Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 609

1842

Opium-smoking in Penang.

587

ART. II. Abstract of a paper on opium-smoking in Penang. By G. H. SMITH, surgeon in Penang.-Mode of preparing the opium for smoking; causes of the prevalence of the habit; mode of smoking; description of a smoking-shop; effects of the opium on the smoker; influence of the habit on the health, vigor, and conformation of the Chinese. Extracted from John-

son's Medico-Chirurgical Review for April, 1842. The great extent to which this destructive vice is carried on in this island, and in the straits and islands adjacent, together with the al- most utter impossibility of relinquishing the dreadful habit when once acquired, opens an immense source of revenue to the East India Company, who monopolize the sale of all quantities of opium under a chest, as well as that of arrack, siri, toddy, bang, &c. The annual average revenue of this monopoly, or revenue farms, as they are called, for ten years past, has amounted to 48227. sterling. But the quantity of opium smuggled is immense and incalculable. Benares opium is that chiefly used by the farmer for the preparation of chandoo (the composition smoked), on account of its weight and cheapness; but the consumers prefer the Patna opium, because it has a finer flavor, is stronger, and its effects more lasting.

The

The following is part of the mode of preparing the chandoo. Two balls are as much as one man can properly prepare at once. soft inside part of the opium-ball is scooped out, and the rind is boil- ed in soft water, and strained through a piece of calico. The liquor is evaporated in a wide vessel, and all impurities carefully skimmed off, as they rise to the surface. The same process is gone through with the soft opium extracted from the ball; and all being mixed and evaporated to the consistence of dough, it is spread out into thin plates, and when cold, it is cut into a number of long narrow slips. These are again reduced to powder, re-dissolved, again evaporated, and ultimately rolled up into balls, and a good deal resemble shoe- maker's wax. In this state it is fit for smoking, and is at least twice the strength of crude opium. The chandoo, when once smoked, does not entirely lose its power, but is collected from the head of the pipe, and is then called tyr-chandoo or facal opium, which is made into pills, and swallowed by those whose poverty prevents them from smoking the chaudoo itself.

In Penang, the opium-smokers are the Chinese, the Malays, and a very few of other nations, chiefly the native Portuguese

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