Chapter VIII: Part 8

But the civility of our military friends was greater, if possible, than their skill in gardening or hydraulics. When we saw a countenance more intelligent and good-natured than the rest, we made bold to enter into conversation, and make inquiries about the forthcoming review. The witnesses were unanimous in answering, that it was to commence at half-past two, and that the Emperor and Empress would appear at three. The French army, we conclude, is recruited, like our own, from all parts of the country, and the mixture of dialects is accordingly very great. There were the most convulsive efforts made by several of the men we spoke to, first, to understand what we said, and, secondly, to make us understand their reply. Some were from Alsace, and we detected the German element in the sibilants and gutturals with which they in vain endeavoured to simplify their discourse; but, whether Parisians or Alsacians, they were unanimous about the show, and we accordingly considered ourselves in luck, and moved slowly towards the Champ de Manœuvre, a plain on the other side of the road, where, they told us, the display was to take place. Suddenly we heard bugles and drums at the line of camps which we had left, and, on looking back, we saw blue coats and red trousers congregating in front, issuing from their tents like a thousand hives of bees swarming; and after a few rat-tat-tats! and a few notes of the horn, we saw a long line of soldiers stretching from one end of the encampment to the other. Motion was communicated to this immense body, and we waited to see them pass. First, a regiment, in battle array, with bayonets blazing in the sun, marched solidly and firmly past, crossed the highway, and were lost to our eyes in the level ground beyond. Behind them, at a moderate interval, walking, not marching, fifteen abreast, came a prodigious column of men and officers, but they had no arms, and apparently very little discipline; laughing, talking, dropping out of line, but still tripping lightly on, at about four miles an hour, and they also disappeared in the plateau to the south. Where could they all be going to? Without muskets, how could they manage at a review? The artillerymen also were in full force, but they were dismounted and unarmed, and the whole army, “pioneers and all,” disappeared, in some marvellous manner, the moment they crossed the road. We crossed the road too, and found ourselves behind a close line of armed soldiers, who were drawn up along a narrow pathway. Another line of soldiers guarded its other side, and the space so kept clear was occupied by field-officers and aides-de-camp, and occasionally by an orderly or two, trotting at full speed, and busy in the delivery of orders and despatches. About fifty yards from where we stood, an immense curtain was suspended across the whole width of the footpath, and entirely blocked up the view beyond. This enormous curtain stretched from side to side of lofty banks, which looked like the entrance to a deep cutting in a railway; and it was only when either the wind blew the canvass aside, or the sides of it were partly opened to admit fresh arrivals from the camp, that we caught momentary views of the most curious spectacle it ever was our fortune to see. An amphitheatre of more than Roman size had been hollowed out of the sandy elevation at the end of the pathway. Row upon row, to an enormous height, were stretched the seats all round; and placed on them, grim, silent, and expectant, sat upwards of twenty thousand of the young soldiers of France, all in uniform, all under military discipline—for their officers maintained perfect order—and all radiant, as far as we could see, with health and satisfaction. The curtain again closed, and we were left to the line of soldiers and the narrow pathway. There were crowds where we stood, but by the disbursement of some halfpence we got our party comfortably provided with chairs, and on these miserable rush-bottomed and rickety articles we stood in the hot sun, till fatigue almost compelled us to give up all prospect of the review, and wend our way to Versailles. But the plot began to thicken. A bewhiskered civilian made his appearance at the end of a little alley, which was exactly opposite to where we stood, and at his command there emerged from some canvass tents, which we had not observed under some trees, a group of strangely dressed characters, which was “a sight to behold” at that time of day, with the sunshine all round. First, on piebald steeds, with long tails and broken knees, appeared two or three painted ladies, dressed in red jackets and spangled velvet petticoats. They spurred and whipped their chargers to get a little life into them, and took short gallops from the tents towards the opposite line of soldiers, pulling suddenly up when they came within an inch or two of the bayonets, and voltiging round with great elegance and skill. Next came some men, also mounted, dressed like emirs of the desert, trundling tremendous hoops, of such circumference that they rose several feet above the horses’ heads. The hoops the horsemen kept at full speed, twisting and turning them, galloping after or overtaking them; and all these preliminary rehearsals were carried on exactly in front of our position, and sufficed to make our time pass pleasantly enough. The bewhiskered civilian made some signal which we did not notice, and instantly, dashing through the line of soldiers, the bespangled ladies burst into the pathway full speed, the curtains were for a moment withdrawn, and clapping of hands and hearty cheers from the twenty thousand spectators hailed the commencement of the fêtes of Satory. This was a field-day, not of the French army, but of Franconi’s troop, all at the Emperor’s expense.

