May we not impute to beef and tobacco, gin and opium, porter and hemp, results infinitely in advance of their power?
Dr. Eatwell writes, “It has been too much the practice with narrators who have treated on the subject, to content themselves with drawing the sad picture of the confirmed opium debauchee, plunged in the last stage of moral and physical exhaustion, and having formed the premises of their argument of this exception, to proceed at once to involve the whole practice in one sweeping condemnation. But this is not the way in which the subject can be treated; as rational would it be to paint the horrors of delirium tremens, and upon that evidence, to condemn at once the entire use of alcoholic liquors. The question for determination is not what are the effects of opium used to excess, but what are its effects on the moral and physical constitution of the mass of the individuals who use it habitually, and in moderation, either as a stimulant to sustain the frame under fatigue, or as restorative and sedative after labour, bodily or mental. Having passed three years in China, I may be allowed to state the results of my observation, and I can affirm thus far, that the effects of the abuse of the drug do not come very frequently under observation; and that when cases do occur, the habit is frequently found to have been induced by the presence of some painful chronic disease, to escape from the sufferings of which the patient has fled to this resource. That this is not always the case, however, I am perfectly ready to admit, and there are, doubtless, many who indulge in the habit to a pernicious extent, led by the same morbid impulses which induce men to become drunkards in even the most civilized countries; but these cases do not, at all events, come before the public eye. It requires no laborious search in civilized England to discover evidences of the pernicious effects of the abuse of alcoholic liquors: our open and thronged gin-palaces, and our streets, afford abundant testimony on the subject; but in China this open evidence of the evil effects of opium is at least wanting. As regards the effects of the habitual use of the drug on the mass of the people, I must affirm that no injurious results are visible. The people generally are a muscular and well-formed race, the labouring portion being capable of great and prolonged exertion under a fierce sun, in an unhealthy climate. Their disposition is cheerful and peaceable, and quarrels and brawls are rarely heard amongst even the lower orders, whilst in general intelligence, they rank deservedly high amongst orientals.
“The proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more pernicious effects upon the constitution, than does the moderate use of spirituous liquors, whilst at the same time, it is certain, that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their effect upon the victim, and less disastrous to society at large, than are the consequences of the abuse of the latter. Compare the furious madman, the subject of delirium tremens, with the prostrate debauchee, the victim of opium; the violent drunkard, with the dreaming sensualist intoxicated with opium; the latter is at least harmless to all except to his wretched self, whilst the former is but too frequently a dangerous nuisance, and an open bad example to the community at large.”
[CHAPTER XIV.]
FALSE PROPHETS.
“If your wish be rest,
Lettuce and cowslip wine probatum est.”
Pope.
Before describing any of the imitations of opium, or substitutes for it in any form, it will not be out of place to notice briefly the tinctures in popular use in which that drug forms a prominent ingredient.Laudanum is the spirituous infusion, and contains the active ingredients of a twelfth part of its weight of opium. Scotch paregoric elixir is a solution in ammoniated spirit, and is only one-fifth of the strength of laudanum, containing, therefore, one part in sixty of opium. English paregoric is a tincture of opium and camphor, and is four times weaker still. The black drop, and Battley’s sedative liquor, are believed to be solutions of opium in vegetable acids, and to possess, the one of them, four, and the other, three times the strength of laudanum. Although some good authorities consider this an exaggerated computation of the strength of the latter two, and that they are not more than half that strength. There are several other pharmaceutical preparations into which opium enters as a component, but to which it is unnecessary to refer. Those already named, as has before been intimated, are used not a little, to still the sounds of those miniature human organs so distasteful to bachelor ears. The practice, unfortunately so prevalent, of soothing infants with preparations of opium, cannot be too strongly deprecated. We are ready to express our surprise that oriental mothers should transfer their cigars from their own mouths to those of their infants, that the helpless little creatures may enjoy the luxury of a suck, while, at the same time, we are inuring them to the use of a far more insidious and deadly poison. Rather let us for the future, when inclined to charge this as a crime upon others, remember that scene which took place eighteen hundred years ago, and the rebuke with which it closed, in words written with the finger upon the ground, “Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her.”
One of the most important of opium substitutes is derived from a plant in itself not only harmless, but extensively used as an article of food: it is Lactucarium or Lettuce Opium, and is prepared generally from the wild lettuce, although similar properties exist to a more limited extent in the cultivated varieties which find their way to our tables.