All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of moral indignation, and the crusade against opium-smoking was carried on with renewed severity. All the same, the popular custom proved irresistible, and its victory in the end was of incalculable benefit to the Chinese, as it served gradually, wherever opium-smoking pre- vailed, to completely entice them away from the use of their native ardent spirits. This historical fact should never be overlooked by those who have been led by their blind philanthropy to believe that opium-smoking is necessarily injurious to the Chinese, and that, there- fore, the Indian opium revenue is immoral. No one will deny that, at all events in tropical countries, the effects of excess in ardent spirits are worse than those of opium, and it would be unfortunate indeed if, as a consequence of the abolition of the Government manufacture of opium in India, the Chinese were led back to the use of the ardent spirits of their own baneful distillation. It would be the undoing of probably the greatest temperance triumph of any age or country ; for I repeat that, of itself, opium-smoking is almost as harmless an indulgence as twiddling the thumbs and other silly-looking methods for concen- trating the jaded mind in momentary nirvana. The mind often seeks a lull—quiescence without vacuity—and finds it in any of these strangely infectious ways, opium-smoking among the rest. But, it may be asked, what of the opinion of the Chinese Govern- ment as to the morality of opium-smoking ? It is, I believe, partly due, as with other worthy people, to their not distinguishing between the accidental concomitants of a debauched life and the antecedent inducements to it ; but chiefly to the fact of official Cfliinese ideas of morality being founded on an artificial religious system, and not on the national habits of the masses of Chinamen. The scholastic official ideas of morality in China are utterly at variance, as is obvious in regard to opium-smoking at least, with the universal practice of tho people. Be that as it may, all I insist on is the downright innocency, in itself, of opium-smoking; and that, therefore, so far as we are concerned in its morality, whether judged by a standard based on a deduction from preconceived religious ideas or an induction from national prac- tices, we are as free to introduce opium into China and to raise a revenue from it in India, as to export our cotton, wool, and iron manu- factures to France. The habitual eating and drinking of opium are altogether different things from smoking it as a gentle incentive to restorative repose of inind. Opium taken internally is a powerful and dangerous narcotic stimulant ; but even so it is no worse in the effects produced by ex- cessive use than alcohol. It is and has been immemorially used throughout vast regions of the East. It satisfies a natural human craving for some paregoric stuff or other, “ banishing sorrow, wrath allaying, and causing oblivion of all cares,” while its consumption has been further fostered by the religious ban imposed in Asiatic countries on the use of alcohol. Alcohol acts with doubly destructive force in tropical climates, and with awful rapidity, and its victims are a con- stant danger to others ; whereas the sufferers from the abuse of opium are seldom dangerous to others, and are a nuisance only from lingering so long in a state of harmless dulness on the hands of their relations, Nothing, moreover, is so offensive to respectable Asiatics as the violent