The size of the amphitheatre was too vast, the noise of the reception frightened the horses; some accident we saw had taken place, for a horse rushed frantically down the pathway, nearly upsetting a fiery little major, who had been showing off by blowing up some of the too ardent spectators, and in a short time the runaway steed was followed by one of the red-jacketed amazons, very much contused, and leaning for support on the arms of two men: a horse, bleeding and lame, followed. There had been a collision in the ring, and that portion of the sports was dispensed with. Our Arabian hoop-players took their place, were well received, and came off without an accident. It was now three o’clock, and we only wished the founder of the feast would follow the example of our gracious Queen in the great virtue of punctuality; and we were not much disappointed. At a corner of the little wood, beyond the horse-people’s tents, we perceived a stir among the spectators. Suddenly emerging from a green alley in the wood, we saw a first-rate turn-out—an open carriage and four, with two outriders, but no other attempt at show. It came at a foot pace, and was followed by another, also with four horses, but both as plain and unpretending as any gentleman’s could be. Meanwhile the sports grew fast and furious among the equestrians in our front. Five or six ponies now made their appearance bestrode by monkeys, dressed like Abd-el-Kader, and fixed so closely and ingeniously to the saddle that it was difficult to believe their horsemanship was not voluntary, but painful and distressing to the last degree. The ponies carried them at full gallop through the curtain and round the ring. After them, like lightning, rushed an equal number of boys, also on ponies, and dressed like French _spahis_; and great was the agitation in the military circle, to see the counterfeit presentment of the African war. There were shouts and loud clappings of hands, as they watched the pursuers gradually overtake the vanquished Arabs, and lay their mimic swords lightly on the captives’ shoulders; but this lasted a long time, during which the royal cortège made its slow detour towards the entrance of the guarded pathway; and far down, to our left, we heard the shouting that told the gradual approach of the cavalcade. The shouting was cold and faint; but perhaps soldiers in actual duty, with muskets in hand, thought noisy demonstration a little out of place. The spectators were not numerous enough—that is, condensed enough into one crowd—to encourage each other to any violent hurraing; and therefore in comparative silence, which however was respectful and good-humoured, the carriages passed on through the double line of soldiers and of spectators on the outside. Just opposite to us the carriages stopped, and we had a full view of Louis Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie. His appearance is so well known from bust and portrait, that we will not allude to it farther. We will only say that on this occasion he had shaken off the dull apathetic expression, or rather want of expression, of which he is accused. He sat with his back to the horses, fronting his wife, and his cousin the Princess Mathilde, and seemed very much pleased and interested with all he saw. But the Empress—Has she red hair? Has she absurdly large features, and a ridiculously long nose? Does she look proud and haughty like a _parvenu_?—bronzed and audacious like a successful adventuress? In short, is she like the descriptions we have read of her from the pens of her enemies and rivals? No, she is not. She is as sweet and gentle a lady as ever it was our fortune to look upon. None of her portraits do her justice—a point greatly in her favour, for we remember hearing Sir Henry Raeburn say, “No woman’s face is worth anything if it can be put upon canvass,”—meaning that variety and transitoriness of expression were the finest parts of female beauty. Even in feature she is statuesque and regular; “but ’twasna her bonny blue e’e was my ruin;” it was the soft, feminine graciousness of look and motion; the retiring and yet self-possessed manner with which she acknowledged the sincere and hearty reception of the spectators,—and to us—

(“Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Shall e’er untie the filial band
That binds me to thy rugged strand?”)

she had an indefinable charm—powerless perhaps on the hearts of French, or even English. She was the exact representative of “the yellow-haired lassie” we read of in Burns’s songs: a refined Scottish expression about her mouth, winning and humorous, completed the effect; and from henceforth our glove is perpetually in the ring against all comers, as _champion à l’outrance_ of the Empress Eugenie—always saving and excepting our sovereign lady the Queen. But in the mean time the monkeys and boys were in mad career round the ring; the royalties dismounted from the carriages, and walked up a steep incline which conducted to the top of the amphitheatre on its outward face; they were received by generals and princes, and distinguished visitors of all nations—except our own; for there was not a red coat or tartan trews to refresh the eye in all that blaze of gold and jewels; and on stepping a little forward to the inner edge, they came in view of the soldiers. But the monkeys were too much for the Emperor. The spahis were in the very act of cutting off the retreat of the Bornouses, and the recognitions of the Sovereign were slight and momentary. However, like a sensible man, he seemed pleased with the applauses they gave, bowed in a very manly manner once or twice, and took his seat with no pride or state, and seemed to enter into free and lively conversation with anybody that chose.

So having commenced our inspection of foreign parts with such elevated personages, we shall proceed in our future communications to a notice of the Sciences and Arts, and any other subject which may appear worthy of Maga’s regard.

THE NARCOTICS WE INDULGE IN.

PART II.

In a previous Number we treated of Tobacco and the Hop, the two narcotics of the most general and acknowledged use among our British population. But there are many others in extensive use in foreign countries, which, though not of so much immediate interest to us in their social relations, are yet of even higher interest in their general, physiological, and psychological bearings. Among these are opium, hemp, coca, the red-thorn apple, the betel-nut, the Siberian fungus, and several others, which we now propose to consider in their order.

