This is a very important operation, and is conducted in long rooms, time workmen sitting in rows, closely watched by the overseers to insure the work being carefully per formed. Before each workman is a tray. and within easy reach is placed the lager, a tin vessel for holding as much opium as will make three or five balls. On the tray is another basin containing water, and a smaller tray; on this tray stands a brass cup, into which the ball or cake is molded, also a supply of thin layers of poppy petals, formed by laying them out overlapping each other, and pressing them upon one another; these are prepared by women hi the poppy-fields, and with these is a cup filled with a sticky fluid called lora, made from opium of inferior quality. The operator begins his work by taking the brass cup and placing on its bottom one of the cakes of poppy petals, which he smears over with the Torah; then adds other cakes of petals to overlap and adhere to the first, until the cup is lined and a coat of petals is thus formed for the opium, of which he takes the exact quantity as near as lie can guess, works it into a ball, mid places it in the basin, so that th3 lining of petals encloses it and sticks to it, in conse quence of the lelcalt smeared on the inner side of the thin cakes of petals. Other petals are put on the upper part of the ball, and the whole gathered round it, forming a case about as thick as a bank-note. Each man's work for the day is kept by itself, and after having been duly registered, is taken to a vast drying-room, where the balls are placed in tiers on lattice-work racks, and are continually turned and examined by boys, to keep them from insects and other injuries. After being fully dried, these balls are packed in chests for the market.
The manufacture of opium is carried on to the greatest extent in India, but large quantities are also made hi Turkey, and this latter is considered the best in quality. It Is also made at Trebizond in Persia, and in Egypt; occasionally it has been produced in Germany, France, and England. Of the Indian opium there are several qualities, :Is Bengal, Patna or Bewares opium, Garden Patna, Maiwa, fine Malwa, Cutch, and Kan deisfi opium.
The opium revenue for India in 1875-76 was given at £8,471,425. The number of chests sold was 49,695, at £139 per chest, or £26 higher than the previous year's average. The net profit was £90 per chest. The area under cultivation in Bengal and Bombay was 560,608 acres. lit 1873-74, 94,746 chests of opium, valued at £1,195,693, were exported. Next to China, the largest consumption of Indian opium is by the Burmese and the natives of the Malacca straits, who take annually to the value of nearly a million sterling.
In Europe, with very slight exceptions, opium is used for medicinal purposes only, and large quantities of it undergo a still further stage of manufacture, in order to sepa rate from it the active principles morphine, narcotine, etc. In Great Britain, the chief manufacture of these salts of opium is carried on in Edinburgh. where two firms, Messrs. T. and II. Smith, and J. F. Macfarlane & Co. have attained great reputation, and manu facture these products upon an immense scale, supplying probably a fifth of the whole quantity manufactured.
Chemical and Medicinal only variety recognized in the British phar macopoeia is the Turkey opium. The chemical composition of opium has been studied
by various chemists, amongst whom must be especially mentioned prof. Mulder of Utrecht, and Anderson of Glasgow. The following constituents occur in most kinds of opium: Meennie acid 3HO,C,4110o, from 4 to 8 per cent.
orphi• from 4 to 12 "I1 Codeia less than 1 1'1 7:1 j Thehnia . . . N06, I Papa•erine rcoti Cne from 6 to 10 " 0 c reeia C46112.3N0,8, from 6 to 13 " Meeonine less than 1 Et Resinous matte^ from 2 to 4 Caoutehoue front 4 to 6 Mucilage, gum, and extractive matters .from 40 to 50 " In addition to the six alkaloids named in this table, a seventh, named opianine, has been found iii Egyptian opium. but in no other varieties.
Some of the most important and characteristic of these constituents, as meconie acid, morphia, awl nareotine, are noticed in special articles. The only isolated constituents of opium which arc now u-as1 in medicine are codeia (so called from the Greek word kozp-',/, a poppy•heml), which has been asserted by Magendie and others to act in the same manner as, although less powerfully than, morphia, but which is now seldom prescribed, as it is not it pharmacopwial preparation; and morphia, which has •already been de scribed.
The only test given in the British pharmacopoeia for the purity of opium is the determination of its percentage of morphia, which is a process requiring a considerable amount of chemical skill.
Following the arrangeinent adopted by Pereira (Elements of Yateria Medica, 4th ed.). we have just quoted, we shall consider (1) the effects of one or a few doses of opium employed medicinally or as a poison; (2) the effects of the habitual employment of opium, either by chewing or smoking it; and (3) its good and bad effects on the different systems of organs.
1. In small th,sP.v as from a quarter of a grain to a grain, it acts as an agreeable stim ulant, this effect being followed by a desire to sleep, accompanied by dryness of the mouth and throat, thirst, and slight constipation. When it is giver in a full medicinal dose (as from two to four grains), the stage of excitement is soon followed by well-marked depression or torpor, both of the bodily and mental organs, and an almost irresistible sleepiness; these effects being usually succeeded by constipation, nausea, furred tongue, headache, and listlessness. When it is administered in a dangerous or poisonous dose, the symptoms, as summed up by Dr. Christison in his work On Poisons, begin with gid diness and stupor, generally without any previous stimulus. The stupor rapidly increas ing, the person becomes motionless, and insensible to external impressions; he breathes very slowly, generally lies quite still, with his eyes shut and the pupils contracted; and' the whole expression of the countenance is that of deep and perfect repose. As thel poisoning advances, the features become ghastly, the pulse feeble and imperceptible, the muscles exceedingly relaxed, and, unless assistance is speedily procured, death ensues If the person recovers, the insensibility is succeeded by prolonged sleep, which corn mealy ends in twenty-four or thirty-six hours, and is followed by nausea, vomiting, gid diness, and loathing of food.