Opium, as 'a luxury, is consumed in differe; ways. In Great Britain it is either used in solid state, made into pills, or a tincture in tl shape of laudanum. Insidiously it is given children under a variety of quack forms, such ; Godfrey's cordial,' etc. In India, the pure opiu is either dissolved in water and so used, or roll( into pills. It is there a common native practi to give it to children when very young, by mothei require to work and cannot at the same time id to their offspring. In liajputana, it is !veil in water, and the solution, called is sipped. There, and in the Panjab, decoction or infusion, called post, is made by the unripe poppy head in water. In Dina, usually an extract of it is smoked, or is, to some form or other, swallowed. In Bali, it is first mixed with China paper, and when to be used it is rolled up with the fibres of a par ticular kind of plantain, and inserted into a hole made at the end of a small bamboo, and smoked. In Java and Sumatra, it is often mixed with sugar and the ripe fruit of the plantain. In Turkey, it is usually taken in the form of pills, and those who do so avoid drinking any water after swallowing them, as this is said to produce violent colic ; but to make it more palatable, it is sometimes mixed with syrups or thickened juices; in this form, however, it is less intoxicating, and resembles mead. It is then taken with a spoon, or is dried in small cakes, with the words MS-sha alliili imprinted on them. When the dose of two or three drachms a day no longer produces the beatific intoxication so eagerly sought by the opiophagi, they mix the opium with other drugs. It then acts as a stimulant. Besides being used in the shape of pills, it is frequently mixed with hellebore and hemp, and forms an electuary known by the name of majun, whose properties are different from that of opium or its extract, and may account for the want of similitude in the effect of the drug on the Turk and the Chinese. The majun electuary in use in India is variously mpounded. In the Panjab, Rajputana, Sind, utch, Gujerat, Hindustan, the Maimatta country, Telingaua, by some of the various races, also in ssam, in Burma, as also among the Chinese and ie Malays, it is being more and more used in rious forms as a nervous sedative, and in Raj utana, Assam, Burma, and China to such an xtent as to occasion anxiety in the minds of many gardiug the future of the races using it. The anvil, a Dravidian people of the south of India, nd the Aryans of India, do not, however, use it in any form. It is a matter of race proclivities, and the Indo-Germanic tribes of Europe have never taken to it.
In China, since the early part of the 19th cen tury, the emperors and the literati have been striving to restrain the people from its use, and the rude efforts to effect their object have twice brought on them unfortunate wars with Great Britain. But the action taken by the Chinese towards foreign importers has neither evinced a knowledge of man's wants, nor has it been in keep ing with their treatment of their own peasantry, who are cultivating the poppy all over China, and two-thirds of the opium used in that countryis of native manufacture.
The craving for a nervous stimulant to remove fatigue, to allay irritability, to lighten care, and to dispel gloom, is universal, and seeks satisfaction in many ways, as in the use of alcohol, hemp, opium, tobacco, tea, coffee, chloral hydrate, eau-do Cologne. The mind often seeks a lull,—thero is a natural craving for some soothing stuff. The Chinese authorities strove to prevent its importa tion, but a great national appetite for any article of consumption has its foundation in the real wants of the people, who manifest a predilection for it.
So long as man demands temporary confusion of mind and oblivion of his woes and cares, so long will he find means of obtaining these ends, and smugglers in armed opium-clippers Landed it along the coast. It would have been possible for them to prevent the poppy being grown in China, seeing that three months are required for its ripening ; and the Indian Government adopted this plan with regard to many of its provinces by Act 1 of 1878, which provides that, except in districts specially exempted, no one shall cultivate the poppy, manu facture, possess, or transport opium, under pain of imprisonment and fine.
In excess, as with other excesses, the effect can only be injurious. But, as Consul Lay says, China the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters, slide into the opium-smoker, hence the drug seems to be chargeable with all the vices of the country.' The moderate use of opium is not only not injurious, but has a beneficial effect on the constitution, improving the health, and ward ing off sickness. And Consul Gardner, who visited many opium saloons, tells us of the Protestant Christians, who are prohibited opium, and are dissuaded from early marriage, that many die from consumption. Chinese told him that they took to opium-smoking to check blood-spitting.
Dr. Frederick Porter Smith, M.B., a medical mis sionary in China, tells us that the moderato use of the opium pipe is not incompatible with the health of those who practise it. Ire adds, how ever, that the positive necessity of improving or increasing the extract used leads to the loss of the volitional, digestive, and sexual powers, or, in other words, to the gradual degradation of the man. Consul Gardner himself smoked opium for a time, but suddenly stopped it, and suffered in convenience. But a moderate opium pipe soothes the system, lessens coughs and consumptive ten dencies, and is a prophylactic against marsh fever and malaria generally. Mr. Storrs Turner charac terized it as a pacific and polite vice.' Similar to the smoking of tobacco, cigars, or cavendish, opium - smoking entices away from the use of ardent spirits. Before its introduction into China. there was a great deal more of intemperance from alcoholic intoxicants than is now to be seen in the land. Excess of ardent spirits is, in any country, more injurious than excess in tobacco or opium smoking. On the average European who is accus tomed to smoke tobacco, the smoking of opium in the Chinese fashion will not have any perceptible effect.
Maharaja Narendra Krishna says that many of the elderly and old Hindus of Bengal take opium, and that not a few young men wean themselves from drinking habits by betaking themselves to opium. When taken by the camel-feeders in the sandy deserts of Western Rajputana, it enables the men to subsist on scanty food, and to bear without injury the excessive cold of the desert winter night, and the scorching rays of the sun. Opium in Rajputana. acts as a preventive of rualarious fever. In the fens of England, a whole population use opium as a prophylactic against ague. i Extract of Opium is the form in which, in China, Further India, and the Archipelago, the drug is employed in opium-smoking. This is known in the Straits Settlements as Chaudoo. It is called by the Chinese Yen-kau, also Shuh-ycn. More of the extract is said to be got from the chuen opium than from the Indian product. Chandoo is usually made by the keepers of the opium saloons, who are heavily taxed and squeezed. Rich people and Buddhist priests make their own chandoo.