* * * * *

III. THE POPPY AND OPIUM.—The use of the poppy, as a giver of sleep and a soother of pain, has been familiar from the earliest periods. This is partly shown by the names—_poppy_ in English and _papaver_ in Latin—said to have been given to the plant because it was commonly mixed with the food of young children (pap or papa) to ease pain and secure sleep. In this country the chief use of the poppy is as a medicine. The Tartars of the Caucasus, who, though they profess Mahomedanism, yet drink wine publicly, make it very heady and inebriating, by hanging the unripe heads of poppies in the casks while the fermentation is going on; and in the coffeehouses of the cities of Persia a decoction of poppies is sold, called _kokemaar_, which is drunk scalding hot. Before it begins to operate, the drinkers quarrel with and abuse each other, but without coming to blows; and afterwards, as the drug takes effect, make peace again. One utters high-flown compliments, another tells stories; but all are extremely ridiculous both in their words and actions.—TAVERNIER.

But it is the concrete juice of the

_The Elements of Materia Medica and Therapeutics._ By JONATHAN
PEREIRA, M.D., F.R.S., &c. Third Edition. London, 1850.

_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater._

_Travels in Peru during the years 1838–1842._ By Dr J. L. VON TSCHUDI.
Translated from the German by THOMASINA ROSS. London, 1847.

poppy-head that is generally and extensively employed as a narcotic indulgence. The dried juice is called by the Persians _afioun_, and by the Arabs _aphioum_, and hence our name opium.

Numerous as are the substances included in the enlarged list of drugs and medicines of the present day, opium is still the most important of them all. It is obtained by making incisions into the capsules or seed-vessels of the common white poppy (_Papaver somniferum_), when they are nearly ripe, allowing the milky juice which exudes to thicken upon the capsules for twenty-four hours, and then scraping it off. The best opium of commerce is a soft unctuous mass of a reddish or blackish brown colour, a waxy lustre, a strong disagreeable odour, and a bitter, acrid, nauseous taste, which remains long in the mouth. It is collected chiefly in Asiatic Turkey, in Persia, and in India. That which is most esteemed in the European markets comes from Smyrna. The most extensively used in Eastern countries is that which is grown in India. The maximum produce of good opium in our Indian possessions is stated to be 41 lb. per acre, and the average from 20 to 25 lb.—MEYEN.

When used as a narcotic indulgence, opium is swallowed either in bulk in the form of pills, or in tinctures—such as our common laudanum—or it is smoked in minute pipes after the manner of tobacco. The first practice prevails most, we believe, in Mahomedan countries, especially Turkey and Persia; the second among Christian nations; and the third in China, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago. In preparing it for smoking, the Chinese extract from the Indian opium all that water will dissolve—generally from one-half to three-fourths of its weight—dry the dissolved extract, and make it into pills of the size of a pea. One of these pills they put into a short tiny pipe, often made of silver, inhale a few puffs at a time, or one single long puff, and return the smoke through the nostrils and ears, till the necessary dose has been taken.

In Borneo and Sumatra finely-chopped tobacco is mixed with the moist extract till it absorbs the whole, and the mixture is made into pills about the size of a pea. At convivial parties a dish of these peas is brought in along with a lamp, when the host takes a pipe, puts in one of the pellets, takes two or three long whiffs, returning the smoke through his nostrils, and, if he be an adept, through his eyes and ears. He then passes the pipe round the company, each of whom does the same with the same pipe; and so they continue smoking till all are intoxicated.

Used in any of these three ways, its sensible effects are nearly the same, varying of course with the quantity taken, with the constitution of the taker, and with the frequency of its previous use. The essential and primary action of the drug is upon the nervous system.

When it is taken in a moderate dose, the results of this action are, that

“The mind is usually exhilarated, the ideas flow more quickly, a
pleasurable or comfortable condition of the whole system is
experienced, which it is difficult to describe. There is a capability
of greater exertion than usual, and hence it is taken as a restorative
by such persons as the Tartar couriers, who travel for many days and
nights continuously, and with great speed. These exciting effects are
succeeded by a corresponding depression. The muscular power is
lessened, and the susceptibility to external impressions. A desire for
repose ensues, and a tendency to sleep. The mouth and throat become
dry meanwhile, the thirst is increased, hunger diminished, and
constipation succeeds.”

When large doses are taken, all these effects are heightened in proportion. The period of depression, which almost always succeeds the excitement at first produced by opium, comes on more quickly the larger the dose; the prostration of energy degenerates into stupor, with or without dreams; the pulse becomes feeble, the muscles exceedingly relaxed, and if enough has been taken, death ensues.

