opium often escape the decomposing action of the digestive and other
organs. They pass unchanged into the milk of the nurse who uses it, and
have been known to poison the infant suckled by a female who had been
dozing herself largely with opiates. The odour of the drug is to be
perceived in the breath and in the perspiration; and morphia and meconic
acid are known occasionally to escape through the kidneys, and have been
found in the fluid excretions. This character the active ingredients of
opium possess in common with many other narcotic principles, such as
those of the deadly nightshade, the henbane, the thorn-apple, the
intoxicating fungus, and with many other substances used in
medicine.—PEREIRA, p. 102.
_Third_, Opium, as is well known, gradually loses its effect upon the
habitual consumer, so that the dose must be increased from time to time,
if the influence of the drug is to be maintained. But at length, even
this resource fails the inveterate opium-eaters of Constantinople, and
no increase of dose will procure for them the desired enjoyment, or even
relieve them from bodily pain. In this emergency, they have recourse to
the poisonous corrosive sublimate. Mixing at first a minute quantity of
this substance with their daily dose of opium, they increase it by
degrees, till they reach the limit of ten grains a-day, beyond which it
is usually unsafe to pass. This mixture acts upon their long-tortured
frames, when neither of the ingredients, taken alone, will either soothe
or exhilarate. But the use of the new medicine only protracts a little
longer the artificial enjoyment, which has become a necessary of life,
finally bringing to a more miserable termination the career of the
debilitated and distorted Theriaki.
We have said that, in moderate doses, opium acts in a similar way to our
wines and spirituous liquors, and that it is as a substitute for these
that the Chinese use it. By this we do not mean that its physiological
effects are precisely the same, although the main purpose for which they
are used by many—that of a care-dispeller—may be the same. On the
contrary, there are many points of difference in the effects which
alcohol and opium respectively produce. The following somewhat coloured
and imaginative picture represents their relative effects on the
constitution of the _English opium-eater_:—
“Crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any
state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and
not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_. It is not in the
_quantity_ of its effects merely, but in the _quality_, that it
differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting, and
tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium, when
once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first—to
borrow a technical distinction from medicine—is a case of acute, the
second of chronic pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a steady and
equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine
disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a
proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order,
legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession;
opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgment,
and gives a preternatural brightness, and a vivid exaltation to the
contempts and the admirations, the loves and the hatreds, of the
drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise
to all the faculties, active or passive; and with respect to the
temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of
vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would
probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or
antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an
expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then with
this remarkable difference, that, in the sudden development of
kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more
or less of a maudlin character, which exposes it to the contempt of
the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed
tears, no mortal knows why; and the sensual creature is clearly
uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to
opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state
which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any
deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with
the impulses of a heart originally just and good.... Wine constantly
leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a
certain point, it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the
intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had
been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short,
to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to
inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up
into supremacy the merely human—too often the brutal—part of his
nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from
any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner
part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in
a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the
majestic intellect.”
After this highly-coloured eulogium upon the comparative virtues of
opium and alcohol, drawn from personal experience, who could blame us
were we at once to propose the establishment of a national opium-eating,
distillery-burning society, and, Father Mathew-like, should take up our
staff, and preach everywhere the exceeding virtues of the inestimable
drug, and propose for universal imitation the admirable example of the
silver-piped Celestials? But it may occur to the reader, as it does to
ourselves, that the English opium-eater himself was brought to death’s
door by the use of his favourite drug, and was compelled to abandon his
beloved enjoyment. For the present, therefore, we refrain, and recommend
in preference our own bitters practice. Keep your morphia bottle
carefully stowed away till a new attack of toothache or sciatica comes
on, and your laudanum as a ready friend should the prevailing epidemic
approach you.
