Opium :: essays research papers

History of OpiumOpium is a narcotic drug prepared from the succus of the opium poppy, Pa paver somniferum, a plant probably indigenous in the southern of Europe and western Asia, but now so widely elegant 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 inhis time to have consisted of an get out of the whole plant, since Dioscorides, about A.D. 77, draws a distinction between it and an extract of the whole herb derived from the capsules alone. From the 1st to the 12th century the opium of Asia Minor appears to have been the barely kind known in commerce. In the 13th century opium is mentioned by Simon Januensis, physician to Pope Nicholas IV., while meconium was still in use. In the sixteenth century opium is mentioned by Pyres (1516) as aproduction of the kingdom in Bengal, and of Malwai. Its introduction into India appears to have been connected with the spread of Islam. The opium monopoly was the property of the Great male monarch of Persia and was regularlysold. 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 estimation 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 chinaware by the Arabs probably in the 13th century, and it was originally used on that point as a medicine. In a Chinese Herbal compiled in the first place 1700 both the plant and its juice are described, together with the mode of compendium it, and in the General History of the Southern Provinces of Yunnan, revised and republished in 1736, opium is find as a common product. The first edict prohibiting opium smoking was issued by the emperor Yung Cheng in 1729. Up to that date the amount imported did non exceed 200 chests, and w as usually brought from India by junks as a go through cargo. In the year 1757 the monopoly of opium cultivation in India passed into the hands of the East India attach to through the victory of Clive at Plassey. Up to 1773 the administer with China had been in the hands of the Portuguese, but in that year the East India Company took the trade under their own charge.