OCR Text |
Show 510 WHITE Poppy. (probably 1792) weat different times made incisions in the green capsules of the white poppy, and collected the juice, which soon acquired a due consistence, and was found, both byits sensible qualities and effects, to be very pure opium. MayI beper. mitted to add, that nearfifty years ago I frequently amused my. self with slashing the green poppy-heads, and collecting a most pure and well digested opium from them ? But the merit of first cultivating the poppy for opiumis due to Mr. John Ball, of Williton, who in the year 1796 wasre. warded bythe Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, for procuring opium in an unsophisticated state from British poppies, and communicating his mode of preparing it to the Society for the use of the public. When the leaves die away and dropoff, the capsules or heads being then in a green state, is the proper time for extracting the opium, by mal:ing fouror five small longitudinal incisions with a sharp-pointed knife, about an inch long} on one side only of the head, taking care not to cut to the seeds: immediately on the incision being made, a milky fluid will issue out, which being of a glutinous nature, will adhere to the bottom of the incision ; but some are so luxuriant that it will drop from the head. The next day, if the weather should be fine, the opium will be of a grayish substance, and some almost turning black ; it is then to be scrapedoff, with the edge of a knife, into pans or pots; and in a day or two it will be of a proper consistence to make into a mass, and to be potted. As soon as the Opium is all taken away from one side, make incisions on the Opposite side, and proceed in the same manner. The reason of not making the incisions all round at once is, that the opium cannot be so conveniently taken away; but every person, upon trial, will be the best judge. Children may with ease be soon taught to make the incisions, and take off the opium, so that the expense will be trifling. An instrument might be made, of a concave form, with four or five pointed lancets, about the twelfth or fourteenth part of an inch, to make the incisions at once, Mr. Ball calculates, that supposing one Poppy to growin one square foot of earth, and to produce only one grain of opium, morethan fifty pounds will be collected from one siatute acre. But since one Poppy produces from three or four to ten heads, WHITE POPPY. 511 each incision sometimes producing two or three grains, what must be the produce, and what the profit at the present price of opium, twenty-two shillings the pound ! I am sensible that great abatements must be made in practice from such theoretical calculations as these; and that in our moist climate many seasons will occur, and many days in almost every summer, unfavourable to the collection of the opium. It is, however, with all its disadvantages, a very important object to cultivate the poppy for this purpose in Britain ; considering the great price of foreign opium, the increasing call for it in medicine, the adulteration of whatis imported by rice flour and other articles, and the employment that it will find in the collection for women and children. Mr. Ball adds, that in 1795, from a bed of self-sown poppies 576 feet square, he collected four ounces of opium, though the plants were very thick; and from-a few plants that stood detached he took from fifteen to thirty-four grains: this ground had been well manured with rotten dung. He remarks, that semidouble flowers, and those of a dark colour, produced the Most opium ; that the heads should be about the size of a walnut before the incisions are made; and that the foreign dried poppy heads are full three times as big as ours. Mr. Miller remarks also that they are of a different shape ; but the size is only owing to climate, and the shape indicates no more than a variety. Mr. Ball collected from one semidouble poppy a quantity which he supposes to be more than thirty grains; but this plant had twenty-eight heads on it. He prefers the double and semidouble-flowering plants to those which have single flowers. But Thave observed that the single poppy, cultivated by our physic. gardeners here for the seed and the heads, has generally larger heads than the double poppycultivated in gardens. But after all, the point of most importancerespecting the cultivation of the poppyfor opium in Britain is, whether its quality be equal to that of foreign opium. .This has been fully ascertained, not only by a druggist in London having agreed with Mr. Ball to give him the sameprice for what he should make in the year 1795, as the foreign drug should bear at that time, but bythe testimony ofseveral eminent medical gentlemen in London, Who tried it in consequence of the request of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce . Dr. Latham observes, that in its sensible qualities it does not seem |