And yet even grave and matter-of-fact men are to be found—persons who
have had large experience of the use of opium in Eastern countries—who
not only pronounce the use of the drug as a narcotic indulgence to be
far from an unmitigated evil, but who especially prefer its general use
to that of alcoholic drinks. Among these we may mention Dr Eatwell, of
the East India Company’s service, whose knowledge of the history and
action of opium is acknowledged to be most extensive. The deliberate
opinion of this gentleman is deserving of much attention; and he argues
the case as follows:—
“It has been too much the practice with those who have treated this
subject to content themselves with drawing the sad picture of the
confirmed debauchee, plunged in the last stage of moral and physical
exhaustion; and having taken this exception as the premises of their
argument, to proceed at once to involve the whole practice in one
sweeping condemnation. But this is not the way in which the subject
can be fairly treated. As rational would it be to paint the horrors of
_delirium tremens_, and upon that evidence to condemn at once the
entire use of alcoholic liquors. The question to be determined is not,
what are the effects of opium used in excess, but what are its effects
on the moral and physical constitution of the mass of individuals who
use it habitually, and in _moderation_, either as a stimulant to
sustain the frame under fatigue, or as a restorative and sedative
after labour, bodily or mental. Having passed three years in China, I
can affirm thus far, that the effects of the abuse of the drug do not
come very frequently under observation, and that, when cases do occur,
the habit is frequently found to have been induced by the presence of
some painful chronic disease, to escape from the suffering of which
the patient has fled to this resource. That this is not always,
however, the case, I am perfectly ready to admit, and there are
doubtless many who indulge in the habit to a pernicious extent, led by
the same morbid influences which induce men to become drunkards in
even the most civilised countries; but these cases do not, at all
events, come before the public eye. As regards the effects of the
habitual use of the drug on the _mass_ of the people, I must affirm
that no injurious results are visible. The people are a muscular and
well-formed race, the labouring portion being capable of great and
prolonged exertion under a fierce sun, in an unhealthy climate. Their
disposition is cheerful and peaceable, and quarrels and brawls are
rarely heard even amongst the lower orders; whilst in general
intelligence they rank deservedly high amongst Orientals.
“I conclude, therefore, with observing that the proofs are still
wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more
pernicious effects upon the constitution than the moderate use of
spirituous liquors; whilst, at the same time, it is certain that the
consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their
effects upon the victim, and less disastrous to society at large, than
the consequences of the abuse of the latter. Compare the furious
madman, the subject of _delirium tremens_, with the prostrate
debauchee, the victim of opium; the violent drunkard with the dreamy
sensualist intoxicated with opium. The latter is, at least, harmless
to all except his wretched self, whilst the former is but too
frequently a dangerous nuisance, and an open bad example to the
community at large.”[45]
It strikes us that the tone of this passage is that of an apologist for
an evil practice, rather than of a defender of a good one. But we leave
our readers to form their own opinion upon the point not unably argued
by Dr Eatwell. It may be that the ideas we have generally entertained in
this country, hitherto, as to the necessarily evil effects of the use of
opium as an indulgence, may be only unfounded prejudices. They may have
arisen from drawing too hasty and general conclusions from the manifest
evils of extreme cases; and it is possible that more knowledge may
compel us materially to alter our present opinions. Meantime the medical
missionaries inform us that the confirmed opium-consumers of China use
daily from 30 to 200 grains of the pure extract, which is equal to twice
as much of the crude opium. We might expect, therefore, a more frequent
recurrence of melancholy spectacles arising from the use of the drug,
than by the testimony of Dr Eatwell is really the case.
* * * * *
IV. HEMP.—As a general rule, little is popularly known in northern
Europe of the use of hemp as a narcotic indulgence; and yet in the East
it is as familiar to the sensual voluptuary as the opium we have been
considering.
Our common hemp (_Cannabis sativa_), so extensively cultivated for its
fibre, is the same plant with the Indian hemp, _Cannabis Indica_, which
from the remotest times has been celebrated among Eastern nations for
its narcotic virtues. The plant came to Europe from Persia, and is
supposed by many to be a native of India; but, like tobacco and the
potato, it has a wonderful power of adapting itself to differences in
soil and climate. Hence it is cultivated in northern Russia—whence our
manufacturers obtain large supplies of its valuable fibre—in Northern
America, on the plains of India and Arabia, in Africa, from its northern
to its southern extremities, and throughout the whole of Europe. But in
hot climates the fibre degenerates in quality, while the narcotic
ingredients increase in quantity, and in apparent strength.
In the sap of this plant, probably in all countries, there exists a
peculiar resinous substance in which the narcotic quality resides. In
northern climates the proportion of this substance is so small as
hitherto to have escaped notice. In the warmer regions of the East,
however, it is so abundant as to exude naturally from the flowers, from
the leaves, and from the bark of the young twigs. This is another of the
many interesting facts now known, which show the influence of climate in
modifying the chemical changes that take place in the interior of
plants, and the nature and proportions of the several substances which
are produced by these changes. We have already seen how the numerous
constituents of opium vary with the locality in which it is collected.
In India the resinous exudation of the hemp plant is collected in
various ways. In Nepaul it is gathered by the hand in the same way as
opium. This variety is very pure and much prized. It is called _Momeea_,
or waxen _Churrus_. It has a fragrant narcotic odour, and a slightly
hot, bitterish, and acrid taste. In Central India, men covered with
leathern aprons run backwards and forwards through the hemp fields,
beating the plants violently. By this means the resin is detached and
adheres to the leather. This is scraped off, and is the ordinary churrus
of commerce, the _chirs_ of Caubul. It does not bring so high a price as
the momeea. In other places the leathern aprons are dispensed with, and
the resin is collected on the naked skins of the coolies. In Persia it
is collected by pressing the resinous plant on coarse cloths, and
afterwards scraping the resin from these, and melting it in a little
warm water. The churrus of Herat is considered as one of the best and
most powerful varieties of the drug.
