Page:Journal Of The Indian Archipelago And Eastern Asia Series.i, Vol.2 (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.107695).pdf/23

 opinion, what has been seen is either a blot as black as Erebus, a canker eating into the vitals of society, a moral curse attended with great and deep physical evils, which are slowly, but surely, extending; or it may be looked upon as one way of spending money, not a bad plan for raising the revenue, a lighter curse than dram drinking and a far pleasanter, where the young men dream dreams, and the old men see sights. But let the philanthropist pass from house to house, mark the appearance of the visitors, pursue them to their homes, when, reeling from the effects of the drug, they, heedless of wife or children, pass into a disturbed sleep, to waken to the tortures of the damned when the sun is high up in the horizon, and the industrious of their fellow creatures have been at work for hours: this is the moment they appreciate their wretchedness, when feverish and hot, with a tongue that is dry, yet cannot be moistened, lips that are cracked, yet cannot be softened, a throat parched and thirst excessive, that cannot be quenched, with eyes either closed or running with rheum, a tightness of the chest that prevents breathing, a lassitude, a langour, a pain in all the bones, a downright incapability of exertion, a loathing of food and a craving for one thing only, which, not to attain is worse than death,&mdash;and that is another draught of the poison, which soothes for the moment, but clenches the faster the misery of the wretches. No overdrawn picture is this, but sketched from life, yea more, by the victims themselves, and of these victims there at least 15,000 in Singapore. Surely the importance of the subject will not now be questioned, and a little attention can safely be claimed to the particulars which have justified me in making the above momentous statement.

Opium is the inspissated juice of the white poppy, obtained by scratching the capsules, and collecting the exuding juice. The plant has been long known and is perhaps one of the earliest described. Homer speaks of the Poppy growing in gardens; and it was employed in medicine by Hippocrates, the father of physic, who even particularizes two kinds, the black and the white, and used the extract or Opium so extensively as to be condemned by his contemporary Diagoras. Dioscorides and Pliny also make mention of it, and from their time it