and as they collect the juice from a number of roots at the same time, and expose it in one common place to harden, the sun soon gives it that consistence and appearance in which it is imported into Europe.

Assafoetida has a bitter, acrid, pungent taste, and is well known by its peculiar nauseous fetid smell, the strength of which is the surest test of its goodness; this odour is extremely volatile, and of course the drug loses much of its efficacy by keeping. According to Kampfer's account, the juice is infinitely more odorate when recent, than when in the state brought to us: Affirmare ausim, unam drachmam recens effusam, majorem spargere fætorem, quàm centum libras vetustioris quem siccum venundant aromatarii nostrates. "We have this drug in large irregular masses of a heterogeneous appearance, composed of various shining little lumps or grains, which are partly whitish, partly of a brownish or reddish, and partly of a violet hue. Those masses are accounted the best which are clear, of a pale reddish colour, and variegated with a great number of fine white tears. Assafoetida is composed of a gummy and a resinous substance, the first in largest quantity. Its smell and taste reside in the resin, which is readily dissolved and extracted by pure spirit, and, in a great part, along with the gummy matter, by water *."

Assafoetida is a medicine in very general use, and is certainly a more efficacious remedy than any of the other fetid gums: it is most commonly employed in hysteria, hypochondriasis, some symptoms of dyspepsia, flatulent colics, and in most of those diseases termed nervous but its chief use is derived from its antispasmodic effects and it is thought to be the most powerful remedy we possess for those peculiar convulsive and spasmodic affections which often recur in the first of these diseases, both taken into the stomach and in the way of enema. It is also recommended as an emmenagogue, anthelminthic, expectorant †, antiasthmatic, and anodyne. Where we wish it to act immediately as an antispasmodic, it should be used in a fluid form, as that of a tincture.

Dr. Hope has the credit of having first cultivated the assafoetida

* See Lewis's Mat. Med.

+ Dr. Cullen prefers it to the Gum Ammon as an expectorant. Assafœtida should therefore have a double advantage in spasmodic asthmas.

plant in Britain, if not in Europe, from seeds sent to his friend Dr. Guthrie of St. Petersburg, from the mountains of Ghiam, in Persia: but the plant at present regarded as genuine is a different species, a native of the north; the former is now denominated Ferular Persica.

[Amanitates. Exotica. Wildenow. Woodville.

SECTION XXIX.

Opium Plant.

Papaver Somniferum.-WILden.

THE poppy genus contains nine species, of which two are employed in medicine. 1. P. rhæas, or wild globular-headed poppy, common to our corn-fields, and flowering in June or July, the flowers of which are said to be slightly anodyne, but which are chiefly made use of on account of their elegant red hue, being for the sake of the hue boiled and preserved as a syrup; and 2. P. somniferum, the article immediately before us. The root of this is annual, tapering, and branched; the stalk is round, smooth, erect, often branched, of a glaucous green colour, and rises two or three feet in height; the leaves are alternate, large, ovate, lobed, smooth, deeply cut into various segments, and closely embrace the stalk; the flowers are very large, terminal, and usually white or purplish; the calyx consists of two leaves, which are ovate, smooth, concave, bifid, and fall off on the opening of the flower: the corolla consists of four petals, which are large, roundish, entire, undulated; the filaments are numerous, slender, much shorter than the corol, and furnished with oblong, erect, compressed anthers; the germ is large, globular, and upon it is placed the stigma, which is large, flat, radiated, and forms a kind of crown; the capsule is one-celled, smooth, divided half way into many cells, which open by several apertures beneath the crown, and contain very numerous small white seeds. It is a native of England, usually growing in neglected gardens or uncultivated rich grounds, and flowers in July and August.

This species is said to have been named white poppy from the whiteness of its seeds; a variety of it, however, is well known to produce black seeds: the double-flowered white poppy is also

another variety; but for medicinal purposes any of these may be employed indiscriminately, as we are not able to discover the least difference in their sensible qualities or effects.

The seeds, according to some authors, possess a narcotic power; but there is no foundation for this opinion: they consist of a simple farinaceous matter, united with a bland oil, and in many countries are eaten as food. As a medicine, they have been usually given in the form of emulsion, in catarrhs, stranguaries, &c.

The heads or capsules of the poppy, which are directed for use in the Pharmacopoeias, like the stalks and leaves have an unpleasant smell, somewhat like that of opium, and an acrid bitterish taste. Both the smell and taste reside in a milky juice, which more especially abounds in the cortical part of the capsules, and in its concrete state constitutes the officinal opium. These capsules are powerfully narcotic, or anodyne; boiled in water, they impart to the menstruum their narcotic juice, together with the other juices which they have in common with vegetable matters in general. The liquor, strongly pressed out, suffered to settle, clarified with whites of eggs, and evaporated to a due consistenee, yields an extract which is about one-fifth or one-sixth of the weight of the heads. This possesses the virtues of opium, but requires to be given in double its dose to answer the same intention, which it is said to perform without occasioning a nausea and giddiness, the usual effects of opium. This extract was first recommended by Mr. Arnot; and a similar one is now received in the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia. It is found very convenient to prepare the syrup from this extract, by dissolv ing one dram in two pounds and a half of simple syrup. The syrupus papaveris albi, as directed by both colleges, is a useful anodyne, and often succeeds in procuring sleep, where opium fails; it is more especially adapted to children. White poppy heads are also used externally in fomentations, either alone, or more frequently added to the decoctum pro fomento.