The plant itself is often collected and dried for the sake of the resin
it contains. The whole plant collected when in flower, and dried without
the removal of the resin, is called _Gunjah_. The larger leaves and
capsules without the stalks form _bang_, _subjee_, or _sidhee_, which is
less esteemed than the gunjah.[46]
The gunjah, when boiled in alcohol, yields as much as one-fifth of its
weight of resinous extract, and hence this method of preparing the drug
in a pure state has been recommended as the most efficient and
economical.
Among the ancient Saracens, the modern Arabs, in some parts of Turkey,
and generally throughout Syria, the preparations of hemp in common use
were, and are still, known by the names of _haschisch_, _hashash_, or
_husheesh_. The most common form of haschisch, and that which is the
basis of all others, is prepared by boiling the leaves and flowers of
the hemp with water to which a certain quantity of fresh butter has been
added, evaporating the decoction to the thickness of a syrup, and then
straining it through cloth. The butter thus becomes charged with the
active resinous principle of the plant, and acquires a greenish colour.
This preparation retains its properties for many years, only becoming a
little rancid. Its taste, however, is very disagreeable, and hence it is
seldom taken alone, but is mixed with confections and aromatics,
camphor, cloves, nutmegs, mace, and not unfrequently ambergris and musk,
so as to form a sort of electuary. The confection used among the Moors
is called _el mogen_, and is sold at an enormous price. _Dawamese_ is
the name given by the Arabs to that which they most commonly use. This
is frequently mingled, however, with other substances of reputed
aphrodisiac virtues, to enable it to minister more effectually to the
sensual gratifications, which appear to be the grand object of life
among many of the Orientals.
The Turks give the names of _Hadschy Malach_ and _Madjoun_ to the
compositions they use for purposes of excitement. According to Dr
Madden, the madjoun of Constantinople is composed of the pistils of the
flowers of the hemp plant ground to powder, and mixed in honey with
powdered cloves, nutmegs, and saffron.
Thus the hemp plant or its products are used in four different forms.
_First_, The whole plant dried and known by the name of gunjah; or the
larger leaves and capsules dried and known as bang, subjee, or sidhee;
or the dried flowers, called in Morocco _kief_, a pipe of which,
scarcely the size of an English pipe, is sufficient to intoxicate; or
the dried pistils of the flower in the madjoun of the Turks. It is
possible that these latter parts of the plant may be peculiarly rich in
resin.
_Second_, The resin which naturally exudes from the leaves and flowers,
and is, when collected by the hand, called momeea; or the same beaten
off with sticks, and sold by the name of churrus.
_Third_, The extract obtained by means of alcohol from the gunjah, and
which is said to be very active.
_Fourth_, The extract obtained by the use of butter, which, when mixed
with spices, forms the dawamese of the Arabs, and is the foundation of
the haschisch of many Eastern countries and districts. Other varieties,
however, are in use, under the name of haschisch, one of which consists
only of the tops and tender parts of the plants collected after they
have been in flower.
The dried plant is smoked, and sometimes chewed, while the resin and
resinous extracts are generally swallowed in the form of pills or
boluses. The newly-gathered plant and leaves have a rapid and energetic
action. Their efficacy diminishes, however, by keeping, which is less
the case with the natural resin and the extracts.
In one or other of these forms the hemp plant appears to have been used
from very remote times. The ancient Scythians are said by Herodotus to
have excited themselves “by inhaling its vapour.” Homer makes Helen
administer to Telemachus, in the house of Menelaus, a potion prepared
from the Nepenthes, which made him forget his sorrows. This plant had
been given to her by a woman of Egyptian Thebes; and Diodorus Siculus
states that the Egyptians laid much stress on this circumstance, arguing
that Homer must have lived among them, since the women of Thebes were
actually noted for possessing a secret by which they could dissipate
anger or melancholy. This secret is supposed to have been a knowledge of
the qualities of hemp.
It is curious how common and familiar words sometimes connect themselves
with things and customs of which we know absolutely nothing. The word
_assassin_—a foreign importation, it is true, but long naturalised among
us—is of this kind. M. Sylvester de Sacy, the well-known Orientalist,
says that this word was derived from the Arabic name of hemp. It was
originally used in Syria to designate the followers of “the old man of
the mountain,” who were called _Haschischins_, because among them the
haschisch was in frequent use, especially during the performance of
certain of their mysterious rites. Others say that, during the wars of
the Crusaders, certain of the Saracen army, intoxicated with the drug,
were in the habit of rushing into the camps of the Christians,
committing great havoc, being themselves totally regardless of death;
that these men were known as hashasheens, and that thence came our word
assassin. The Oriental term was probably in use long before the time of
the Crusades, though the English form and use of the word may have been
introduced into Europe at that period.
