There are Chinese who contend that opium is good for the health. It may, like intoxicating liquors, be used in moderation, but its use once acquired, its strides upon the appetite of its votary, are far more speedy, and fatal in results.
The story of opium-using—which is synonymous with its excessive use, need hardly be repeated here; how, instead of the brains out, and the man dying, the brain dies and the man may still live on; how the robustness of youth is suddenly changed into the infirmity of old age; the limbs shrivel, the chest sinks, the shoulders stoop, the bones protrude—the sunken cheeks, the ghastly hue of the complexion, the extreme attenuation of the neck, causing the head to sink between the shoulders, and appear disproportionate, and the man to move about a walking skeleton; or how the debauchee once accustomed to the use of the drug, becomes as secure in its grasp as an ox in the coils of the huge serpent of Brazil—the successive stages gone through, when in its power; the victim wrapped in dreamy hallucination is fiendishly mocked with the imaginary enjoyment of a seventh heaven;—the alternation to a supernatural excitement; the eye glaring demoniacally, and all the brutish passions of human nature possessing him, or the look changing to the listless, leaden, dull, inane leer of idiocy, when the curtain falls upon the death-rattles of agony. Two instances of the excessive use of opium came more immediately under my observation; one a jeweller at Macao, who was a hale, hearty-looking man upon the occasion of our first visit, yet on our return from Japan, had undergone frightful emaciation from its effects. The other was a Chinese teacher, who had been employed for the purpose of putting communications into the mandarin dialect. He was buried at sea, on the passage of the Susquehanna from Loo-Choo to Bonin, and those who witnessed his death, represent it as one of terrible contortion and suffering.
The opium stored on the hulks at Cum-sing-moon, comprises the Benares, the Patna, and Malwa. It is put up in balls and packed in chests. On its receipt, the custodian of the hulk proceeds to assort it, and with a view of testing its quality, and preparing its samples for the examination of the purchaser, small quantities of each case are boiled in water, strained through brown paper, and then, by the heat of a fire, reduced to the consistency of thick paste or molasses, which it somewhat resembles, when it is placed in little cups.