The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

Dr. Ayres was quite right, the two have got mixed up together, thanks to Mr. Storrs Turner and his confrères. To further explain the difference between opium eating and opium smoking, let us take the familiar instance of tobacco smoking. It is not, I think, generally known that tobacco, taken internally, is a violent and almost instantaneous poison. A very small quantity of it admitted into the stomach produces speedy death, and it is a wonder to some medical men that its use has not been made available by assassins for their foul and deadly purposes. Tobacco has no medicinal properties; it is simply known to chemists and physicians as a poison. Its alkaloid, or active principle, is nicotine, a poison of so deadly and instantaneous a nature as to rank with aconite, strychnine, and prussic acid. Of the four, indeed, it takes the lead. In Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” to which I have already referred, it is laid down at page 321, under the head of “Poisoning by Tobacco”:—

The effects which this substance produces when taken in a large dose, either in the form of powder or infusion, are well marked. The symptoms are faintness, nausea, vomiting, giddiness, delirium, loss of power in the limbs, general relaxation of the muscular system, trembling, complete prostration of strength, coldness of the surface with cold clammy perspiration, convulsive movements, paralysis and death. In some cases there is purging, with violent pain in the abdomen; in others there is rather a sense of sinking or depression in the region of the heart, passing into syncope, or creating a sense of impending dissolution. With the above-mentioned symptoms there is dilatation of the pupils, dimness of sight with confusion of ideas, a small, weak, and scarcely-perceptible pulse, and difficulty of breathing. Poisoning by tobacco has not often risen to medico-legal discussion. This is the more remarkable as it is an easily accessible substance, and the possession of it would not, as in the case of other poisons, excite surprise or suspicion. In June, 1854, a man was charged with the death of an infant, of ten weeks, by poisoning it with tobacco. He placed a quantity of tobacco in the mouth of the infant, with the view, as he stated, of making it sleep. The infant was completely narcotized, and died on the second day.... Tobacco owes its poisonous properties to the presence of a liquid volatile alkaloid, nicotina.

Whilst under the head “Nicotine,” on the same page, he says:—

This is a deadly poison, and, like prussic acid, it destroys life in small doses with great rapidity. I found that a rabbit was killed by a single drop in three minutes and a half. In fifteen seconds the animal lost all power of standing, was violently convulsed in its fore and hind legs, and its back was arched convulsively.

In Dr. Ure’s “Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,” it is laid down, at page 250, under the head of “Nicotine”:—

This alkaloid is the active principle of the tobacco plant.... Nicotine is a most powerful poison, one drop put on the tongue of a large dog being sufficient to kill it in two or three minutes.

So much for tobacco and its alkaloid as deadly poisons; yet we all know that, unless indulged in to an inordinate extent, tobacco smoking is a perfectly harmless practice, almost universally indulged in; the exception now being to find a man, young or old, gentle or simple, who is not a tobacco smoker. Most of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and mathematicians smoke it, and in most cases, I believe, with advantage. Indulged in moderately, it does no injury to the constitution, but I should rather say its effects are curative and beneficial; you will rarely find a heavy tobacco smoker a drunkard or even a spirit drinker. Yet this plant, which gives comfort and delight to millions of people, is a deadly poison if taken internally in even a minute quantity in its natural or manufactured state. So it is with opium; the habitual eating of it may be injurious, but the smoking is not only innocuous, but positively beneficial to the system. It is a complete preservative against dram drinking and drunkenness, for whilst it produces similar but far more agreeable effects on the nervous system than wine, it does not, like alcohol, poison the blood, destroy the health, and lead to ruin, disgrace, and death. Of course, opium-smoking, like every other luxury—tea, wine, spirits, beer, tobacco—may be abused, but the few who indulge excessively are infinitesimally small as compared with the many who abuse the use of alcoholic liquors. As to opium eating, an overdose produces death, but the opium smoker can indulge in his luxury from, morning till night without any apparent injury. It is plain, therefore, that opium smoking and opium eating cannot be classed in the same category at all, but stand apart quite separately and distinctly.

