116 
OPIUM  AS  A  THERAPEUTIC  AGENT. 
the  bitter  taste.  Hence  it  must  be  apparent  that  the  mere  act 
of  judgment  applied  to  opium,  can  be  of  little  other  value 
than  to  discriminate  by  a  certain  physiognomy  the  class  or  com- 
mercial variety  to  which  it  may  belong,  and  its  freedom  from 
unusual,  or  clumsy  adulteration  or  admixture.  Any  one,  there- 
fore, with  even  a  small  experience  in  the  assay  of  opium  will 
give  little  credit  to  the  assertion  of  opium  judges,  that  by  simple 
inspection  of  its  physical  properties  they  can  tell  within  a  frac- 
tion of  one  per  cent.,  how  much  morphia  any  given  specimen 
or  case  of  opium  contains. 
Authorities  agree  pretty  well  upon  the  general  fact  that 
opium  without  any  secondary  adulteration  varies  in  morphia 
strength  from  2  to  22  per  cent.,  in  the  different  varieties  met 
with  in  commerce.  But,  excluding  from  consideration  here  the 
lower  grades,  such  as  the  Egyptian  and  India  varieties,  which 
may  always  be  avoided  by  inspection,  and  the  very  high  grades 
of  European  cultivated  opium  which  are  never  met  with  in  the 
common  market,  and  thus  confining  these  remarks  to  that 
variety  almost  exclusively  met  with  in  our  markets,  the  follow- 
ing results  have  been  obtained. 
The  Smyrna  opium  examined  was  of  the  qualities  known 
commercially  as  "prime"  and  "strictly  prime,"  and  the  num- 
ber of  critical  assays  made  within  the  last  six  years,  of  which 
reliable  notes  were  kept,  and  excluding  those  where  there  could 
be  any  suspicion  of  damage  or  sophistication,  is  ten.  In  all 
these  the  assay  was  confined  to  morphia  alone,  but  the  amount 
of  water  lost  in  drying  sufficiently  to  powder  the  opium  was 
also  taken  in  many  instances,  and  an  average  loss  for  the  water 
was  established.  Upon  this  average  loss  of  21  per  cent.,  the 
specimens  of  powdered  opium  examined  were  calculated  back  to 
their  original  condition  of  moisture,  and  the  percentage  is  based 
upon  the  calculated  weight  for  such  specimens.  Subsequent  ob- 
servations and  a  larger  experience  go  to  show,  however,  that  this, 
as  a  general  average,  is  a  little  too  high  ;  for  although  individual 
experiments  with  quantities  of  10  to  20  lbs.  will  occasionally 
lose  24  and  25  per  cent,  in  drying  sufficiently  to  powder,  other 
individual  cases  are  met  with  where  the  loss  is  as  low  as  17  per 
cent.  The  average  loss  now  supposed  to  be  nearer  the  true  ex- 
pression, is,  for  drying  19.5  to  20  per  cent.,  or  in  drying  and 
