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.
In the Malays and Javanese we have the excitable temperament,
accompanied by the unrestrained outward forms of expression, which are
characteristic of Eastern nations. What affects us Saxons lightly or
slowly, touches them instantly, and penetrates deep. The emotions which,
when awakened, we are accustomed to restrain and hide, they openly and
vividly display, and by indulgence heighten often to an overpowering
degree. The negro tribes partake of a similar organisation. “In this
respect,” says Mrs Beecher Stowe, “they have an Oriental character, and
betray their tropical origin. Like the Hebrews of old, and the Oriental
nations of the present day, they give vent to their emotions with the
utmost vivacity of expression, and their whole bodily system sympathises
with the movements of their minds. When in distress, they actually lift
up their voices to weep, and ‘cry with an exceeding bitter cry.’ When
alarmed, they are often paralysed, and rendered entirely helpless.” This
susceptibility affects all their relations both to living and dead
things. Opium affects different individuals among them in different
ways, as it does the different individuals of European races, but upon
all it produces those more marked and striking effects which, among
ourselves, we only see in rare instances, and in persons of uncommonly
nervous temperament.