That Europe is the original home of the opium-poppy, and not Asia, is even more contradictory of our settled traditions and belief than the fact that Europeans gave tobacco to the East. Yet it is the fact that opium, like tobacco, came to the Far East from Europe. The opium-poppy does not grow wild in Asia; it is a cultivated variety of a Mediterranean poppy, the Papaver setigerum, which has a pale purple flower, and was conveyed, long ago, by man from the Levant to Asia. We have true poppies of four species which grow wild in England, all with splendid scarlet or crimson petals, easily distinguished from one another by the shape of the seedboxes, or capsules, which they form. If you scratch the surface of the seed capsule of one of these poppies a milky juice appears. It is this which is collected from the capsules of the much larger opium-poppy in India and China, and when dried forms a hard brown cake, which is called “opium.” It consists of resinous matter, in which is contained a small quantity of the invaluable narcotic called “morphia,” and also small quantities of other powerful poisons.

The pale-purple poppy of the Mediterranean (Papaver setigerum) was cultivated hundreds—even thousands—of years ago in the South of Europe and on the Mediterranean shores of Africa—not for opium, but for the oil which can be expressed from the seed, “poppy-seed oil.” The oil is free from narcotic properties. The purple poppy is still cultivated for that oil in France, and poppy-seed oil is an article of commerce used as food, both in the pure state and for adulterating other oils. The earliest cultivation of this poppy is even as remote in Europe as 7000 years, for we find that the Swiss lake-dwellers of the Stone Age cultivated it, and that the variety they obtained was nearer to the wild Papaver setigerum than to its cultivated derivative, the modern opium-poppy, Papaver somniferum. How and when it first was recognised that the narcotic substance “opium” could be prepared from the juice exuding from the cut capsule is not exactly known, but it is probable that it was not until the early Middle Ages that the poppy was cultivated for the habitual use of opium as a narcotic indulgence, and that its earlier cultivation was, as to some extent at the present day, for the sake of the oil contained in the seed, its use in medicine requiring but a very small supply. The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with the cultivated poppy. Homer mentions it, and at a much later period Theophrastus and Dioscorides do so. They call it “mekon,” and were aware of the somniferous properties of the sap. Dioscorides, whose wonderful book on plants dates from the first century of our era, speaks of the drug derived from the sap by the name “opos,” and it is from that word that the name “opium” has come. The Romans cultivated the poppy before the republic, and mixed its seeds with their flour in making bread. The story of King Tarquin taking the governor of a rebellious province into a poppy-field, lopping off the heads of the taller poppies with his stick, and then turning to his visitor, without a word, but with a look which said, “That is the way to govern”—is evidence of the very early cultivation of the poppy by the Romans. Hebrew writings do not mention the opium poppy, though it seems to be certain that it has been cultivated in Asia Minor for at least 3000 years. There is no evidence that the plant was cultivated in more ancient times in Egypt, although in Pliny’s time the Egyptians used the juice of the poppy medicinally. In the Middle Ages it was, and in our own day it is, one of the chief objects of cultivation in that country, especially for the manufacture of opium.

The cultivated variety P. somniferum of the present day differs from the wild P. setigerum, in having the seed-capsule surmounted by ten or twelve stigmas (the free ends of the leaves which are united to form the capsule), instead of by eight as in the wild form. It seems that the introduction of the poppy from the shores of the Mediterranean into Persia, India, and China is due to Arab traders, and is coincident with the rise of Mohammedanism; and it is probable that it was valued and cultivated from that time onwards, not so much for the sake of its seed and oil, as for the narcotic juice, which was made up by Arabian “confectioners” into a kind of paste, and eaten, as were other vegetable extracts—such as “bang,” from hemp—for the sake of the pleasurable effects produced by its poisonous action on the nervous system. It is certain that the opium poppy does not occur at all in the wild state in the Middle and Far East. In 1516 opium was already an article of trade from India to China. The poppy was cultivated, and the use of opium known and frequent in India for some five centuries before that date. Probably the cultivation of the plant in China was not started until the eighteenth century.

It was the Chinese who hit upon the mode of indulging in opium by smoking it in a pipe. There is no record, written or pictorial, of this practice earlier than 1730, about fifty years before which date (1680) we find the smoking of tobacco represented on Chinese pottery. Very soon the Chinese were not content to import their opium from India, but large areas were put under cultivation with the Indian poppy in China and Manchuria. For a century or more the export of opium from India to China continued and increased as the consumption of the drug increased, the native Chinese production not being sufficient to meet the demand. In 1730 and 1796 the Chinese Government issued edicts forbidding the smoking of opium, and in the last century the efforts of the Chinese authorities to prevent the importation of Indian opium, whether with a view to suppress a dangerous vice or to favour the home-grown article, led to war with England. In some parts of China—for instance, Amoy—three-fourths of the population are, or were until lately, opium-smokers. Now it is believed that the Chinese Government is genuinely determined to put a stop to the dangerous and enervating indulgence in this narcotic, and the opium-growers of India will have to limit their output, and employ their land and labour for other crops.

