395
A Chinaman must be very muscular and fat to top 140 tbs., their bones are so small in comparison with other races as also their average height in the Southern parts of China. In the 56 opium smokers there are only 9 men who reach 120 lbs. or over, one reached 135 tbs.
The cost of one mace of opium is 10 cents, so that all these men spent $3 or more a month in smoking the drug.
As so much has been said in Parliament lately I will give a brief resumé of my 18 years' experience of opium smokers in the Gaol and the different tests I have made myself and caused to be made with the view of finding out what harm it does physically and mentally.
When I first took charge of the Gaol in 1873 I found that every prisoner that reported himself as an opium smoker was put on extra diet, a mixture that contained Laudanum, three times a day, a Quinine pill three times a day, and 2 oz. of Gin. As I had no experience of opium smoking I kept all these cases under observation with the result that in three months' time I saw no necessity for this treatment of opium smokers and abolished it altogether treating them as all the other prisoners without regard for the habit, and this has been done ever since and the opium habit ignored. I could find no set of symptoms that was common to the opium smokers only or justified any exceptional treatment. The result was much fewer men reported themselves as opium smokers, as there was nothing to be gained by it. For the first few years I did little more than this as my attention was wholly occupied in my spare time with the sanitation of the Colony which at that time devolved entirely upon me with two Inspectors for assistants. Afterwards I began to keep these records of every opium smoker. In the eighteen years there have been over 1,000 of those addicted to the habit in the Gaol and among them only one death has occurred which had no relation whatever to the habit. I have not been able to find that the habit affected them in any way physically or mentally. I recorded in my annual report for 1877 the case of an opium smoker whose consumption had averaged 8 oz. a day for 19 years. This man was in Gaol for embezzlement of $40,000 and had been a wealthy merchant in Singapore, in his case the habit was entirely ignored, for the first few days he suffered from want of sleep but it was from anxiety more than any thing else, for he had been told that if he gave up the habit suddenly he would die and he was proportionally disgusted when nothing happened, as he said if he had known it would cost him so little he would have given up the habit long ago. He was a stout, strongly built man of about fifty years of age and the largest consumer of the drug we have had in the Gaol. During his three months' detention here before being sent back to Singapore he was in good health and never required a single dose of medicine. I tried opium smoking myself and could make nothing of it though I smoked more than two mace at a single sitting; it had no effect upon me whatever. Dr. MANSON was of opinion that I did not use the drug properly or such would not have been the case, so I had him, Sir W. MARSH, Mr. PRICE and some others interested in the matter to dinner one night, and after dinner smoked in his presence having an old opium smoker to load the pipe for me and a fresh box of the Opium Farmer's opium. Dr. MANSON watching me all the time. He was satisfied that the opium was properly and fairly used but could find no effect as indeed I felt none myself. But he declared I should before morning, they all left at midnight, and half an hour afterwards I was called out to attend a child in convulsions which occupied me nearly three hours before the child was sufficiently recovered to be left. At nine o'clock next morning I met Dr. MANSON on my rounds and told him how I had passed the night and so far I had felt no effects from the smoking whatever.
In 1881 I requested Mr. HUGH MCCALLUM, who was at that time the Government Analyst, to make some experiments, and he sent me in a report dated March 6th, 1881., He afterwards embodied this report in an article he sent to the China Review ("On Opium and Opium Smoking") 1883, Volume 11, No. 5, page 278. This report, I think, should be printed for information and recorded, and I enclose it as an appendix to my report as the Home Government are anxious to obtain all the inform- ation they can on the habit of opium smoking.
But
As a habit I cannot find it is so injurious as tobacco smoking is in some cases. I am an inveterate tobacco smoker myself, and as far as I am concerned it has never done me any harm, but I have seen many cases of its evil effects on other people. I have not been able to find even this much in the case of the opium smoker. Very few people have got through their first pipe or cigar without feeling very sick even if they have not had a violent attack of vomiting; but I have tried opium smoking on many novices and could find nothing approaching the effect of tobacco, though the smoker does not inhale the smoke of tobacco the effect of the nicotine in the case of a novice is visible to any one. though the opium smoke is always inhaled deep into the lungs no effects of Morphine are visible at all, and I doubt very much if this principle ever reaches the lungs at all. As will be seen in Mr. MCCALLUM's report there is about 6 to 7 per cent. of Morphia in the opium sent out by the Opium Farmer, yet the old opium smoker, who has had the habit for over 30 years and was one of the best Chinese Government servants in my Department, could not detect the difference between the Opium Farmer's opium containing 7 per cent. of Morphia the same opium with an additional 15 per cent. of Morphia added, and the Opium Farmer's opium with all the Morphia abstracted. The opium expert, attached to the Opium Farmer's firm, condemns his employer's opium and with 15 and 25 per cent. of Morphia added says it has no taste or smell at all. The old opium smoker is a pensioner now, he was the Senior Chinese Wardmaster at the Hospital, his habit never rendered him unfit for duty, he