Opium is the dried, milky juice (latex) of unripe capsules of the white poppy (Papaver somniferum). It is produced chiefly in Afghanistan, Asia Minor, India, and China.
The opium poppy is cultivated from seeds sown between November and March, and successive crops are ready from May to July. The flowers are white or purplish; and a few days after the petals
have fallen, when the capsules are about 25 mm. in diameter, they are cut round the middle with a knife, and left overnight for the juice to flow out and harden. After further drying on poppy leaves, the dark, plastic masses are made into lumps for sale.
Opium is bitter, and has a characteristic smell. Its properties depend upon the nineteen or twenty alkaloids it contains. The chief of these are: Morphine (9 per cent); narcotine (5 per cent); papaverine (0.8 per cent) ; thebaine (0.4 per cent); codeine or methylmorphine (0.3 per cent); narceine (0,2 per cent.). Morphine, the most important alkaloid, is separated from the others by extracting the opium with hot water, and boiling the extract with milk of lime. Alcoholic tincture of opium is known as laudanum. It contains about 0.75 per cent, of morphine.
Opium is used medicinally, mainly to relieve pain and to produce sleep, and for this purpose is best given hypodermically as morphine. It is also employed to relieve vomiting and to stop diarrhoea, to lessen distressing coughing, to stop bleeding in the stomach and intestines; while it is valuable in
neart disease, diabetes, in cystitis and other inflammatory conditions, for haemoptysis, and, as
Dover's powder, to cause perspiration in, for instance, common cold.
A conference of the Powers at the Hague in January 1912, drew up a convention of twenty-five articles by which they agreed to control the supply of and gradually suppress the manufacture of
opium. Research Opium
Abbreviations
Medicine
Research Opium