Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/371

Rh latter residence in Western India. I paid the closest attention to the subject during the whole of the years I was there, and had every kind of experience in relation to it, having at different periods been in medical charge of the Southern Mahratta Irregular Horse, the 8th Madras Cavalry, the 3rd Bombay Native Infantry, a battery of Artillery, the jail and civil station of Sholapore, and the steam frigate Ajdaha.... Subsequently, and for the remainder of my service, I was attached to the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Hospital, Bombay, and was in succession Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, and of Botany and Materia Medica, at Grant Medical College. I was also a J.P., and a visitor of the jails in Bombay, and the year I was sheriff I regularly visited them. Besides this, I was probably more intimately familiar with all classes of the native population than any other European of my generation; while, as an ever-active journalist (I was a journalist from the first day to the last of my service in India), I was mixed up in almost every discussion of this sort during my time in Bombay. Well, in all the experience—as here precisely detailed, and capable therefore of being checked at every point—I thus had of the indigenous life of Western India, I never once met with a single native suffering, or who had ever suffered, from what is called the excessive use, or from the habitual use of opium; and, except cases of accidental or wilful poisoning by opium, I never knew of a single instance of death from its use; and I have never met with any one who, in his own personal experience, has known a case of death, or of injury to health, from the habitual use of opium as practised by the people of any part of India proper. I exclude Burmah; I know nothing of it.... So far as I can remember, in the printed tables used in Indian civil and military hospitals for the entry of diseases, there is no column for the 'opium habit,' nor for 'deaths from opium.' On the strength of my personal experience, I should be prepared to defy any one to bring forward, from their personal experience, a single authentic record of death, or shortened life, from habitual opium eating or drinking in India. If any one