In small doses, opium acts in a similar way to our wines and spirituous liquors; and it is as a substitute for these that the Chinese use it. Like them, also, its effects diminish by use, and therefore those who take it for the purpose of producing a pleasurable excitement must gradually increase the dose. The Turkish opium-eaters generally begin with doses of from half a grain to two grains a-day, and gradually increase the quantity till it amounts to 120 grains, or sometimes more. The effect shows itself in one or two hours after it has been taken, and lasts for five or six. In those accustomed to take it, it produces a high degree of animation, which the Theriakis (opium-eaters) represent as the summit of happiness.

Dr Madden thus describes his own sensations when under the influence of the drug, in one of the coffeehouses at Constantinople:—

“I commenced with one grain. In the course of an hour and a half it
produced no perceptible effect. The coffeehouse-keeper was very
anxious to give me an additional pill of two grains, but I was
contented with half a one; and in another half hour, feeling nothing
of the expected reverie, I took half a grain more, making in all two
grains in the course of two hours. After two hours and a half from the
first dose, my spirits became sensibly excited; the pleasure of the
sensation seemed to depend on a universal expansion of mind and
matter. My faculties appeared enlarged; everything I looked at seemed
increased in volume; I had no longer the same pleasure when I closed
my eyes which I had when they were open; it appeared to me as if it
was only external objects which were acted on by the imagination, and
magnified into images of pleasure: in short, it was ‘the faint
exquisite music of a dream’ in a waking moment. I made my way home as
fast as possible, dreading at every step that I should commit some
extravagance. In walking, I was hardly sensible of my feet touching
the ground; it seemed as if I slid along the street, impelled by some
invisible agent, and that my blood was composed of some etherial
fluid, which rendered my body lighter than air. I got to bed the
moment I reached home. The most extraordinary visions of delight
filled my brain all night. In the morning I rose pale and dispirited;
my head ached; my body was so debilitated that I was obliged to remain
on the sofa all day, dearly paying for my first essay at
opium-eating.”[38]

The effects of opium upon the system of the healthy are generally esteemed to be eminently prejudicial. Not only is an indulgence in the use of opium held to be criminal in itself, because of the evil consequences which are supposed to follow it, but it is esteemed a criminal act to make the procuring of it easy, and thus indirectly to minister to its more extensive consumption.

The opinion is now, however, beginning to prevail among medical men, that opium taken in moderation, even for a serious of years, is not necessarily injurious to health. Like spirituous liquors and tobacco, it acts as a sure poison when taken immoderately, but the moderate enjoyment of any of the three has not been proved to be either generally or necessarily, and upon all constitutions, attended by ill effects. It may be that the temptation to excess in the case of opium is greater, and that the habitual users of it are less frequently able to resist its seductive influence. But even this, as a physiological question, has by no means been satisfactorily established, and we must be cautious in pushing our conclusions farther than known facts will carry us.

Upon _confirmed_ opium-eaters, however, as the irreclaimable are called, the evil effects of the drug are both undoubted and extremely melancholy.

“A total attenuation of body, a withered yellow countenance, a lame
gait, a bending of the spine, frequently to such a degree as to assume
a circular form, and glassy deep-sunken eyes, betray the opium-eater
at the first glance. The digestive organs are in the highest degree
disturbed; the sufferer eats scarcely anything, and has hardly one
evacuation in a week. His mental and bodily powers are destroyed—he is
impotent.

“When the baneful habit has become confirmed, it is almost impossible
to break it off. His torments when deprived of the stimulant are as
dreadful as his bliss is complete when he has taken it. Night brings
the torments of hell, day the bliss of paradise; and after long
indulgence, he becomes subject to nervous pains, to which opium itself
brings no relief. He seldom attains the age of forty, if he have begun
the practice early.”—OPPENHEIM.

“The coffeehouses,” says Dr Madden, “where the Theriakis, or
opium-eaters, assemble, are situate in a large square; and on a bench
outside the door they await the wished-for reveries, which present to
their glowing imagination the forms of the celestial _houris_, and the
enjoyments of their own paradise in all its voluptuousness. I had
heard so many contradictory reports of the sensations produced by this
drug, that I resolved to know the truth, and accordingly took my seat
in the coffeehouse with half a dozen Theriakis. Their gestures were
frightful; those who were completely under the influence of the opium
talked incoherently, their features were flushed, their eyes had an
unnatural brilliancy, and the general expression of their countenances
was horribly wild. The effect is usually produced in two hours, and
lasts four or five; the dose varies from three grains to a drachm. I
saw one old man take four pills, of six grains each, in the course of
two hours: I was told he had been using opium for five-and-twenty
years; but this is a very rare example of an opium-eater passing
thirty years of age, if he commence the practice early. The debility,
both moral and physical, attendant on its excitement is terrible; the
appetite is soon destroyed, every fibre in the body trembles, the
nerves of the neck become affected, and the muscles get rigid: several
of these I have seen in this place at various times, who had wry necks
and contracted fingers; but still they cannot abandon the custom; they
are miserable till the hour arrives for taking their daily dose; and
when its delightful influence begins, they are all fire and animation.
Some of them compose excellent verses, and others address the
bystanders in the most eloquent discourses, imagining themselves to be
emperors, and to have all the harems in the world at command.”—MADDEN,
i. p. 23.

