Opium smoking and opium eating, their treatment and cure / by George Shearer.

Date:
[1881?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opium smoking and opium eating, their treatment and cure / by George Shearer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    1 in 1796 it approached 4,000 chests. In 1839, the year immediately preceding the first opiiim war, 35,000 in order to win their money from them. Young men of recldess habits met at night in opium-smoking houses—a feast was pre- pared of fruit and pastry. New visitors at these gatherings were not asked to pay a share. After a time they would not be able to stay away, and would ruin themselves in order to come. They passed the whole night without sleeping, given up to vicious indulgence. If they remained a day without smoking their cheeks shrivelled, their lips fell apart, their animation was gone, and they had no heart for anything. But if they smoked again they were well. After three years they died. Such is the earliest account known to exist in any book of the commencement of opium smoking in China. The native growth in Yunnan can be traced^ to about the same time, or a little later. In the history of that province, pubhshed m 1736, it is stated that opium was then a common product of the department of Yung Chang-fu in that province. This native opium would be intended not for opium smoking, but to be used medically. Dr. Edkins has completely dispelled the vague, unfounded assertions about the immemorial antiquity of opium smoking, and has confirmed all that has been advanced by the Anti-Opium Society. The first British importers of opium did not teach the vice to the Chinese; possibly they did not even know that the drug was used in vicious indulgence. But when the vice had spread to such an extent as to be gene- rally reprobated, and the import of the drug was forbidden by the Government, they continued to bring it, in violation of Chinese law. This was their crime. Dr. Edkins thus describes the result: Opium smoking has now become one of the national characteristics. It makes the people unhealthy and weak; it encourages waste, raggedness, and despair; it destroys the prospects in life of those who are young, intelligent, and vigorous; it causes the rich to become poor, and changes the poor into beggars. In a country so thickly populated, many have a hard struggle to live ; but with the spread of the habit of opium-smoking the class of the very poor is greatly increased. The land is filled with wretched-looking physiognomies, and the most tattered of costumes.