Opium

the dried juice of the seed pods of the common garden poppy. The poppy has a milky juice, a disagreeable smell, flowery foliage, and gorgeous flowers that fall to pieces under the touch. "The capsules, seed pods, are curious from the manner in which they fling out their seeds when shaken by the wind; each capsule being somewhat like a round or oval pepperbox with holes, however, not on the top, where rain might get in, but under the rim." An agreeable oil, pressed from the seeds of the poppy, is used as a substitute for olive oil. To collect seed, it is necessary to harvest and dry the stalks in an upright position. They are then inverted, when the seeds run out of the pods and are caught on a canvas. Poppies are cultivated, for the sake of opium chiefly, in the valley of the Ganges, in Asiatic Turkey, in Egypt, and in Persia.

The Ganges poppy region is a small district 400 miles long and 100 miles wide. When a fair proportion of the poppy heads are full sized but not ripe, which for India is in February, the opium harvest is at hand. The native laborers go through the fields in the dewy morn, wounding the poppy heads with a notched instrument such as would be formed by cutting a steel saw into pieces of two teeth each, and binding four of these pieces together to make what a boy would call a "jabber." During the sultry day a milky sap oozes out of the punctures and collects in drops. Early each morning collectors go along the rows and scoop off these drops into a vessel hanging at the workman's girdle. Returning home, the juice is transferred to a shallow brass pan which is tilted to allow any water to drain off. In three or four weeks the sap has evaporated to the consistency of dough, and is sold to a government factory where it is thrown into a vat large enough to hold the product of a district. The opium is now kneaded and worked into balls. These balls are covered skillfully with poppy petals, carefully pasted and glued and adapted to the surface. Each ball is deposited in a brass cup, which, indeed, has been used during the process of covering; the cups are placed in trays, and the trays are placed in racks in a vast drying room. These precious balls are turned every day, as if they were small cheeses, and examined with care to see that no harm is taken from insects or mold. When dried, the balls are packed in chests for market. It may be seen readily that opium is an expensive article, but the demand is so great that opium exceeds every other drug in commercial importance. By actual weight it is the most extensively sold drug in the market. In 1904 our drug trade imported opium to the value of $2,500,000.

In addition to its legitimate use as a powerful medicine, opium is used habitually by the natives of China and the eastern archipelago. It is consumed by placing a pellet the size of a pea in an opium pipe. The pipe is lighted by application to a flame, and the opium is inhaled by a single long drawn whistling breath. Opium dens are maintained by the Chinese in many of our large cities. Those of San Francisco were especially notable before the great fire of 1906. China raises considerable opium, and imports $25,000,000 worth annually. Laudanum is a tincture of opium,--one part of opium to five parts each of water and alcohol. An overdose is a deadly poison. Morphine is one of the ingredients of opium. When extracted it is a white crystalline powder.

The production of opium in India is a government monopoly. There is a agitation against production for smoking. The United States Department of Agriculture is experimenting with a view to the home production of morphine. It can be made from a cheap grade of opium.