It is the fact that the eating of opium (for it is not “smoked” there) does very little harm in India, since it is not used by a large proportion of the people nor in excess. Many persons who have studied the subject maintain that the widely-spread injury caused by opium in China is due to the short time during which it has been in use there as compared with India. It is held that a population after a few centuries becomes immune to such poisonous but attractive indulgences by the killing out of those who cannot resist excess—and the suggestion is that the simplest way of dealing with such cravings for poison is to let those who have them and cannot resist their demand, freely indulge and die, and their stock with them. This is, however, a slow and tedious way of eradicating an evil tendency. It may, perhaps, be the only way, and hereafter, when the production by careful and restricted breeding of a sound and healthy population becomes recognised as being part of the duty of the makers and administrators of the law in civilised states, it is not improbable that we shall see something of the kind deliberately put into practice.

The opium-pipe and the mode of smoking at present in use in China are very different from the pipe and smoking of tobacco used there or elsewhere. I investigated the matter myself twenty years ago in an opium-den near the London Docks, under the instruction of a polite Chinaman. The opium-pipe has a very narrow cavity, about one-sixth of an inch wide. The prepared opium, in a condition resembling treacle, is smeared on the walls of the cavity with a pin, and the pipe is held to a lighted lamp. The flame drawn into the pipe causes the opium to frizzle and give off smoke, but it does not “light” and continue to burn. Each whiff which the smoker inhales has to be procured by applying the pipe to the lamp. The smoke is tasteless, and it requires a good deal of patience and several re-smearings of the inside of the pipe before the smoker begins to experience the pleasant effects of the drug. These consist in the production of a sense of perfect contentment and indifference to all trouble and care, whilst the imagination gives a rose-colour, or an even more alluring aspect, to all that one sees or thinks of—until a gentle sleep closes the scene.

The Chinese, having obtained the seeds, cultivated the opium-poppy, and made opium before the prepared article was imported in any great quantity from India. There is, of course, no doubt as to the injury which is done to a population by the habitual use of opium. At the same time, there is no one who knows anything about medicine and the use of drugs who does not speak of opium with reverence and even affection. Forty years ago, at a dinner-party where the leading physicians of London were present, it was suggested that they should each write down in order of merit the ten drugs to which they attached the greatest value. I heard from one who was present that they all put opium in the first place, and that mercury, iodide of potassium, and ipecacuanha followed in that order in the majority of the lists. The value of opium as a medicinal agent is one thing; its deadly effect on those who have become victims to its daily use is another. The origin of the medicinal use of opium can be traced to Egypt in Pliny’s time, but beyond that nothing is known.

As I am writing of botanical matters, I may briefly refer to an ambiguity about the names “banana” and “plantain.” There is no difference (as is sometimes suggested) between the fruits indicated by these two words. Our word “plantain” is merely a corruption of the Spanish word platano, which is the name of the plane-tree. It was loosely applied in South America by the Spanish colonists to the banana palm (Musa sapientum), just as they called the North American bison a buffalo, and as the Anglo-Americans call a stag an elk, and a red thrush a robin. The banana palm is not an American tree, but was introduced there from the East Indies by the early navigators, and was very soon cultivated by the South American Indians as well as by the colonists. There have been great authorities—for instance, Humboldt—who have believed that there is a native South American banana palm as well as an East Indian one; but the definite conclusion of botanists, after careful inquiry, is that there is only one species, and that it is of South Asian origin. There are an enormous number of cultivated varieties—forty-four are described; they can all be arranged in two groups, the large-fruited bananas (fruit 7 inches to 15 inches long), and the small-fruited bananas, commonly called fig-bananas (fruits 1 inch to 6 inches long). All are equally entitled to the name “plantain” as well as “banana.” The finest flavoured varieties are cultivated in Hindustan, and there only, being often of very great value and rarity. Those which come into the English market are chiefly, if not entirely, of West Indian production. The foliage of the banana palm consists of oblong leaves of magnificent size and unbroken surface; small trees are to be seen in hothouses (they bear fruit at Kew), and are frequently used for decorative purposes.