Opium Smoking and Opium Eating, Their Treatment and Cure
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OPIUM SMOKING AND OPIUM EATING, THEIR TREATMENT AND CURE, BY GEORGE SHEARER, M.D., F.L.S., Senior Assistant Physician to the Hospital for Consumption, Liverpool. PREFACE. The nucleus of the following treatise was an Essay by the Author on "The Medical means of counter- acting the effects of Opium-smoking in China, with suggestions as to the best method of conducting Opium refuges," to which a prize of ^50 was awarded in February, 1881, by Sir James Risdon Bennett, Sir Joseph Fryrer, Dr. Sieveking, and Dr. Broadbent, adjudicators. Besides enjoying the advantage of actual Hospital work among the Chinese, the Author has consulted almost every available work that has yet appeared on the subject. — : CONTENTS. PAGE The political aspect of the Opium trade with China. England the purveyor of Opium for the Chinese market : The mischief already wrought beyond calcula- tion : The native drug now extensively cultivated, and women and children 'becoming Opium-smokers Some tens of millions of smokers and the practice still extending : Poppy-culture, a cause of famine : Opium all but unlcnown to the ancient Chinese : Opium- smoldng, comparable in its extent and ravages with the vice of intemperance, though the growth of but two centuries ! The vice spreading in India and Bur- mah : Compassion for mankind demands repression or restriction . i Principles Opium and its Constituent . , . lo Method of making "Smoking" Opium .. lo Preliminary Questions to be settled : Is the use of Opium so deleterious as it is represented to be ? 12 The use of Opium on the increase in England and America 12 Opium by far the most valuable Medicine in the Materia Medica .. .. .. .. i? A Resume of its more important Apphcations .. .. 17 Rationale of its mode of action . 18 Classiiication of its greater Physiological and Therapeutic actions . • • '9 Example of its Subjective Effects . 20 Dr. Kane's Experiments .. .. .. ..21 Its perversion as an agent of Sensual Pleasure traceable to the Mohammedans . • 23 An honest investigation of the whole question demanded 25 Does Opium cause Intoxication ? . 26 It is Intoxicant and Narcotic . 26 Primarily stimulant, secondarily sedative, the mind itself, when used in moderation, comparatively at Uberty . 27 « V. PAGE 28 Opium and Alcohol compared . Commonly indulged in, for the sake of its deeply narcotic effects . • • • 33 Narcotic mdulgence reveals the original basis of character, but also strengthens the selfish and the sensual propen- sities in man . • • 34 More destnictive of health and happiness than dram drinking 34 Is the excitement induced by Opium followed by propor- tionate depression ? . • 3S Proportionate recoil or depression . • • 37 The Opium trance : a spirit aU but disembodied . • . 39 Neither lawful nor safe . • • 39 The man becomes a moral paralytic . 40 The horrors exceed the fascinations of the drug . 40 Subsequent torpidity and depression, as well as incapacity and remorse . 40 Procrastination and loss of time amongst the incidental evils 41 Mental imbecility and lunacy threatened or consummated . 42 Depressive recoil must foUow all but the most moderate use of the drug . 44 Are increasing doses required to produce the original eifects ? 44 As the jaded horse requires more of the whip and the spur: explanation . Physiological . "45 Does Opium impart the power of conjuring up phantoms at will and give command over them ? . 48 Opium initiates the visions, but gives no command over them . • • 49 past life unveiled . • The • 49 Ideas of space and time vastly extended or minimised . .50 The literary genius and characteristic studies of De Quincey betrayed in his dreams . • • 51 Visions followed by suicidal despondency . • Substitution of for Alcohol . Opium . • S3 Illustrations of suicidal indulgence in . ' Opium . 56 example of total paralysis of the will . An . 58 Smoking themselves to death . • • 59 Inertia of mind predisposes to indulgence in narcotics . 59 Vlll. PAGE . 140 But hypnotics may be required . for time . The tonic regimen must be persevered in some . 141 • • • • '4^ Anti-dyspeptics . Electricity .. .. .. •• •• • • H3 Cure by smoldng Stramonium . • • ^43 The Coca cure .. .- .. • • • ^43 . • • • • '44 Opium refuges . • • • ^45 Plan and Management . • • . 148 The Chinese people once addicted to drunkeness . The cure must be sought in the creation of a sound pubUc opinion and the diffusion of secular and religious truth 149 . 15° Formation of Opium- Abstinence Societies . 15° The Tai- Pings Anti-Opium smokers . physical, social and moral, Arguments : — Economical, I5' • • • spiritual . • • • • • . die out . 