The cultivation of the poppy, as a garden flower at any rate, was certainly practised as far back as eight hundred years before Christ. Homer, who lived between 800 B.C. and 700 B.C.[6] mentions it in his Iliad.[7] Cornelius Nepos also mentions the poppy in Italy; when Tarquin indicated to the envoy sent to him by his son Sextus Tarquinius, what he wanted done to the chief inhabitants of Etruria, by striking down all the tallest poppies in his garden.[8]
Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, and who is famous as the founder of Greek medical literature, is the first to mention poppy juice, and the virtues of the poppy were undoubtedly known to him; but the physical effects of opium were not definitely mentioned until the first century before Christ, when Vergil, who lived from 70 B.C. to 19 B.C., writes of the “Poppy pervaded with Lethean sleep,”[9] and the “Sleep-giving poppy.”[10] It may be mentioned in passing, that in Greek mythology Lethe is a river that flows through the regions of the dead, the waters of which, if drunk by anyone, cause oblivion in regard to their past existence.
In the first century after Christ, opium was known as a medicine. Opium is mentioned by this name by Pliny[11] and by Dioscorides[12] both of whom lived in this century and its soporific effect was well known. The poppy was cultivated for opium on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and as the bulk of the trade between Europe and the Indies passed through these countries, it is certain that this drug, whose value was known, must have formed a part of the trade, though not, perhaps, to such a great extent as to attract attention.
Early in the seventh century after Christ, the religion of Islam was established in Arabia. By the commandments of this new religion the use of alcohol was absolutely forbidden, and it is supposed that those who had been used to alcohol began to use opium and hemp drugs as substitutes, the fact that these two drugs were not explicitly mentioned being sufficient sanction, apparently, for their use. It seems certain that with the spread of Islamism, the use of opium as a stimulant became more widely diffused. The Arabs were at that time, to all intents and purposes, masters of the eastern seas. They made long voyages, and carried on a trade with India and China, and from contemporary literature it has been definitely established that it was the Arabs that introduced the poppy, and a knowledge of its properties, into China. It is probable that opium was used as a stimulant in India also, at this time, but nothing is definitely known about this, and the history of the production and use of the drug before the sixteenth century is obscure. There are many indications, however, that the opium habit came into India in the eighth century, when the Arabs invaded and conquered Sind; and as the habit spread with the wanderings of the Arabs, there is much in the surmise. From this time, up to the end of the eleventh century, the Mahomedan invaders brought the greater part of India under their rule or influence, and in Portuguese Chronicles, written in the sixteenth century, the cultivation of the poppy, the opium habit, the production of opium, and its export are talked of as established things. Authorities on India conclude, from the inherent reluctance of the Indian to rapidly adopt new habits or crops, that the opium habit, and the cultivation of the poppy for opium, must have taken at least three hundred years or so to develop over such large areas.
The Portuguese discovered the Cape route to India in 1488, but it was not till ten years later that they first crossed the Indian Ocean and appeared on the west coast of India. They visited all important places on the coasts, and the great Islands of the Malay Archipelago, and established themselves in many places. They were not welcome, however, and were treated as intruders by Oriental traders. Many and fierce were the encounters between the Moors, and Arabs, and the intruders, who were, in the greater number, buccaneers and pirates rather than merchants. Numerous references to opium occur in the literature of those times. Vespucci mentions “opium, aloes, and many other drugs too numerous to detail” in a list of the cargo carried by Cabral’s fleet from India to Lisbon in 1501. In 1511 Giovanni da Empoli mentions the capture of eight Gujarat ships laden with opium and other merchandize; and in a letter written in 1513 by Albuquerque to the King of Portugal, he says “I also send you a man of Aden who knows how to work afyam (opium) and the manner of collecting it. If Your Highness would believe me, I would order poppies of the Açores to be sown in all the fields of Portugal and command afyam to be made, which is the best merchandize that obtains in these places, and by which much money is made; owing to the thrashing which we gave Aden no afyam has come to India, and where it once was worth 12 pardoes a faracolla, there is none to be had at 80. Afyam is nothing else, Senhor, but the milk of the poppy; from Cayro (sic) whence it used to come, none comes now from Aden; therefore, Senhor, I would have you order them to be sown and cultivated, because a shipload would be used yearly in India, and the labourers would gain much also, and the people of India are lost without it, if they do not eat it; and set this fact in order, for I do not write to Your Highness an insignificant thing.”
Duarte Barbosa[13] (1516) makes several references to opium:—
Duy (Diu): “They load at this port of the return voyage cotton ... and opium, both that which comes from Aden, and that which is made in the kingdom of Cambay, which is not so fine as that of Aden.”
Peigu (Burma): “Many Moorish ships assemble at these ports of Peigu, and bring thither much cloth of Cambay and Palecate, coloured cottons and silks, which the Indians call patola, which are worth a great deal here; they also bring opium, copper ... and a few drugs from Cambay.”
Ava: “The merchants bring here for sale quicksilver, vermilion, coral, copper ... opium, scarlet cloth and many other things from the kingdom of Cambay.” D’Orta described Cambay opium as yellowish, while the Aden variety was black and hard, and apparently the better liked kind.[14]
A Dutchman named Linschoten,[15] in an account of his travels and voyages, in 1596, gives an exaggerated account of the effects of opium. He says: “Amfion, so called by the Portingales, is by the Arabians, Mores (Moors) and Indians called affion, in Latin, opio or opium. It cometh out of Cairo in Egypt, and out of Aden upon the coast of Arabia, which is the point of the land entering into the Red Sea, sometimes belonging to the Portingales, but most part out of Cambaia, and from Deccan; that of Cairo is whitish and is called Mecerii; that of Aden and the places bordering upon the mouth of the Red Sea is blackish and hard; that which come from Cambaia and Deccan is softer and reddish. Amfion is made of sleepeballs, or poppie, and is the gumme which cometh forth of the same, to ye which end it is cut up and opened. The Indians use much to eat Amfion, specially the Malabares, and thither it is brought by those of Cambaia and other places in great abundance. He that useth to eate it must eate it daylie, otherwise he dieth and consumeth himself. When they begin to eate it, and are used unto it, they eate at the least twenty or thirty grains in weight everie day, sometimes more; but if for four or five days he chanceth to leave it, he dieth without fail. Likewise he that hath never eaten it, and will venture at the first to eate as much as those that daylie use it, it will surely kill him, for I certainly believe it is a kind of poyson. Such as use it goe alwaise as if they were half asleepe. They eate much of it because they would not feel any great labour or unquietness when they are at work, but they use it most for lecherie ... although such as eate much thereof, are in time altogether unable to company with a woman and whollie dried up, for it drieth and whollie cooleth man’s nature that use it, as the Indians themselves do witness. Wherefore it is not much used by the nobilitie, but only for the cause aforesaid.”