The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-15
EARLY HISTORY OF OPIUM

From the Journal of the American Medi-
 cal Association.
 nHE medicinal properties of poppy
 juice date from remote period.
 \ Recalling the highly developed cul- ture of the ancient Egyptians one is ln- clined to imagine that the narcotic prop critics of opium were known to them; but the investigations of Unser Qs5O have failed to trace any acquaintance with opium in ancient Egypt, and Dr. Elm Der of the semitic department of Johns Hopkins university, knows of no refer ence to it in Egyptian literature. Accord ing to some Hebrew scholars, there Is reference to poppy juice in the Bible. Tn several passages in the Old Testament the word rosh is mentioned. Professor Haupt is convinced that rosh means the poppy, and so also is Professor Post. In the Talmud we have one reference to opium, under the name opinion, but that word was clearly borrowed from Creek In the classical Hindoo literature there is found no reference to it. From the time of the mongul conquest on there appears word khash-khash, which means poppy seed, and khash-khasharasa juice of the poppy. In this 1t IS easy to re cognize our modern word hashish ana so it seems that at that early date the narcotics opium and canabis indica were confused with each other. The original home of the poppy was in Asia Minor. From there it was carried to Greece at later period.
 It is not at all certain whether Hip pocrstes was acquainted with the juice of the poppy. According to Wootton, he refers to substance called mecon to which he attributes a purgative as well as narcotic action. Some think that it was opium; others believe that he was re- ferring to another plant In any case, he made but very little use of the drug. The first authentic reference to the milky juice of the poppy we find by Theophrat- us at the beginning of the third century B. C., when he speaks of it as meconion. Scribonus Largus, in his "Compositiones Medicamentorum, about the year 40 of the present era, describes the method of procuring opium from the capsules or the poppy, and about the year 17 or the same century Dioscorides makes dis tinction between the juice of the capsules and the extract of the whole plant. He describes the method of incising the cap suies, and refers to adulterations Of the drug with the milky juices of other plants so that it is evident that the collection Of opium was quite an industry in Asia Minor at that time. Plfny devotes some l 70 Q 1d medicinal use, and the drug Is men, | toned repeatedly by Celsius in the hrs' century and by numerous other Latin | writers Galen spoke enthusiastically oi
 the virtues of opium confections, and the
 drug was soon so popular in Rome tna'
 it fell into the shopkeepers and ftineran' qracks
 l The introduction of the drug to the na- l tives of the east was through the Araos l and ir the first instance to Persian us 1 introduction into India seems to have been connected with the spread of Mo-
 hammedansm.
 The Arabic physicians used opium very
 extensively, and even wrote special treat ises on some of it's preparations. Ihe earliest mention of opimium as prod 1 uct of India is by the traVeier par bosa. in 1511. A Portuguese historian Pyres in a letter to Manuel. King oi Portugal. in 1516 speaks of the opium
 of Egypt and Bengal.
 Opium is supposed to have been brought to China first by the Arabs, who art known to have, traded with the southern part of the empire as early as the nintf century Later the Chinese began to i'm
 port the drug in their junks from India It was not before the second half of thu
 eighteenth century that the importation
 of opium began to increase rapidl, through the hands of the Portuguese, ant a little later through the famous Eas |. India company. In ITO the English es tablished an opium depot in Lark's bay i, south of Macao, and the traffic rapidl, increased. so that very soon the Chines' authorities began to complain. and in 1s2 an edict was issued forbidding any vesse having opium on board to enter the Can
 ton river. A system of contraband fol