Opium, as we have already observed, is obtained from the heads or capsules of this species of poppy, and is imported into Europe from Persia, Arabia, and other warm regions of Asia. The manner in which it is collected has been described long ago by Kampfer and others; but the most circumstantial detail of the culture of the poppy, and the method of procuring the opium from it, is that

given by Mr. Kerr, as practised in the province of Baha: he says, "The field being well prepared by the plough and harrow, and reduced to an exact level superficies, it is then divided into quadrangular areas of seven feet long, and five feet in breadth, leaving two feet of interval, which is raised five or six inches, and excavated into an aqueduct for conveying water to every area, for which purpose they have a well in every cultivated field. The seeds are sown in October or November. The plants are allowed to grow six or eight inches distant from each other, and are plentifully supplied with water. When the young plants are six or eight inches high, they are watered more sparingly. But the cultivator strews all over the areas a nutrient compost of ashes, human excrements, cowdung, and a large portion of nitrous earth, scraped from the highways and old mud walls. When the plants are nigh flowering, they are watered profusely, to increase the juice.

"When the capsules are half grown, no more water is given, and they begin to collect the opium.

"At sun-set they make two longitudinal double incisions upon each half-ripe capsule, passing from below upwards, and taking care not to penetrate the internal cavity of the capsule. The incisions are repeated every evening until each capsule has received six or eight wounds; they are then allowed to ripen their seeds. The ripe capsules afford little or no juice. If the wound was made in the heat of the day, a cicatrix would be too soon formed. The night dews, by their moisture, favour the extillation of the juice.

"Early in the morning, old women, boys, and girls, collect the juice by scraping it off the wounds with a small iron scoop, and deposit the whole in an earthen-pot, where it is worked by the hand in the open sunshine, until it becomes of a considerable spissitude. It is then formed into cakes of a globular shape, and about four pounds in weight, and laid into little earthen basins, to be further exsiccated. These cakes are covered over with the poppy or tobacco leaves, and dried until they are fit for sale. Opium is frequently adulterated with cow-dung, the extract of the poppy plant procured by boiling, and various other substances which they keep in secresy."—" Opium is here a considerable branch of commerce. There are about 600,000 pounds of it annually exported from the Ganges."

It appears to us highly probable, that the white poppy might be cultivated for the purpose of obtaining opium to great advantage in Britain. Alston says, "the milky juice, drawn by incision from poppy-heads, and thickened either in the sun or shade, even in this country, has all the characters of good opium, its colour, consistence, taste, smell, faculties, phænomena, are all the same; only if carefully collected, it is more pure and more free of feculencies."

Similar remarks have also been made by others, to which we may add those of our own; for during a late summer, we at different times made incisions in the green capsules of the white poppy, from which we collected the juice, which soon acquired a due consistence, and was found, both by its sensible qualities and effects, to be very pure opium.

Opium, called also Opium Thebaicum, from being anciently prepared chiefly at Thebes, has been a celebrated medicine from the remotest times. It differs from the Meconium, which by the ancients was made of the expressed juice or decoction of the poppies.

Opium is imported into Europe in flat cakes, covered with leaves, to prevent their sticking together: it has a reddish brown colour, and a strong peculiar smell; its taste at first is nauseous and bitter, but soon becomes acrid, and produces a slight warmth in the mouth; a watery tincture of it forms an ink, with a chalybeate solution. According to the experiments of Alston, it appears to consist of about five parts in twelve of gummy matter, four of resinous matter, and three of earthy, or other indissoluble impurities.

The use of this celebrated medicine, though not known to Hippocrates, can be clearly traced back to Diagoras, who was nearly his cotemporary, and its importance has ever since been gradually advanced by succeeding physicians of different nations. Its extensive practical utility, however, has not been long well understood; and in this country, perhaps, may be dated from the time of Sydenham. Opium is the chief narcotic now employed; it acts directly upon the nervous power, diminishing the sensibility, irritability, and mobility of the system; and, according to a late ingenious author, in a certain manner suspending the motion of the nervous fluid, to and from the brain, and thereby inducing sleep, one of its principal effects. From this sedative power of opium, by which it allays pain, inordinate action, and restlessness, it naturally follows, that it may be employed with advantage in a great variety of diseases.