THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
19 
noxious than opium-eating as tobacco-smoking is than tobacco- 
eating. 
" No part of Mr. Giles's book has been so fiercely assailed by the 
press as that on opium-smoking, especially where he says, ' where 
opium kills its hundreds, gin counts its victims by thousands. ' 
This is said to be an exaggeration ; we consider it an under-state- 
ment ; we have very, very seldom seen drunken Chinese, and in 
fifteen years' residence have only heard of two Chinamen who had 
delirium tremens. We have examined into hundreds of cases of 
opium -smoking. We have never been able to trace a single 
death or crime to the practice. Mr. Giles's distinction between 
men who have the craving and those who have not is correct ; 
to the latter opium does much good ; it has saved the lives 
of myriads of persons of consumptive tendency, who would be 
given up by European doctors. Consumption, the dread and 
scourge of Europeans in China as well as at home, is not feared at 
all by the Chinese who smoke opium. The Chinaman lives in 
crowds in undrained marshy ground, badly ventilated houses, and 
on rotten cabbage and rice ; yet the Chinese opium-smoking coolie 
and carter will do work and face weather that would appal our 
well-fed labourers. Why ? The most rudimentary knowledge of 
physiology will tell us. Animals that eat vegetables have long, 
and animals that eat meat, short intestines. The length of man's 
intestines shows he was meant to eat both. 
" Next with regard to those who have the yin or craving. Mr. 
Giles is mistaken in supposing they cannot give up the habit ; it is 
not so difficult as in cases of dipsomania ; three or four days or a 
week of stomach-ache, with diarrhoea, is all a man of good health 
has to fear; people in a bad state of body cannot give up the 
habit, the attempt to do so does sometimes result in death, which 
would in nine cases out of ten have occurred earlier if they had not 
smoked at all. Mr. Giles is quite mistaken in supposing that to an 
inveterate smoker all chance of posterity is denied. We will men- 
tion three cases that show this : one smoked opium for twenty 
years, has had the craving for fourteen ; several children, one born 
in 1874; a second smoked opium many years, has had craving 
eleven years, has a child one year old; while a third smoked 
opium for forty years, had craving thirty-five years, and died at 
the age of sixty-three, leaving several children, the youngest of 
whom was seven. It is, however, so common a belief that opium- 
b 2 
