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.