“The Discovery of the Opium Poppy”

“Her eyes closed in spite of herself, and she forgot where she was and fell among the poppies, fast asleep.
‘What shall we do?’ asked the Tin Woodman.
‘If we leave her here she will die,’ said the Lion. ‘The smell of the flowers is killing us all, I myself can a scarcely keep my eyes open and the dog is asleep already.’
Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The poppy has a blossom of delicate rounded petals with a brilliant red cradling a black heart on a tall slender stalk. Golden-green seed bulbs cascade beside the blooms. A tangle of tattered leaf clusters staggered unevenly along the stem.

The poppy appears in still life, landscape painters and impressionists. In Claude Monet’s painting Field of Poppies the brilliant, silky flowers are thickly bunched to form a scarlet cascade that fills the bottom third of the picture and seems to be spilling onto the viewer, A scene like this may have inspired the poppy field in the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz.

“They now came upon more and more of the big scarlet poppies, and fewer and fewer of the other flowers; and soon they found themselves in the midst of a great meadow of poppies.” The Wizard of Oz.

The opium found in the poppy is closely linked to humanity’s fascination with euphoria and a chemical assistance to a fabled transcendent state. Its history is one of social addiction, war, and death on a mass scale.

The earliest written history of humanity’s romance with the opium poppy is found in the writings of the Sumerians dating back to approximately 3300 B.C.

The Sumerians learned how to irrigate their crops allowing them to harvest at least three times a year. Among their staple crops was the opium poppy, papaver somniferum. Bartering crops began the spread of the opium poppy.

The Sumerians’ most significant contribution to civilization was the invention of writing, around 3300 B.C. Archaeologists have unearthed more than four hundred thousand clay tablets detailing Sumerian times and achievements.

Sumerians recorded the earliest information about the cultivation of opium. The opiate content of the poppy and its psychotropic qualities was called “hul gil,” or “plant of joy”. The Sumerians used it for medicinal and recreational purposes.

Between 700 and 140 B.C. the opium poppy cultivation was shared with the Akkadians, Sumer’s neighbours to the north. Over time the Akkadians passed it to the Assyrians who traded with the Syrians and Egyptions. The secret of the poppy spread west and north as far away as Greece.

Opium poppy is recorded in Greek pharmacopoeia as early as the fifth century B.C. Again its spread has been attributed to Arab merchant traders who carried opium as a commodity recognized for its medicinal and recreational values.

The Greek physician Hippocrates, prescribed opium’s healing powers to his patients suffering from insomnia about 400 B.C. A Greek physician, Galen, recorded the first opium overdose. Galen acquired his knowledge about opium’s healing properties from the Egyptians. He became an advocate of the practice of eating opium, with other vegetable therapies. For centuries these preparations were known as “Galenicals.”

In the fist century A.D. the Greek physician Dioscorides wrote what became the leading medical text of the day, De Material Medica, in which he described opium and its medical value. He wrote that, mixed in liquid, opium was a powerful cure for insomnia, diarrhea, and nausea and that it had aphrodisiac qualities. Dioscorides detailed how the pod of the poppy plant should be crushed and mixed with a liquid for maximum benefit.

The most common method of opium ingestion was as a liquid elixir. The sappy white milk, raw opium, that is found in the poppy seed bulb was usually mixed with wine or water and produced a dreamy euphoric effect when ingested.

The spread of the opium poppy can be traced from the Middle East westward to Greece and eastward to the Far East- I ndia and China. Along overland trade routes, the addictive fruit of the poppy reached China in approximately the seventh century A.D. In A.D. 973, Chinese scholars recorded in the Herbalist’s Treasury that “the poppy’s seeds have healing powers.”

Later on, European empire building managed to establish a model for the global opium trade that exists today. The Portuguese soon discovered the value that opium had in the international trade market along with silks, spices, and porcelain in the Far East.

Europeans wanted to address a trade imbalance because there was little they produced that the Far East needed or would pay for. The Europeans followed the lead of Arab and Indian merchants who had been selling opium grown in India to the Chinese for hundreds of years. The Chinese were known to cultivate opium by this time, but Indian opium was of higher quality and potency.

The use of a pipe accelerated the use of opium in the Far East. Opium dens appeared everywhere. The stronger effect of smoking opium resulted in more severe physical dependence.

It became virtually impossible for any country to trade with China without trading opium. As the British expanded their empire, Britain dominated the politics of India, and played a significant role in the rapid growth of the opium trade to China.

China now had a hungry addict population being fed by foreign merchants. The Chinese government had banned opium smoking in 1796, on pain of death, but found that this did not curb the spread of the drug.

To solve the problem the Emperor appointed a mandarin named Lin Tse-hsu as a special commissioner to Canton. Lin Tse-hsu was to assess the problem and determine a solution. Lin Tse-hsu demanded the surrender of all opium cargoes from the foreign ships in port. The British merchants delayed but finally, surrendered 95 metric tons of opium to the Chinese and then it was burnt.

This began the first of two Opium Wars China Fought with Britain. The result was major military defeat, which the Chinese accepted in 1842, when they were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty forced China to cede Hong Kong to the British and open five new ports to foreign trade. The Chinese also agreed to pay the equivalent of $21 million as reparations for the 95 metric tons of opium they had seized and destroyed. In spite of this, China still refused to legalize opium.

The Treaty of Nanking would not be China’s last defeat. A single incident in October 1856 sparked a declaration of war. The Cantonese police siezed the British ship The Arrow, lowered the British Flag and charged its crew with smuggling opium. Historians believe the British wanted an excuse to renew hostilities. The French were also looking to gain a foothold in on the lucrative trade market in China and joined forces with Britain.

The British and French occupied Canton by late 1857 and in 1858 forced the Chinese to sign the Treaty of Tianjian. A prompt attack on Peking itself and the burning of the summer palace of the emperor caused a second treaty allowed for new trading ports, freedom that gave movement to Christian missionaries, and permitted travel by foreigners in the Chinese interior.

The Chinese defeat legalized opium importation by China in 1858. By 1900, China had 13.5 million addicts consuming 39,000 metric tons of opium per year. The government reported that 27% of adult Chinese males were opium smokers.

In contrast, during 1995 there was only 4,000 metric tons of opium cultivated globally.

As opium smoking was destroying Chinese citizens, England and the United States were expanding their own addicted consumer base for the poppy derivative. The German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Seturner discovered morphine derived from processed opium, in 1803.

The opium was ingested as an odorless liquid form in Europe and the United States. A Swiss-born alchemist introduced laudanum, or “black drop” in 1541. Women preferred this liquid preparation of opium in the early 1800’s. It was not socially respectable for women to frequent bars or saloons, so it became the drug of choice. Men used it as a substitute for to avoid appearing to be drunk.

Opium in liquid form was used as a patent medicine. Many of the mixtures, with brand names like Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, were fed to children. Mothers used opium-based remedies for coughs, diarrhea or a cranky child. Use of the opium-laced mixtures was so prevalent it became a national problem. Opium based patent medicine enabled Europeans and Americans to become legally addicted to over the counter products. The chemists’ intentions may have been to ease pain and cure ailments, but really filed a need for intoxication and greed.