Similar effects are described as resulting from the _smoking_ of opium to excess in China; and the drinking of laudanum in large quantities in England is equally pernicious in its consequences.

The use of this drug, as a narcotic indulgence, appears to be on the increase among the European populations generally. Among the less provident, especially of the working classes in our own large manufacturing towns, the use of laudanum as a care-dispelling, happiness-giving potion—often as a dispeller of hunger—is said to be greatly extending. If so, we should expect that among us, as among the Turks and Chinese, opium will find many who are unable to resist its seductive allurements, and whom it will drag into the extreme of mental and bodily misery.

Of its powers of seduction, indeed, even over the less delicate and susceptible organisation of our northern European races, and of the absolute slavery to which it can reduce even the strongest minds among us, we have two remarkable examples in the celebrated Coleridge, and in the author of the _English Opium-Eater_. For many years Coleridge was a slave to opium, and the way in which he became addicted to it is thus described by himself, in a letter dated April 1814:—

“I was seduced into the accursed habit ignorantly. I had been almost
bedridden for many months with swellings in my knees. In a medical
journal I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a
similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rubbing in laudanum, at
the same time taking a given dose internally. It acted like a
charm—like a miracle. I recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite,
of my spirits, and this continued for near a fortnight. At length the
unusual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned, the supposed remedy
was recurred to—but I cannot go through the dreary history. Sufficient
to say, that effects were produced which acted on me by terror and
cowardice of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God) by any
temptation of pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting
pleasurable sensations. On the contrary, the longer I abstained, the
higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments—till the moment, the
direful moment arrived, when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to
palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole
frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that
in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison, I
exclaimed in agony which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, ‘I
am too poor to hazard this.’”[39]

He subsequently put himself into the hands of a medical man when at a friend’s house in Bristol; and while he pretended to be gradually lessening the dose under medical instructions, and while his friends thought he was absolutely cured by being brought down to twenty drops a-day, he was all the while obtaining laudanum secretly, and drinking it in large doses as before!

How his moral sense must have been overborne, and by how powerful a fascination, before he could have stooped to such degrading deception! And how fierce his self-upbraidings must have been, when he could add in the same letter from which the above extract is taken: “There is no hope. O God, how willingly would I place myself under Dr Fox in his establishment; for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter _impotence of the volition_, and not of the intellectual faculties. You bid me rouse myself. Go bid a man, paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. ‘Alas!’ he would reply, ‘that I cannot move my arms is my complaint and my misery.’”

And his misery he still further paints in a letter, dated June of the same year: “Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been attempting to beat off pain, by a constant recurrence to a vice that reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell employed in tracing out for others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him! In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for a good man to have.”[40]

And yet Coleridge lived twenty years after this letter was written, conquered the evil habit, and enjoyed, it is to be hoped, much happiness, as he wrote many noble works.

Coleridge speaks of his attempts to give up the indulgence. The following graphic passage describes the horrors undergone by Mr de Quincey, in his efforts to abandon the practice:—

“Opium, therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure, as soon as I should
find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and energy to
this purpose. It was not, however, till the 24th of June last (1822)
that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled
in my own mind that I would not flinch, but ‘would stand up to the
scratch’ under any possible ‘punishment.’ I must premise that about
170 or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months;
occasionally I had run up as high as 300, and once nearly to 700: in
repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as 100
drops, but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day,
which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over than
any of the preceding three. I went off under easy sail—130 drops a-day
for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to 80. The misery
which I now suffered ‘took the conceit out of me’ at once; and for
about a month I continued off and on about this mark: then I sunk to
60; and the next day to—none at all. This was the first day for nearly
ten years that I had existed without opium. I persevered in my
abstinence for ninety hours—_i. e._, upwards of half a week. Then I
took—ask me not how much. Say, ye severest, what would you have done?
Then I abstained again; then took about twenty-five drops; then
abstained—and so on.

“Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks
of the experiment were these—enormous irritability, and excitement of
the whole system; the stomach, in particular, restored to a full
feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain;
increasing restlessness night and day; sleep—I scarcely knew what it
was—three hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that
so agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me;
lower jaw constantly swelling, much ulcerated, and many other
distressing symptoms that would be tedious to repeat; amongst which,
however, I must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany
my attempt to renounce opium—viz., violent sternutation. This now
became exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting for two hours at
once, and returning at least twice or three times a-day. I was not
much surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or
read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of
that which lines the stomach; whence I believe are explained the
inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The
sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach
expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable, also,
that, during the whole period of years through which I had taken
opium, I had never once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the
slightest cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon
after. In an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to
——, I find these words——: Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of
_Thierry and Theoderet_? then you will see my case as to sleep; nor is
it much of an exaggeration in other features. I profess to you I have
a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present, than in a whole
year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts
which had been frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now,
according to the old fable, been thawed at once, such a multitude
stream in upon me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and
hideous irritability, that for one which I detain and note down fifty
escape me: in spite of my weariness from suffering and want of sleep,
I cannot stand still or sit for two minutes together. ‘I nunc et
versus tecum meditare canoros.’”[41]—_Confessions_—Appendix.

It was not so much by the pleasure it gave, as by the tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it, that in both these cases opium kept its firmest hold. But both men finally triumphed over it, though after tortures which few will consent to undergo, and with frail and shattered bodies:—

“I triumphed: but think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended. Nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think
of me as of one, even when four months had passed, still agitated,
writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and much in the situation
of him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state
from the affecting account of them by William Lithgow, the most
innocent sufferer of the times of James I. Meantime, I derived no
benefit from any medicine, except one prescribed for me by an
Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence—ammoniated tincture of
valerian.”—_Confessions._

After a seventeen years’ use, and an eight years’ abuse of its powers, he ceased to consume the drug, but he probably still feels the effects of its long use.

Much uncertainty exists as to the extent to which the use of laudanum really prevails among our healthy adult population. According to De Quincey, the opium-eaters were already numerous thirty years ago. “Of this,” he says, “I became convinced several years ago, by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters: such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ——; the late Dean of ——; Lord ——; Mr ——, the philosopher; a late under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of ——; viz., ‘that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach’); Mr ——, and many others hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention.” He adds, also, that about the same time he learned in Manchester that “on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggist were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of the practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits; and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease. But as I do not readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted—

‘That those eat now, who never ate before,
And those who always ate, now eat the more.’”

In regard to the intensity and suddenness of the positive enjoyment which the uninitiated derive from the first use of opium, the experience of De Quincey is very instructive. Like Coleridge, he took it first to dispel pain. He had been affected for three weeks with excruciating rheumatic pains in the head and face, when he was advised to try laudanum, and forthwith purchased some at a druggist’s shop.

“Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment
in taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the
whole art and mystery of opium-taking; and what I took, I took under
every disadvantage. But I took it, and in an hour, oh, heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner
spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had
vanished was now a trifle in my eyes. This _negative_ effect was
swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had
opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly
revealed. Here was a panacea—a φαρῳακον νήπενθες for all human woes.
Here was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed
for so many ages at once discovered! Happiness might now be bought for
a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies might
be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent
down in gallons by the mail-coach.”

Those who understand best and feel most for the sorrows and pains of the poverty-stricken humbler classes of every pursuit, would feel no surprise on learning that the seductions which the above passage describes had led away many of them into the habitual and intemperate use of opium. To live in pain and privation from day to day, to suffer from the agonies of old remembrances, or the fears of future individual and family griefs, and to have a key to paradise at hand! Who can wonder that the key is used, or would exercise severity towards him who uses it? We must add to the health, and comfort, and peace of mind of the tempted, before we exchange compassion or forbearance for reproach.

But accurate statistical information is still wanting to prove that the habit of opium-eating has really extended in any great degree among our full-grown healthy labouring population, either in town or country. Isolated cases of a melancholy kind do now and then occur, and loose conjectural statements are made as to the prevalence of the practice in this district or that, but we are unwilling to admit the wide prevalence of the custom without the most trustworthy testimony. A child died, for example, from the effects of opium in September (1853) at Boxworth in Cambridgeshire, the mother, because it was unwell, having placed a piece of crude opium in its mouth to suck. To the announcement of this fact in the newspapers, it was added, “that the mother and her family are all opium-eaters, and, though labouring people, spend four shillings a-week on the drug!” This statement suggests the idea that the habit may prevail extensively in the district, a conclusion which may in reality do injustice to an industrious peasantry. We refuse to adopt it, therefore. It lays, we think, a moral obligation upon the professional men of the county to collect information and make known the truth; and all who feel an interest in the moral reputation of our labouring people should reject such inferences to their prejudice, in the absence of accurate knowledge, which it ought not to be difficult for certain parties to obtain.

But another form of the opium evil has been shown, upon unquestionable evidence, extensively to prevail. In the large manufacturing towns of Lancashire it is a common thing for mothers who work in the factories to put out their children to nurse, and it is equally common for the nurses to dose the children with opium for the purpose of keeping them quiet or of setting them to sleep. It was stated by the Rev. Mr Clay, that in the town of Preston alone, in 1843, “upwards of sixteen hundred families were in the habit of using Godfrey’s Cordial, or some other equally injurious compound,” and that in one of the burial clubs in that town, “sixty-four per cent of the members die under five years of age.”[42] The obvious conclusion is, that the fatality among the children is connected with the use of the drug.

