37
The present exports to all countries through Hongkong amounted to about 400 cases in 1907,-to which may be added the trade in "opium compounds", (which are chiefly opium and morphia pills), amounting in 1906 and 1907 to an average of 7,938 lbs.
1
Morphia is not only imported in a liquid form for injection, but also in the Morphia in insidious form of so-called "anti-opium" pills, which are sold in vast quantities, pills.
anti-opiuma as a cure for opium smoking. The Commissioner of Imperial Maritime Customs states that these morphia pills are obtainable in every medicine shop in Canton and their sale is increasing. The offer of a reward of Tls. 15 for every 12 oz. detected produced no result, and proves how lucrative the business is. The Consul General at Canton sent me some samples of pills for analysis. They contained 's a'r as and grain (1-3 to 17 grammes). The Viceroy acting on the orders of the Central Government thereupon issued a Proclamation, directing that a scheme must be devised for the supervision of all shops selling anti-opium pills, the amounts of sales reduced, and the analysis more carefully made. He particularly laid emphasis upon the fact that in my letter to the Consul General had pointed out that the vendors of the pills were in many cases exhibiting sign-boards stating that they were sold under Government authority, and in that case the Chinese Government were merely substituting a worse form of opium consumption, after obtaining from India and the British Colonies, under false pretences, a co- operation which seriously affected their Revenue. Thirty samples of pills from Shanghai were also recently analysed at the request of Sir A. Hosie. In 17 samples each pill contained from to of a grain of morphine, the remainder (all but two) contained lesser quantities.
*
The Government Analyst in Hongkong has found as much as 26% of mor- phia in some of the anti-opium pills imported for sale here, but the local restrictions. to which I shall presently allude have been effective in excluding any containing more than about 16% from the market.
*
Dr. Graham Aspland writing from Peking has addressed a very striking appeal on this subject to the China Times. He says:-"Anti-opium tabloids contain morphia in large doses.* * They are sold and prepared by a British firm doing both wholesale and retail business here in China. How many tons of morphia tabloids are being sold in China at this present moment I would not like to venture to guess, but I am prepared to believe it is appalling.*** Even in remote country villages morphia tabloids and hypodermic syringes are frequently seen, and a condition of things which allows a Chiuaman I know to buy daily a dram bottle of Japanese morphia (60 grains) imperatively calls for restriction if not prohibition. There can be no extenuating circumstances associated with the sale of these 'anti-opium tabloids' for I have not found one that contained any antidotal drug-any stimulant or tonic ingredients, but simply morphia made into a tabloid with ordinary household flour, so that the sale is not accompanied with any honest intention of relieving the suffering, but finding that there is a big market for morphia under the name of anti-opium tabloids and powders foreign trading companies
follow this lucrative trade under the heading of benefactors." The writer goes on to quote from "the recent Editorial of the China Medical Journal" a scathing denunciation of the Trade in "patent medicines" which "reeks with filth and stinks to heaven with its gross and abominable selfishness".
非 ***
of the
What the danger is may be gathered from the report of the Government Magnitude Analyst made after careful enquiry by my instructions, as to the comparative danger. quantities and cost of the four inethods of indulgence. He endorses the statement that 4 mace of opium (2334 grains) may be considered as an excess smoker's quantum, as being in accordance with his own observations :
Smoking. Eating opium. Eating morphia. Injected morphia. Quantity in grains, 233 (4 mace)=12
2
1 Cost
$1.32
11 cents -14 cents
-7 cents.
* The words of the Proclamation in this connection are as follow :—
14
The Governor of Hongkong in his reply to the Consul General remarked that if the sale of such "remedies was officially countenanced the assurances of the Chinese Government of their determination to stamp out the drug were meaningless, and it practically amounted to the "substitution and sanction of one form of the opium habit instead of another. He expressed "great anxiety as to whetber the Provincial High Authorities were cognisant of the sale of "such pills, and as to the nature of the analysis to which they were subject by the Kuan I Cho."