152 Vulgarise the practice, and it will . • • '53 China in a state of transition . •• '54 She is demoralised .. .. • • native nation of immemorial antiquity and considerable A men, capacity, but stUl only a nation of undeveloped adolescents . IS5 with the feeble virtue of mere . ..156 What will raise China ? .. •• Traffic with England, in relation to the immoral Opium . IS° China, unworthy of her traditions . INTRODUCTORY. The Political Aspect of the Opium Trade with China. It does not fall within the province of this treatise to speak at all on the political aspects of the opium traffic ; nor of the possibility that this great country may, some day, see her way to reverse the policy she has pursued for a century past of fostering the trade in opium, and even forcing a contraband and en- snaring poison on the markets of a weak and un- willing nation. What amends she may make by prohibiting the growth and preparation of the drug in her Indian possessions* when the national con- * " The plan adopted by the Indian Government jnakes it the purveyor of opium for the Chinese market. .... Our legislation in regard to alcoholic beverages in England, is a legislation of repression. In Bengal, on the other hand, for the sake of increasing our revenue, we become the cultivators of opium and its manufacturers into a form suited for the Chinese rnarket. The point I wish to urge is that the amount of vice and immorality produced by opium is so great, that it becomes a civilised and christian nation to make every efifort to stay this fearful evil." Paper read before the Social Science Association at Brighton, October, 1885, by R. A. Fowler, Esq., M.A., F.R.C.S. The resolution passed at the last meeting of the Anglo-Oriental Society, in Exeter Hall, for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, is to the same eifect. " That having regard to the great and increasing evils attending the course pursued by the Indian Government in the production and sale'of opium —as inflicting, for the sake of revenue, grievous wrongs on China and British Burmah : as producing in the Chinese Government and people a spirit of resentment, and thereby B — 2 science is awakened to the obligation of removing a stumbling-block and a snare out of a brother's path, we know not, though the history of the abolition of the British slave trade and the 20 years' agitation that preceded this grand triumph of the christianized conscience of the nation should not leave us without hope. The trouble is that no amends can be made such as shall restore the Chinese people to the proud position they once enjoyed—a condition of simpli- city, sobriety, and moderation exceptional amongst the nations before the national life and manners were sullied and vitiated by an enervating and de- grading vice. The trouble is that the habit of opium-smoking has grown with the years, has be- come so engrafted on the people, is so generally practised, and is so germane to the genius of the nation, that, partly as a measure of self-protection, to retain capital within the country otherwise wasted on the foreign article, partly to meet the vast and increasing demand for the drug, they now them- selves cultivate the poppy over a vast area of terri- tory, materially limiting the general food supply throughout the country, and some seasons leading to a positive dearth. Dr. Collins, of Pekin, says, " No estimate that I have seen can be regarded as an over-statement.- There is an opium shop in every village, and there are opium smokers everywhere you travel. Compradors in foreign hongs have the interfering with the success of the Christian Missions, and in every way injurious to Great Britain in the eyes of the world the assembly desires to renew its condemnation of that course, and to express its earnest hope that our Government will not delay longer in doing justice to China, by ratifying the opium clauses of the Chefoo convention negotiated four years ago," 3 opium pipe in readiness, and offer it as freely to their customers as we would a pinch of snuff or a cigar." This statement completely tallies with my experience during my 61- years' residence in Hankow and Kewkiang. Pere David, the famous Jesuit Mis- sionary and naturalist, told me that the most fertile provinces, such as Szechuen and Shansi, once famous or their cereal and rice crops, as well as tea and silk, are given over to the growth of the poppy—have, in fact, become converted into one great poppy gar- den, white with blossom in spring-time—a hazardous and precarious crop. According to Dr. Porter Smith, about one-half of the arable land in the province of SzecTiuen is devoted to the growth of the poppy, and 7-ioths of the townspeople are opium-smokers!* * I can put no manner of confidence in the attempts made to fix the precise proportion of opium-smokers to the population, though the general conclusion is only too manifest, viz., that the habit is very general, that it is still extending, and that it is no longer confined to adult males, but is practised also by women and children. Rev. Dr. Edkins says 55 per cent, of the men cent, in Shantung ; none in some of smoke in Shanghai ; 15 per the villages.