Nor is the use of hemp less extended than it is ancient. All over the
East, and in Mahomedan countries generally, it is consumed. In Northern
Africa it is used largely by the Moors. In Southern Africa, the
Hottentots use it under the name of _Dacha_, for purposes of
intoxication; and when the Bushmen were in London, they smoked the dried
plant in short pipes made of the tusks or teeth of animals. What is more
astonishing, when we consider what broad seas intervene, even the native
Indians of Brazil know its value, and delight in its use; so that over
the hotter parts of the globe generally, wherever the plant produces in
abundance its peculiar narcotic principle, its virtues may be said to be
known, and more or less extensively made use of.
Its effects on the system, therefore, we must suppose, are very
agreeable. In India it is spoken of as the increaser of pleasure, the
exciter of desire, the cementer of friendship, the laughtermover, and
the causer of the reeling gait,—all epithets indicative of its peculiar
effects. Linnæus describes its power as “narcotica, phantastica,
dementens, anodyna et repellens;” while in the words of Endlicher,
“Emollitum exhilarat animum, impotentibus desideriis tristem, stultam
lætitiam provocat, et jucundissima somniorum conciliat phantasmata.”
The effects of the churrus or natural resin have been carefully studied
in India by Dr O’Shaughnessy. He states that when taken in moderation it
produces increase of appetite and great mental cheerfulness, while in
excess it causes a peculiar kind of delirium and catalepsy. This last
effect is very remarkable, and we quote his description of the results
of one of his experiments with what is considered a large dose for an
Indian patient:—
“At two P.M. a grain of the resin of hemp was given to a rheumatic
patient; at four P.M. he was very talkative, sang, called loudly for
an extra supply of food, and declared himself in perfect health. At
six P.M. he was asleep. At eight P.M. he was found insensible, but
breathing with perfect regularity, his pulse and skin natural, and the
pupils freely contractile on the approach of light. Happening by
chance to lift up the patient’s arm, the professional reader will
judge of my astonishment when I found it remained in the posture in
which I placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the
limbs to find that by the influence of this narcotic the patient had
been thrown into the strangest and most extraordinary of all nervous
conditions, which so few have seen, and the existence of which so many
still discredit—the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist. We raised him
to a sitting posture, and placed his arms and limbs in every
imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could not be more pliant or more
stationary in each position, no matter how contrary to the natural
influence of gravity on the part! To all impressions he was meanwhile
almost insensible.”
This extraordinary influence he subsequently found to be exercised by
the hemp extract upon other animals as well as upon man. After a time it
passes off entirely, leaving the patient altogether uninjured.
In this effect of the hemp in India we see a counterpart of many of the
wonderful feats performed by the fakeers and other religious devotees of
that country. It indicates probably the true means also by which they
are enabled to produce them. How much power a little knowledge gives to
the dishonest and designing in every country over the ignorant and
unsuspecting masses!
The effects of the haschisch of the Arabians, which probably do not
differ from those of hemp in any of its forms, have been described to us
from his own personal experience by a French physician, M. Moreau. When
taken in small doses, its effect is simply to produce a moderate
exhilaration of spirits, or at most a tendency to unseasonable laughter.
Taken in doses sufficient to induce the _fantasia_, as its more
remarkable effects are called in the Levant, its first influence is the
same as when taken in a small dose; but this is followed by an intense
feeling of happiness, which attends all the operations of the mind. The
sun shines upon every thought that passes through the brain, and every
movement of the body is a source of enjoyment. M. Moreau made many
experiments with it upon his own person—appears indeed to have fallen
into the habit of using it even after his return to France—and he
describes and reasons upon its effects as follows:—
“It is really _happiness_ which is produced by the haschisch; and by
this I mean an enjoyment entirely moral, and by no means sensual, as
might be supposed. This is a very curious circumstance, and some
remarkable inferences might be drawn from it. Among others, for
example, that every feeling of joy and gladness, even when the cause
of it is exclusively moral—that those enjoyments which are least
connected with material objects, the most spiritual, the most
ideal—may be nothing else but sensations purely physical developed in
the interior of the system, in the same way as those which are
produced by means of the haschisch. At least, in so far as relates to
that of which we are internally conscious, there is no distinction to
be made between these two orders of sensations, in spite of the
diversity of causes to which they are due. For the haschisch-eater is
happy, not like the gourmand, or the famished man when satisfying his
appetite, or the voluptuary in the gratification of his amative
desires,—but like him who hears tidings which fill him with joy, or
like the miser counting his treasures, the gambler who is successful
at play, or the ambitious man who is intoxicated with success.”[47]