[71] Dr. Ayres, Friend of China, 1878, p. 217.
[72] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5980. Mr. Winchester says: “I should say the balance was in favour of the relief given by the stimulant over the actual misery created by its abuse.” Also Dr. Moore, p. 86.
[73] Dr. Ayres, Friend of China, 1878, p. 217.
[74] Dr. Myers, Health of Takow, p. 8. A recent article in the Times, from a Singapore correspondent, fully bears this out. He says that all allow the Chinese of the Straits Settlements to be the finest specimens of their race, and yet these very Chinese, a million in number, smoke 12,000 chests of opium a year; and the deaths from opium registered in the annual medical report were last year five.
[75] Mr. Brereton (p. 8) says: “I have known numbers, certainly not less than 500 in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days, young men, middle-aged, and men of advanced years, some of them probably excessive smokers; but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them.” Again: “I have tried to find the victims of the dreadful drug, but have never succeeded.”
[76] From a letter to the London and China Telegraph, June 19, 1882.
[77] The estimate of one million given in a preceding note includes the Chinese population of the neighbouring islands and of Cochin China.
[78] Dr. Myers: “It is surprising how few among the hard-working class indulge to excess; and case after case will be met with, even in the lowest ranks of life, of men who have smoked regularly from ten to twenty or thirty years, and show little or no signs of mental or physical deterioration.”
[79] Dr. Myers, Health of Takow, p. 10.
[80] Correspondent to North China Herald. See Brereton, p. 135.