I may here again appropriately refer to Sir Wilfrid Lawson’s speech at the Anti-Opium meeting at Newcastle. In the course of his remarks, the speaker referred with some humour to an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, a once active organization. At a meeting of this body held at Carlisle, it appears that the chief orator,—an energetic person, with wonderful powers of imagination and a fluent tongue, quite another Mr. Storrs Turner—having exhausted his power of vituperation in denouncing the Virginian weed and its terrible effects upon its votaries, alleged in particular that tobacco smoking tended to shorten human life, but here he was interrupted by one of the audience, a jovial middle-aged north countryman, who said, “I don’t know that Mr. Lecturer, for my father smoked till he was eighty!” “Ah!” exclaimed the other, quite equal, as he thought, to the occasion, “your father’s case was an exceptional one; he was an unusually strong, healthy man. Anyone who sees you, his hale, hearty son, must know that. Had he not been a tobacco smoker he would have lived much longer.” “I don’t know that either,” returned the countryman, “for he is alive and well and still smokes tobacco.” Now had Sir Wilfrid delivered that speech at a meeting formed to protest against the theories of the Anti-Tobacco Society, he would assuredly have scored; but, as matters stood, I must claim his speech as one made in favour of my views upon the opium question; for, to use a famous formula, I would say to the honourable baronet, “Would you be surprised to hear that I can produce to you, not only an aged father and son who are opium smokers, but a father, son, and grandson all living who follow that practice, and have done so all their lives without injury to health?”

But enjoyable as tobacco smoking may be, I contend that, to the Asiatic at least, opium smoking is not only a more agreeable but also a far more beneficial practice. Tobacco has no curative properties, but is simply a poison; opium is the most valuable medicine known; where all other sedatives fail its powers are prominent. As an anodyne no other medicine can equal it. There is one property peculiar to opium, that is that it is non-volatilizable, or nearly so. If a piece of opium is put on a red-hot plate, it will not volatilize; that is, it will not disappear in the form of vapour, which by chemical means can be preserved in order to resume or retain its original character. But it will be destroyed by combustion; the heat will consume it in the same manner as it would destroy a piece of sugar or any other non-volatilizable body; whereas a substance that is volatilizable, like sulphur, on being subjected to the same process, instead of being destroyed, is simply given out in vapour, and by proper means may be caught again and reformed in the shape of sulphur. So when you place opium into a pipe and put the pellet to the lamp, the effect of the combustion is to destroy the active property of the opium; the smoker takes the smoke thrown off into his mouth, which he expels either through the mouth or nostrils. The only way, therefore, he can get any of the active property of the opium into his system is by smoking it like tobacco. Now tobacco, on the contrary, is volatilizable, but the poison is so volatile, and escapes so freely through the bowl of the pipe in the shape of vapour, and is so rapidly expelled from the mouth, that no harm is produced by the process of smoking the deadly poison, the natural recuperative power of the frame neutralizing the effects of the noisome vapour. The difference between opium and tobacco smoking appears to be this:—In the one case you take into your mouth the mere smoke of a valuable aromatic drug, which, when passed into the stomach in proper quantities as a medicine, has powerful curative properties, the smoke when expelled leaving no substance behind it, but in its passage exerting a pleasant and perfectly harmless stimulating effect upon the nerves.

In the case of tobacco, the fumes with the volatilized substance of a foul and poisonous weed having no curative properties whatever, and having the most loathsome and offensive smell to those who have not gone through the pain and misery necessary to accustom themselves to them, is taken into the mouth. Nicotine, the alkaloid of tobacco, is simply a deadly and rapid poison, useful only to the assassin. Morphia, the alkaloid of opium, is only poisonous when taken in an excessive quantity; whether used internally or injected under the skin, it is the most wonderful anodyne and sedative known. I fully believe that, when medical men come to study opium and opium smoking more fully, it will become the established opinion of the faculty that opium smoking is not only perfectly harmless, but that it is most beneficial, so that it may ultimately not only put down spirit drinking, but perhaps supersede, to a great extent, tobacco. But few medical men in this country have as yet made opium a special study. They only know its use and properties as described in the British Pharmacopeia; many even of those who have practised in the parts of India where the drug is eaten do not, it seems, as yet fully understand all its properties. Dr. Ayres himself admits that he was astonished after his arrival in Hong Kong to find the great difference between the effects of smoking and eating the drug. I may here remind my readers that we have, or had once, an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, just as there is now an Anti-Opium-smoking Society. The former had so many living evidences of the absurdities alleged by its supporters against the use of tobacco, that the agitation was laughed down and has either died a natural death or has only a moribund and spasmodic existence; but had the place where the alleged enormity of tobacco smoking was practised been Africa, I think the Society would have died a much harder death, or at all events shown more vitality. The Anti-Opium Society would have shared the same fate long ago were it not that the scene of all the alleged evils is China, ten thousand miles away, and the witnesses against their absurd allegations live the same distance from us. But still, believe me, the Anti-Opium Society’s days are numbered: it is doomed, and, like the Anti-Tobacco craze, will be numbered soon amongst the things that were. I flatter myself that in the delivery and publication of these lectures I have given the agitation a heavy blow and great discouragement.