A writer in the _Morning Chronicle_ of the 4th of January 1850 thus describes the effects which this use of opium produces upon the health of the children:—

“The consequences of this system of drugging are suffusion of the
brain, and an extensive train of mesenteric and glandular diseases.
The child sinks into a low torpid state, wastes away to 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.’”

It cannot be denied, therefore, that in one melancholy form at least the evils of opium-eating are visible amongst us. And it is curious that this should be the very form of drugging from which the poppy is said to have derived its name. The diffusion of knowledge among the, it may be not unfeeling, mothers of the factory districts, is one of the most likely ways to remove these evils.

It is impossible to arrive at anything like an approximate idea of the quantity of opium consumed by the different nations of the world. Meyen asserts that the quantity consumed by the Malays of the Indian Archipelago, in Cochin-China and Siam, as well as India and Persia, is so immense that, if we could obtain an exact statement of it, the amount would be quite incredible. The Rajpoots and other Hindoo tribes present opium at their visits and entertainments, with the same familiarity as the snuff-box is presented in Europe. In some countries it is even given to the horses, to excite them to greater exertions. “A Cutchee horseman shares very honourably his store of opium with his horse, which then makes an incredible stretch, though wearied out before.”[43]

In India at least six and a half millions of pounds of opium are annually bought by the East India Company from the native growers, and manufactured into a marketable condition. To produce this quantity will require upwards of three hundred thousand acres of land. It yields a revenue to the Company of three and a half millions sterling, and is for the greatest part exported.

As to China, we know that, in the season 1837–8, it imported from India three millions of pounds, and the importation from that country has probably increased considerably since that time. To this importation must also be added the opium which China receives by land from the countries which border it towards the west. The consumption of China at the present moment is probably not less than four or five millions of pounds’ weight, having a market value of as many pounds sterling. In the same year (1837–8) India exported about a million and a half of pounds to the islands of the Indian Archipelago and other places.

The consumption of the United Kingdom is of course trifling when compared with this, but it is greatly on the increase. Thus, the quantity imported into Great Britain in 1839 was only 41,000 pounds, while in 1852 it amounted to 114,000 pounds; or, it has increased nearly three times within fifteen years. This implies either the application of the drug to new purposes, or a greatly increased demand for the uses to which it was formerly applied.

It is to be observed, however, as a matter of comfort, that we are not to expect either in Christian Europe or in America to see the consumption of opium ever become so universal as in Mahometan countries, where the use of wine is forbidden to the true believer. So long as a freedom of choice is allowed to the people, or a moral compulsion only is exercised over them, there is little fear of their becoming generally addicted to opium. Prohibit the use of fermented liquors by law, and we may hope to increase largely the consumers of this drug. Morehead mentions a young lady of his acquaintance who, being prevented by her friends from indulging in ardent spirits, had accustomed herself to swallow an ounce of crude opium, with as much ease and indifference as a boy would eat as much liquorice.[44] We apprehend something of this sort from the strict enforcement of the Maine Law in North America; for although the constitution of our Transatlantic connections has considerably altered, especially in the oldest states, since they crossed the sea, still the universal craving exists among them, and if it is denied gratification in one form, it will seek for it in another.

In regard to its chemical history, opium is probably the best known of all the vegetable extracts or inspissated juices used in medicine. It has been the subject of numerous and elaborate experimental and analytical investigations, and the results of these fill many interesting pages in our newest systems of organic chemistry.

How very complicated a substance even the purest opium is, the general reader will infer from the formidable list of peculiar principles which have been found in it. Besides familiar substances, such as gum, mucilage, resin, fat, caoutchouc, &c., it contains morphine, narcotine, codeine, narceine, thebaine, opianine, meconine, pseudomorphine, porphyroxine, papaverine, and meconic acid—eleven peculiar organic compounds, which occur in greater or less quantity in nearly every sample of pure opium!

Of all these, the most active is that now almost universally known under the name of morphine or morphia. Of this invaluable medicine the best qualities of opium contain as much as ten per cent. It is colourless, void of smell, and nearly insoluble in water, but possesses an exceedingly bitter unpleasant taste, and what are called by chemists alkaline properties. It is powerfully narcotic and poisonous, and is described by some as producing upon the system all the effects of the natural opium. This, however, is not generally the case; and hence it has not, we believe, been anywhere attempted to substitute this pure chemical compound—the chemical composition of which is fixed, and the physiological effects constant and certain—for the crude and uncertain opium, in the production of pleasureable excitement and gratification. And the reason of this obviously is, that the full and peculiar effect of the natural drug is due to the combined and simultaneous action of all the numerous substances it contains. Each of these modifies the effect which would be produced by any one of the others taken singly—as the attraction of each planet modifies the course which would be taken by every one of the others, were it the only one which revolved round the sun. It is from the result of all these conjoined actions that the singular pleasure of the opium-consumer is derived.

