The variety which has been cultivated for centuries escapes readily from cultivation, or becomes almost naturalized in certain localities of the south of Europe.[2001] It cannot be said to exist in a really wild state, but botanists are agreed in regarding it as a modification of the poppy called Papaver setigerum, which is wild on the shores of the Mediterranean, notably in Spain, Algeria, Corsica, Sicily, Greece, and the island of Cyprus. It has not been met with in Eastern Asia,[2002] consequently this is really the original of the cultivated form. Its cultivation must have begun in Europe or in the north of Africa. In support of this theory we find that the Swiss lake-dwellers of the stone age cultivated a poppy which is nearer to P. setigerum than to P. somniferum. Heer[2003] has not been able to find any of the leaves, but the capsule is surmounted by eight stigmas, as in P. setigerum, and not by ten or twelve, as in the cultivated poppy. This latter form, unknown in nature, seems therefore to have been developed within historic times. P. setigerum is still cultivated in the north of France, together with P. somniferum, for the sake of its oil.[2004]
The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with the cultivated poppy. Homer, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides mention it. They were aware of the somniferous properties of the sap, and Dioscorides[2005] mentions the variety with white seeds. The Romans cultivated the poppy before the republic, as we see by the anecdote of Tarquin and the poppy-heads. They mixed its seeds with their flour in making bread.
The Egyptians of Pliny’s time[2006] used the juice of the poppy as a medicament, but we have no proof that this plant was cultivated in Egypt in more ancient times.[2007] In the Middle Ages[2008] and in our own day it is one of the principal objects of cultivation in that country, especially for the manufacture of opium. Hebrew writings do not mention the species. On the other hand, there are one or two Sanskrit names. Piddington gives chosa, and Adolphe Pictet khaskhasa, which recurs, he says, in the Persian chashchâsh, the Armenian chashchash,[2009] and in Arabic. Another Persian name is kouknar.[2010] These names, and others I could quote, very different from the maikôn (Μήκων) of the Greeks, are an indication of an ancient cultivation in Europe and Western Asia. If the species was first cultivated in prehistoric time in Greece, as appears probable, it may have spread eastward before the Aryan invasion of India, but it is strange that there should be no proof of its extension into Palestine and Egypt before the Roman epoch. It is also possible that in Europe the variety called Papaver setigerum, employed by the Swiss lake-dwellers, was first cultivated, and that the variety now grown came from Asia Minor, where the species has been cultivated for at least three thousand years. This theory is supported by the existence of the Greek name maikôn, in Dorian makon, in several Slav languages, and in those of the peoples to the south of the Caucasus, under the form mack.[2011]
The cultivation of the poppy in India has been recently extended, because of the importation of opium into China; but the Chinese will soon cease to vex the English by buying this poison of them, for they are beginning eagerly to produce it themselves. The poppy is now grown over more than half of their territory.[2012] The species is never wild in the east of Asia, and even as regards China its cultivation is recent.[2013]
The name opium given to the drug extracted from the juice of the capsule is derived from the Greek. Dioscorides wrote opos (Οπος). The Arabs converted it into afiun,[2014] and spread it eastwards even to China.
Flückiger and Hanbury[2015] give a detailed and interesting account of the extraction, trade, and use of opium in all countries, particularly in China. Yet I imagine my readers may like to read the following extracts from Dr. Bretschneider’s letters, dated from Pekin, Aug. 23, 1881, Jan. 28, and June 18, 1882. They give the most certain information which can be derived from accurately translated Chinese works.
“The author of the Pent-sao-kang-mou, who wrote in 1552 and 1578, gives some details concerning the a-fou-yong (that is afioun, opiun), a foreign drug produced by a species of ying-sou with red flowers in the country of Tien-fang (Arabia), and recently used as a medicament in China. In the time of the preceding dynasty there had been much talk of the a-fou-yong. The Chinese author gives some details relative to the extraction of opium in his native country, but he does not say that it is also produced in China, nor does he allude to the practice of smoking it. In the Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands, by Crawfurd, p. 312, I find the following passage: ‘The earliest account we have of the use of opium, not only from the Archipelago, but also from India and China, is by the faithful, intelligent Barbosa.[2016] He rates it among the articles brought by the Moorish and Gentile merchants of Western India, to exchange for the cargoes of Chinese junks.’”
“It is difficult to fix the exact date at which the Chinese began to smoke opium and to cultivate the poppy which produces it. As I have said, there is much confusion on this head, and not only European authors, but also the modern Chinese, apply the name ying-sou to P. somniferum as well as to P. rhæas. P. somniferum is now extensively cultivated in all the provinces of the Chinese empire, and also in Mantchuria and Mongolia. Williamson (Journeys in North China, Mantchuria, Mongolia, 1868, ii. p. 55) saw it cultivated everywhere in Mantchuria. He was told that the cultivation of the poppy was twice as profitable as that of cereals. Potanin, a Russian traveller, who visited Northern Mongolia in 1876, saw immense plantations of the poppy in the valley of Kiran (between lat. 47° and 48°), This alarms the Chinese government, and still more the English, who dread the competition of native opium.”
“You are probably aware that opium is eaten, not smoked, in India and Persia. The practice of smoking this drug appears to be a Chinese invention, and modern. Nothing proves that the Chinese smoked opium before the middle of the last century. The Jesuit missionaries to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do not mention it; Father d’Incarville alone says in 1750 that the sale of opium is forbidden because it was used by suicides. Two edicts forbidding the smoking of opium date from before 1730, and another in 1796 speaks of the progress made by the vice in question. Don Sinibaldo di Mas, who in 1858 published a very good book on China, where he had lived many years as Spanish ambassador, says that the Chinese took the practice from the people of Assam, where the custom had long existed.”
So bad a habit, like the use of tobacco or absinth, is sure to spread. It is becoming gradually introduced into the countries which have frequent relations with China. It is to be hoped that it will not attack so large a proportion of the peoples of other countries as in Amoy, where the proportion of opium-smokers are as fifteen to twenty of the adult population.[2017]