Opium Poppy Discovery

“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 is a flower of exquisite beauty. A blossom of delicate rounded petals of vibrant scarlet color encases a black hear perched atop a tall wavy stalk. Golden-green seed bulbs stand or droop alongside the blooms, and disheveled, feathery leaf clusters are stationed randomly along the stem.

The poppy has long been a favorite subject of still-life and landscape painters, particularly impressionists. In Claude Monet’s painting Field of Poppies, however, the brilliant, silky flowers are thickly bunched to form an oncoming scarlet wave that fills the bottom third of the picture and seems to be rushing directly toward the viewer, about to rest over the lower edge of the frame. It is a scene like this that must have inspired the oceanic 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 has its own story, a larger human tale of euphoria and the individual’s search for transcendence. It is a story that encompasses a vast historical landscape: addiction, war, the tending of the fabric of whole societies, 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 are believed to have migrated from Persia (now Iran). They 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. When the exchanging of crops began that is when we can begin to trace the spread of the opium poppy.

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

It was in this form that Sumerians recorded the earliest information about the cultivation of opium. How the opiate content of the poppy and its psychotropic qualities were discovered is not known. We do know that the Sumerians used it for both medicinal and recreational purposes. They referred to it as hul gil, or “plant of joy”.

Opium was not the only crop they used for pleasure, their was also beer production.

At some time between 700 and 140 B.C. the secret of opium poppy cultivation was shared with the Akkadians, Sumer’s neighbours to the north. The Akkadians in turn passed it along to the Assyrians who, through trade with the Syrians and Egyptions eventually spread the secret of the poppy to the west and north as far away as Greece.

There is little historical documentation of the spread of the opium poppy to the west during this time, but there is mention of opium in Greek pharmacopoeia as early as the fifth century B.C. As was the case in later times, its spread has been attributed to Arab merchant traders who carried opium, recognized for its medicinal and recreational values, and other commodities.

Opium’s healing powers are described in the writing of the Greek physician Hippocrates, who in about 400 B.C. prescribed it to patients suffering from insomnia. A Greek physician, Galen recorded the first opium overdose. Galen acquired much of his knowledge about opium’s healing properties from the Egyptions and he became such an advocate of the practice of eating opium, of other vegetable therapies, that 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.

What little recorded history survives traces the spread of the opium poppy from the Middle East westward to Greece and eastward tot eh Far East- India and China. Gradually making its way along overland trade routes, carried as one of many commodities by Arab merchants, 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.” They recommended mixing the seeds of the poppy with bamboo juice boiled into gruel.

Once the ability to sail around the world was accessible Europe established a model for the global opium trade that exists to this day. Although their primary objective was to obtain the silks, spices, and porcelain that were to be found in the Far East the Portuguese soon discovered the value that opium had in the international trade market.

Europeans suffered a trade imbalance because there was little they produced that the Far East needed or would pay for. However, they learned form the experience 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 it was a minimal crop, and Indian opium was of higher quality and potency.

Then the technology of the pipe accelerated the use of opium in the Far East. Opium dens began to spring up everywhere. The stronger effect of smoking opium, rather than drinking it, resulted in more severe addiction, or physical dependence.

It became virtually impossible for any country to trade with China with out dealing in opium. Britain though one of the last sea powers to enter this market, became a dominant force in the politics of India, and played a significant role in the rapid growth of the opium trade to China.

China was faced with the problem of how to react to a hungry addict population being fed by greedy foreign merchants. The Chinese government had banned opium smoking in 1796, making it a capital offense, but found that this did little to curb the spread of the drug though out the country.

As a drastic measure the Emperor appointed a mandarin named Lin Tse-hsu as a special commissioner to Canton and Charged him with a twofold task: 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 and after what appeared to be a standoff, surrendered 95 metric tons of opium to the Chinese and then it was burnt.

Great Britain in response to the seizure began the first of two Opium Wars China Fought with Britain. Whether the Chinese government officials underestimated Britain’s response to the opium seizure is open to conjecture but the result was a crushing military defeat, which the Chinese accepted in1842, when they were force 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.

Unfortunately the Treaty of Nanking would not be the last that China would see. A single incident in October 1856 sparked a declaration of war. The Cantonese police boarded the British ship The Arrow. They lowered the British Flag and seized the ship and its cargo, charging its crew with smuggling opium. Historians believe the British were looking for an excuse to renew hostilities and the French were also looking to capitalize on the lucrative trade market in China and decided to join forces with Britain.

The British and French forces methodically defeated the Chinese forces. The Europeans occupied Canton by late 1857 and in 1858 brought the Chinese to the treaty table again forcing them to sign the Treaty of Tianjian temporarily halting fighting. A second treaty that the Chinese initially refused to sign allowed for new trading ports gave freedom of movement to Christian missionaries and permitted travel by foreigners in the Chinese interior. When it was refused there was a prompt attack on Peking itself and the burning of the summer palace of the emperor.

Perhaps the most significant result of the Chinese defeat was the legalization of 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 China was being devastated by opium smoking, England and the United States were slowly cultivation their own addicted consumer base for the fruit of the poppy.

The scientific minds of Europe were busy discovering various medical uses for opium derivatives. The German pharmacist Friedrich Wilhelm Adam Seturner discovered morphine derived from processed opium, in 1803.

In Europe and the United States the preferred way of using opium was in its liquid form. The Swiss-born alchemist Paracelsys as it was also known introduced laudanum, or black drop in 1541. This liquid preparation of opium was what many women used because in the early 1800’s it was not socially expectable for women to frequent bars or saloons, so it became the drug of choice for many. It was also a substitute for alcohol for men who did not wish to appear to be drunkards. It was odorless.

Gradually opium in this liquid form was used as patent medicin remedies. Many of the remedies, with such brand names as Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup, were spoon-fed to children. Mother’s used opium based remedies to suppress coughs, cure diarrhea and to quiet the occasionally cranky child. Use of the opium-laced remedies was so widespread that it became a national problem.

The use of the liquid opium called laudanum and patent medicine remedies enabled Europeans and Americans to become legally addicted to products they could purchase over the counter, order through mail, or obtain by a doctor’s prescription at a drugstore. While the chemists’ intentions may have been to ease pain and cure physical ailments, the age-old human desire for intoxication created a problem with which we still struggle.