Henbane or stinking-nightshade (Hyoscyamus niger) is a highly poisonous biennial or annual herb of the family Solanaceae. It is a coarse, erect plant with soft, clammy, hairy foliage of a disagreeable odour and pale yellowish-brown flowers streaked with purple veins. Henbane is found in waste ground and loose dry soil. The expressed juice of the leaves and seeds was formerly often used as a sedative, antispasmodic, and narcotic, having in many cases the great advantage over laudanum of not producing constipation. When taken in considerable quantity it proves quickly fatal to man and most animals, particularly to domestic fowls, whence the name. Research Henbane
Robert Hall was a celebrated divine among the Dissenters in England. He was was born in 1764 at Arnsby, Leicestershire and died in 1831. He was the son of a Baptist minister. He studied at the Baptist College at Bristol, and afterwards at Aberdeen. In 1783 he became assistant pastor of Broadmead Church in Bristol, suffered for a time from mental alienation, recovered and became pastor of the Baptist Church at Cambridge, where he soon acquired a great reputation by his preaching and his writings, such as Apology for the Freedom of the Press (1793); Modern Infidelity (1800); Reflections on War (1802). He again became certified as insane and resigned his charge, but recovering married and settled at Leicester in 1808, until in 1826 he was again called to Bristol. Nearly all his life he suffered so intensely from calculus in the kidney that for twenty years he was never able to pass an entire night in bed, and could obtain rest only by a ruinous use of laudanum. Research Robert Hall
Opium is the dried, milky juice (latex) of unripe capsules of the white poppy also known as the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), a plant probably indigenous in the south of Europe and western Asia, but now so widely cultivated that its original habitat is uncertain.
The medicinal properties of the juice have been recognized from a very early period. It was known to Theophrastus and appears in his time to have consisted of an extract of the whole plant, since Dioscorides about 77 AD draws a distinction between different types of opium, one of which he describes as an extract of the entireherb, and the more active form derived from the capsules alone. From the 1st to the 12th century the opium of Asia Minor appears to have been the only kind known in commerce. In the 13th century opium thebaicum is mentioned by Simon Januensis, physician to Pope Nicholas IV.
In the 16th century opium is mentioned by Pyres in 1516 as a production of the kingdom of Cous (Kuch Behar, south-west of Bhutan) in Bengal and of Malwa. Its introduction into India appears to have been connected with the spread of Islam. The opium monopoly was the property of the Great Mogul and was regularly sold. In the 17th century Kaempfer describes the various kinds of opium prepared in Persia, and states that the best sorts were flavoured with spices and called theriaka. These preparations were held in great esteem during the Middle Ages, and probably supplied to a large extent the place of the pure drug.
Opium is said to have been introduced into China, probably by the Arabs around 1280-1295, during the reign of Taitsu, and its use seems to have temporarily ceased in 1368. It appears to have been commonly used in that country as a medicine before the trade with India started. In a Chinese herbal compiled prior to the 17th century both the plant and its inspissated juice are described, together with the mode of collecting it, and in the General History of the Southern Provinces of Yunnan, revised and republished in 1736, opium is noticed as a common product up to this date, however, it was imported in comparatively small quantity by the Chinese solely as a remedy for dysentery, diarrhoea, and fevers, and was usually brought from India by junks as a return cargo.
In 1757 the monopoly of opium cultivation passed into the hands of the East India Company through the victory of Clive at Plassey. Up to 1773 the trade with China had been in the hands of the Portuguese, but the quantity annually exported to that country rarely exceeded 200 chests. In that year the East India Company took the trade under their own charge, and in 1776 the annual export reached 1000 chests, and 4054 chests in 1790. Although the importation was forbidden by the Chinese emperor Keaking in 1796, and opium-smoking punished with severe penalties, which were ultimately increased to transportation and death, the trade continued and had increased during 1820-1830 to 16,877 chests per annum. In 1839 a proclamation was issued threatening hostile measures if the English opium ships serving as depots were not sent away. The demand for removal not being complied with, 20,291 chests of opium (of 149.3 Ib each), valued at 2,000,000 pounds sterling, were destroyed by the Chinese commissioner Lin; but still the British sought to smuggle cargoes on shore, and some outrages committed on both sides led to an open war, which was ended by the treaty of Nanking in 1842. From that time until the end of the 19th century, in spite of the remonstrances of the Chinese Government, the exportation of opium from India to China continued, having increased from 52,925 piculs (of 133.3 Ib) in 1850 to 96,839 piculs in 1880. It appears to be certain, however, that, while the court of Peking was endeavouring to suppress the foreign trade in opium from 1796 to 1840, it did not or could not put a stop to the home cultivation of the drug, since a Chinese censor in 1830 represented to the throne that the poppy was grown over one-half of the province of Chekeang, and in 1836 another, Cho Tsun, stated that the annual produce of opium in Yunnan could not be less than several thousand piculs.
In 1885 it was estimated that south-western China, including Szechuen, produced not less than 224,000 piculs, while the entire import from India did not exceed 100,000 piculs. Opium was then produced in nine out of the eighteen provinces of China. The comparative cheapness of the Chinese opium, the lighter duties levied upon it, and the increasing care taken in its cultivation were enabling it to compete successfully with the Indian drug even in eastern China, where, however, it was hitherto chiefly used to mix with and cheapen the foreign article.
The amount of opium imported into Great Britain in 1861, 1871, and 1881 was 284,005, 591,466, and 793,146 lbs respectively, and the exports for the same years 290,120, 307,399, and 401,883 lb.
The method of cultivationa nd manufacture varies between countries, but generally 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, there being different varieties of opium poppies; 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 heart 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
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Henbane
