turned his attention
to the subject, and he has published the results of his analyses of
specimens of opium from the different divisions of the Behar Agency,
which are worthy of much attention. In the opium from eight divisions
of the agency, he found the quantity of morphia to range from 13/4
grains to 31/2 grains per cent., and the amount of the narcotine to vary
from 3/4 grain to 31/2 grains per cent., the consistence of the various
specimens being between 75 and 79 per cent. In the opium from the
Hazareebaugh district (the consistence of the drug being 77), he found
41/2 per cent, of morphia, and 4 per cent, narcotine; whilst from a
specimen of Patna-garden opium he extracted no less than 103/4 per cent.
of morphia, and 6 per cent. of narcotine, the consistence of the drug
being 87. With respect to the last specimen, Dr. O'Shaughnessy
mentions that the poppies which produced it were irrigated three times
during the season, and that no manure was employed upon the soil. It
is much to be regretted that these interesting results were not
coupled with an analysis of the soils from which the specimens were
produced, for to chemical variations in it must be attributed the
widely different results recorded above.

Opium as a medicine has been used from the earliest ages; but when it
was first resorted to as a luxury, it is impossible to state, though
it is not at all improbable that this was coeval with its employment
in medicine, for how often do we find that, from having been first
administered as a sedative for pain, it has been continued until it
has taken the place of the evil. Such must have happened from the
earliest ages, as it happens daily in the present; but as a national
vice it was not known until the spread of Islamism, when, by the
tenets of the Prophet, wine and fermented liquors being prohibited, it
came in their stead along with the bang or hasch-schash (made from
hemp), coffee, and tobacco. From the Arabs the inhabitants of the
Eastern Archipelago most probably imbibed their predilection for
opium, although their particular manner of using it has evidently been
derived from the Chinese. China, where at present it is so extensively
used, cannot be said to have indulged long in the vice. Previous to
1767 the number of chests imported did not exceed 200 yearly; now the
average is 50,000 to 60,000. In 1773 the East India Company made their
first venture in opium, and in 1796 it was declared a crime to smoke