242 ON THE CULTIVATION OP 
The opium commerce gives to the Indian government an annual 
revenue of 87,000,000 frs., and in this computation is not included the 
opium which China receives from the countries which bound it on the 
west or which it produces itself ; so that the price of opium consumed 
by the Chinese annually amounts to 125 millions of francs. 
M. le Professeur Guibourt says that in 1827-28, the exportation of 
opium from India to China was from 550,765 kilogr. ; in 1853 it was 
from 1,395,887 kilogr., it must now be considerable more. 
It appears, too, that the use of opium spreads itself also over the 
New "World, and that the consumption of this narcotic everywhere in- 
creases in proportions that are alarming, for this reason that the pro- 
duction does not increase to the same extent. 
The day will come, I repeat again, if this state of things continues, 
when European doctors will not be able to obtain pure oriental opium 
even at a high price, and the medical world is well aware, as Sydenham, 
the eminent English physician, declares, there is scarcely a medicine 
without opium. Then opium must be grown in France. 
Let us next see what would be the price of French opium, and com- 
pare it with that of the exotic opiums. 
And first, M. Aubergier, in practising incisions of the poppy head 
with an instrument with four blades,* and taking away the opium juice 
as soon as it appears. M. Aubergier, I say, has succeeded after several 
and praiseworthy attempts, in obtaining from each day's work 450 grs. 
of the milky juice from white poppies, and 300 grammes from the 
purple. 
Monsieur Chevallier, whose name is sufficient authority in science, 
gives an account of an experiment made under his eyes on the purple 
poppy in the plantation of the professor at Clermont. He thus expresses 
himself : — 
" Two workers, in the space of forty-five minutes, collected thirty 
grammes of poppy juice, which comes to forty grammes of juice in an 
hour, and consequently 400 grammes in ten hours work. These 400 
grammes of poppy juice lose by drying in a stove (we made the experi- 
ment) 264 grammes of water, and leave 136 grammes of an opium more 
dry than that which is given in trade. 
" We see that with two workers, to whom we pay 60 cents, or 1 fr. 
20 cents., we obtain more than 125 grammes of opium of from 4 to 5 frs. 
value, which leaves a profit of 2 frs. 75 cents. ; still we have only 
brought opium to 32 frs., whilst in trade opium of good quality sells 
for from 32 to 40 frs. the kilogramme." 
In another experiment, the results of which are in the same way 
* M. Guibourt, the learned professor of the Parisian school, says that the idea 
adopted by M. Aubergier of employing an instrument with four blades is not 
new ; it is in reality surpassed by that of jive blades, already described by 
Kampfer and mentioned by Geoffrey, and by M. Guibourt himself in his ' Na- 
tural History of Simple Drugs.' 
