OPIUM

(Gr. etrai, juice.) The inspi ated juice of the poppy, obtained by wounding the unripe seed capsules of the Fapaver somnijerum, collecting the milky juice which exudes and dries in the sun, and kneading it into cakes. The cakes of the best opium are covered externally with pieces of dried leaves and the seed capsules of some species of Rumex. It should be of a rich brown colour, tough consistency, and smooth uniform texture; its peculiar narcotic smell should be strong and fresh; its taste bitter, warm, and somewhat acrid. The chemical analysis of opium has rendered it probable that its activity as a medicine depends upon the presence of a peculiar alkaline base called morphia, in combination with an acid which has been termed meconic acid. Opium also contains narcotine, narceine, codein, gum resin, extractive matter, and small portions of other proximate principles. The chief countries in which opium is prepared are India, Egypt, Turkey, and other parts of Asia; it is even cultivated in Italy, France, and England, but the climate of Europe seems to be too uncertain to allow of its regular production. Opium is pretty extensively used, both as a masticatory and in smoking, in Turkey and India; but its great consumption is in China and the surrounding countries, where the habit of smoking it has become all but universal. The supplies for the Chinese market are derived from India and Turkey, but chiefly from the former. Indian opium is distinguished into three kinds: the Patna or that grown in the province of Bahar, the Benares, and the Malwa; of which the first is in the highest repute. The cultivation of opium in India is a strict government monopoly. Every one who chooses may, within the prescribed regulations, engage in the opium cultivation; but the drug, when prepared, must all be sold to the government at a fixed price, which is said to be so far from remunerating the growers that, were it not for the advances which government are obliged to make to enable them to carry on the busine , the cultivation of opium would be discontinue<\ [s. 859]