Opium is called in Arabic “Afiyoon,” and the opium-eater “Afiyoonee.” In the crude state, opium is generally taken by those who have not long been addicted to its use, in the dose of three or four grains, and the dose is increased by degrees.
The Egyptians make several conserves composed of hellebore, hemp, and opium, and several aromatic drugs which are in much more common use than the simple opium. One of these conserves is called “magoon,” and the person who makes or sells it, is called “magoongee.” The most common kind is called “barsh” or “berch.” There is one kind which, it is said, makes the person who takes it manifest his pleasure by singing, another which will make him chatter, a third which excites to dance, a fourth which particularly effects the vision in a pleasurable manner, and a fifth which is simply of a sedative nature. These are sold at certain kind of shops called “mahsheshehs,” solely appropriated to the sale of intoxicating preparations.
Thus, in different countries, we find opium used in different ways. In Great Britain, for instance, it is either used in the solid state, made into pills, in which form it is somewhat extensively employed in certain of our manufacturing districts, where druggists are affirmed to keep a supply of these pills ready made to meet the demand, or it is used in the form of tincture in the common state of laudanum, in which form it is not only used medicinally, but to our knowledge, somewhat largely as a means of indulgence, or, we should rather say, with somewhat of qualification, largely for a country in which many are fain to suppose that it is not used for those purposes at all. It is also used in the form of Paregoric elixir, and is given insidiously to children under a variety of quack forms, such as Godfrey’s cordial, &c. On the authority of a reverend gentleman, it is stated that in the town of Preston, in 1843, there were upwards of sixteen hundred families in which Godfrey’s cordial was habitually employed, or some other equally injurious compound. Professor Johnston has noticed a communication which appeared in the “Morning Chronicle,” describing the effects of opium upon the health of children, says—“The child sinks into a low torpid state, wastes away into a skeleton, except the stomach, producing what is known as pot-belly. One woman said, ‘The sleeping stuff made them that they were always dozing, and never cared for food. They pined away; their heads got big, and they died.’”
In India, the pure opium is either dissolved in water, and so used, or rolled into pills. It is there a common practice to give it to children when very young, by mothers who require to work, and cannot at the same time nurse their offspring. The natives of the western coast of Africa have a curious mechanical contrivance, by means of which they get rid of the necessity for opium in these cases. The girls wear a “kankey,” or artificial hump on their backs as soon as they can walk, in order to learn betimes to carry their juniors, who ride astride on the said projections. The usefulness of them consists in enabling the mothers to work with their infants in this way on their backs, while in England they excuse themselves from work on the plea of an infant in arms, or else the helpless little creatures are drugged with sleeping stuff, and their heads grow big, and they die.
In China, opium is either swallowed or smoked in the shape of Tye. In Bally it is first adulterated with China paper, and then rolled up with the fibres of a particular kind of plantain. It is then inserted into a hole made at the end of a small bamboo and smoked. In Java and Sumatra it is often mixed with sugar and the ripe fruit of the plantain. In Turkey it is usually taken in pills, and those who do so, avoid drinking any water after having swallowed them, as this is said to produce violent colic; but to make it more palatable, it is sometimes mixed with syrups or thickened juice; in this form, however, it is less intoxicating, and resembles mead. It is then taken with a spoon, or is dried in small cakes, with the words “Mash Allah,” the “Work of God,” or the “Gift of God” imprinted on them. When the dose of two or three drams a day no longer produces the beatific intoxication so eagerly sought, they mix corrosive sublimate with the opium till the quantity reaches ten grains a day.
In Singapore there are representatives of almost every Eastern nation, indulging in the luxury according to the fashion of the country of which he is a native. The Hindoo, fresh from the continent, prefers the mode there in use, and swallows the soul-soothing pill; while the Chinese, with a gusto which no worshipper of the meerschaum can compete with, inhales the smoke, not only into his mouth, but into his lungs, where it becomes breath of his breath, and where retained, it acts on the nervous fibres that are spread over the extensive membrane which lines every cell of the lungs until exhaled through nose and mouth—yea, even in some cases, through ear and eye, it is replaced by another puff.
As the body becomes accustomed by habit to bear larger doses of opium than before the habit has been formed, the enormous quantity which some persons have taken are startling and surprising. Dr. Christison, in his work on Poisons, refers to some of these cases. “A female who died of consumption at the age of forty-two, had taken about a dram of solid opium daily for ten years. A well-known literary character, about fifty years of age, has taken laudanum for twenty-five years, with occasional short intermissions, and sometimes an enormous quantity, but enjoys tolerable bodily health. A lady about fifty-five, who enjoys good health, has taken opium many years, and at present uses three ounces of laudanum daily. Lord Mar, after using laudanum for thirty years, at times to the amount of two or three ounces daily, died at the age of fifty-seven, of jaundice and dropsy. A woman who had been in the practice of taking about two ounces of laudanum daily for very many years, died at the age of sixty or upwards. An eminent literary character who died lately, about the age of sixty-three, was in the practice of drinking laudanum to excess from the age of fifteen, and his daily allowance was sometimes a quart of a mixture consisting of three parts laudanum and one of alcohol. A lady now alive, at the age of seventy-four, has taken laudanum in the quantity of half an ounce daily between thirty and forty years. An old woman died not long ago at Leith at the age of eighty, who had taken about half an ounce of laudanum daily for nearly forty years, and enjoyed tolerable health all the time. Visrajee, a celebrated Cutchee chief mentioned by Dr. Burnes, had taken opium largely all his life, and was alive at the age of eighty, with his mind unimpaired.” To these examples we may add the confession of De Quincey: “I, who have taken happiness both in a solid and a liquid shape, both boiled and unboiled, both East Indian and Turkish—who have conducted my experiments upon this interesting subject with a sort of galvanic battery, and have, for the general benefit of the world, inoculated myself, as it were, with the poison of eight thousand drops of laudanum a day—I, it will be admitted, must surely now know what happiness is, if anybody does. Fifty and two years’ experience of opium, as a magical resource under all modes of bodily suffering, I may now claim to have had. According to the modern slang phrase, I had, in the meridian stage of my opium career, used ‘fabulous’ quantities. Stating the quantities—not in solid opium, but in the tincture (known to everybody as laudanum)—my daily ration was eight thousand drops. If you write down that amount in the ordinary way as 8000, you see at a glance that you may read it into eight quantities of a thousand, or into eight hundred quantities of ten; or, lastly, into eighty quantities of one hundred. Now, a single quantity of one hundred will about fill a very old-fashioned obsolete teaspoon, of that order which you find still lingering amongst the respectable poor. Eighty such quantities, therefore, would have filled eighty of such antediluvian spoons, that is, it would have been the common hospital dose for three hundred and twenty adult patients.” And he adds solemnly, that “without opium, thirty-five years ago, beyond all doubt, I should have been in my grave.”
It is not a very easy task to ascertain the full extent of opium indulgence at home; but there is more of truth than fiction in that passage in “Alton Locke,” where the hero, on his way to Cambridge, meets with a ride in the vehicle of a certain yeoman of the Fen country, and enters into conversation with him, in the course of which the following dialogue takes place.
“Love ye, then! they as dinnot tak’ spirits down thor, tak’ their pennord o’ elevation, then—women folk especial.”
“What’s elevation?”