At least three of the constituents of opium which have been named above are known to be narcotic and poisonous. These are morphine, codeine, and thebaine. The special action of the other substances upon the system is still unknown or undecided. Indeed, it is a remarkable thing in chemico-physiological history, that, long as opium has been known, extensively as it has been, and still is used, both as a medicine and a luxurious indulgence, and numerous as are the opinions in regard to its mode of action which have been promulgated by medical authorities, we are still so unable to say what is the true action of this drug, that, in the words of Dr Pereira, “we shall save ourselves much time and useless speculation by at once confessing our ignorance on this point.” So far does physiology appear still to lag behind, when our chemistry is tolerably advanced.

It is no doubt the complicated nature of the problem which renders the physiological solution so difficult. Nearly a dozen different substances are mixed up and given at once. Not only do these act in different ways upon the same individual, but each of them probably acts in a somewhat different way upon each different patient, according to his natural constitution, and the state of his health. Is it wonderful that, out of these multiplied sources of diversity, numerously varied phases should appear in the character of its action, and numerous opinions consequently be formed as to the way in which its effects are produced?

Besides, it is a matter of interest, both in connection with this point and with the general chemical history of opium, that the proportions of the several ingredients which are known to be active, vary very much in different samples of the drug. The locality or country in which the plant is grown, the peculiarities of the season during which the opium is collected, and the state of ripeness of the plant—the way in which the juice is dried, and subsequently prepared for the market, and the variety of poppy from which it is obtained,—all these circumstances influence the proportions of its constituents, and consequently modify the action of the mixed substance upon the human system. The Smyrna opium is generally considered the best in the European market, but even in this the morphia varies between four and fourteen per cent. Bengal opium differs from that of Turkey and Egypt, in containing more narcotine in proportion to the morphia. Generally, also, the Indian and Persian samples yield less morphia than those of Turkey.

This latter fact shows that, though it is in warm climates that opium is chiefly collected and used, yet that mere warmth of climate, whatever may be its other effects upon the white poppy, does not alone cause the juice of its capsules to be rich in morphia; and this is supported further by the statement of some English experimenters, that British-grown opium contains more morphia than that of commerce, as well as by the results of French experiments, which showed the presence of 16 to 28 per cent of morphia in some opiums collected in France. These facts are of considerable scientific interest; but they are not likely to lead to any practical results of importance to the rural economy at least of this country. Our poppy plants are probably too slow in their growth, and possess too little juice or succulence, to yield a satisfactory return to the opium-gatherer—were the uncertainty of the climate and the dearness of labour not alone sufficient to preclude the idea of our entering into competition with the Eastern producers of the drug. A different opinion, however, is entertained in France, where the most recent experiments profess to show that the variety which is there cultivated for its seed may be so treated as to yield a harvest of opium at an expense which need not exceed one-fourth of the present market price of the drug, while the seed which ripens uninjured will pay all the ordinary cost of culture; and from these results it is argued, that in the collecting of opium there is the prospect of great advantage to the agriculture of France.

There are three other circumstances in connection with the chemico-physiological history of opium, which will be interesting to the general reader. These are—

_First_, That its exciting effect is more conspicuous upon some races of men than upon others. This is said to be especially the case with the negroes, the Malays, and the Javanese. “The latter,” says Lord Macartney, “under an extraordinary doze of opium, become frantic as well as desperate. They acquire an artificial courage; and, when suffering from misfortune and disappointment, they not only stab the objects of their hate, but sally forth to attack in like manner every person they meet, till self-preservation renders it necessary to destroy them.” They shout, as they run, _Amok_, _amok_, which means “kill, kill;” and hence the phrase, _running a-muck_. Captain Beeckman was told of a Javanese who ran a-muck in the streets of Batavia, and had killed several people, when he was met by a soldier, who ran him through with his pike. But such was the desperation of the infuriated man, that he pressed himself forward on the pike, until he got near enough to stab his adversary with a dagger, when both expired together. On the Malays its effects are described to be very nearly the same. They remind one of the excitement said to have formerly prevailed in a less fatal form at Donnybrook and other Irish fairs, when an unusual dose of poteen had been administered to the _boys_.

The influence of race, as it affects the physiological action either of substances introduced into the stomach, or of ideas presented to the mind, is the same in kind as the influence of individual constitution. It is only greater in degree, and startles us sometimes because of the extent to which it appears exaggerated. The influence of constitution is recognised and considered in every dose of medicine we take or administer, and in the way in which good or evil tidings are communicated to our friends. We more rarely allow for differences of race in dealing with foreign nations, or in criticising their behaviour and actions under given circumstances.