650 POLYANDRIA. MONOGYNIA. Papaver 
P. cam'jbricum. Capsule smooth, oblong, beaked : stem many-flowered, 
nearly smooth: leaves winged, jagged, stalked. 
obtaining therefrom 19b* lbs. of Opium, vvhich sold for two shillings per pound more than 
any of foreign growth. The cultivation of the Poppy has been strongly recommended as 
an employment for the poor. A practical treatise, describing the whole process, with 
the instruments for, cutting and collecting, may be had at Northampton, or of Mr. Dash, 
Kettering. The general supply has always been obtained by importation from Persia, 
Egypt, Smyrna, and the East Indies ; but were this provided at home, light labour, 
suitable even to women and children, would he very considerable, and large sums 
of money kept in the country. Opium, properly so called, is the hardened juice of Poppy 
heads ; Meconium is the juice of heads and leaves mixed, and not so powerful. The 
remarks here offered apply not only to foreign Opium, but, more or less, to our native 
produce. Though in ordinary cases a single grain of Opium may sometimes prove too large a 
dose, the quantity to which the human constitution may be gradually habituated, is astonish¬ 
ing. In countries where the prevailing religion prohibits the use of wine, as in Turkey, the 
Barbary States, Egypt, and throughout a large part of Hindoostan, solid Opium, by 
progressive habit, is sometimes taken to the amount of half an ounce or more each day, 
without producing any other effect than a temporary inebriety. Garcias relates that he 
knew an individual who daily swallowed ten drams ! Though this drug is wont to 
transport the enervated Asiatic to extatic bliss, the Eastern despot occasionally applies 
it to the prompt extinction of life in state criminals. The heat of such climates is 
supposed to concentrate its deadly particles : as an antidote to which modern chemists have 
ascertained acids to be most effectual. But the habitual practice of Opium taking, even 
under the most plausible pretexts, cannot be too strongly deprecated, as not less immoral 
and pernicious than any other species of debauchery ; not merely enervating the system, 
but depriving the unhappy transgressor of a remedy most efficacious on proper occasions. 
However great the temptation to fly to so wretched a subterfuge, the man of courage 
and principle will shun 
c< Poppies which suborn the sleep of death.” 
Dr. Drummond, in his admirable * 4 First Steps to Botany,” very justly remarks, that 
Opium “ allays pain, and lightens sorrow, diffuses a pleasing langour over the frame, and 
gives unusual serenity to the mind, dispelling from it every apprehension of sublunary 
evil, and steeping it in scenes of Elysium. It is indeed an agent which can, for a period at 
least, 
“ Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with a sweet oblivious antidote. 
Cleanse the full bosom of that perilous stuff. 
Which weighs upon the heart.” 
But this is only for a time, and the charm being dissolved, the soul awakes from its trance 
only to experience aggravated woe, in those at least, (and even in Britain the number is 
not small), who have fallen into the habitual use of this drug. If there be on earth a 
misery that approaches what we might be allowed to conceive as among the worst sufferings 
of a future place of punishment, it is the state of an Opium-eater, after the action of his dose 
has subsided. Unhappy and trembling, his head confused, and his stomach sick, remorse at 
his heart, but his resolution too feeble to attempt a reformation; feeling as an outcast from 
every thing that is good or great, he returns despairing to a repetition of his dose, and every 
repetition adds confirmation to the evil habit. His constitution becomes exhausted in a 
few years; he grows prematurely old, and dies of palsy, dropsy, or some disease as fatal: 
he dies, having by his own weakness and imprudence lived a life of wretchedness in this 
world, and looking forward at his exit to the darkest scenes of misery in the next. How often 
does man turn the greatest blessings into the greatest curse ! ” Should this accurate 
description prove insufficient to deter the tempted from yielding to a fascination more fatal 
than that of the serpent, let him read, with trembling, “ the Confessions of an English 
Opium Eater.” 
After the above warning, we may venture to listen to the concluding lines, even of a 
rapturous encomium of the Poppy : 
