Note 102 — Chapter IV

Philomelium, now called Afium Kara Hissar (the “black castle of opium”), has much interest as the centre of the great Asia-Minor trade in that drug, the medicinal properties of which were known to Theophrastus in the third century B.C., under the name of μηκώνιον. Scribonius Largus (A.D. 40), also, knew that the best form of it was procured from the capsules, and not from the leaves of the poppy (Berthold, Argent. 1786, c. iii. s. 2). Dioscorides, thirty years later, calls the juice of these capsules ὀπός (Angl. Sap), and the cutting them ὀπίζειν. Hence, the name, Opium. Pliny (iv. c. 65, xx. c. 76) points out the medicinal use of “Opion,” and Celsus calls the extracted juice “Lacryma papaveris.” Obviously, from this “Opion” comes the Arabic “Afyum,” which is found in many Eastern languages, and may have been spread all the more, owing to Muhammad’s interdiction of the use of wine. In India, Opium is noticed, first, in Barbosa’s Travels, A.D. 1511 (ap. Hakluyt), who found it, at that time, in Malabar and Calicut. Neither Chinese nor Sanskrit has a native word for this drug. Opium Thebaicum is mentioned as early as A.D. 1288-96, by Simon Januensis, Physician to Pope Nicholas IV. (Clavis Sanationis. Venet. 1510); and Kæmpfer (1687) remarks that compounds of opium, nutmegs, &c., were largely sold in his time, as long before, under the name of “Theriaka.”