1842.
Opium-smoking in Pennng.
589
At one
together with a jug of water, for the use of the smokers. side of the door the sub-farmer, or cabaret-keeper, sits with chandoo, pipes, &c., for the accommodation of his customers. The place is filled with the smoke of the chandoo, and with a variety of other vapors, most intolerable to the olfactories of an European. The pipe, is composed of a shank and a head-piece, the former made of hard and heavy wood, fourteen inches long by three inches and a half in circumference. It is bored through the centre, from the mouth- piece to the head, where there is a kind of cup to collect the tye- chandoo.
The smokers generally go in pairs, and recline on the bedstead, with their heads resting on the wooden stool. The mode of proceeding is as follows:-first, one of the pair takes up a piece of chandoo on the point of a short iron needle, and lighting it at the lamp, applies it to the small aperture (resembling the touch-hole of a gun) in the head of the pipe. After a few whiffs he hands the pipe to his friend, who lights another piece of chandon at the lamp; and thus they go on alternately smoking till they have had sufficient, or until they are unable to purchase any more of the intoxicating drug. The fume is always expelled through the nose, and old smokers even draw it into their lungs before it is expired.
During this time, they are at first loquacious, and the conversation highly animated; but, as the opium takes effect, the conversation droops, they frequently burst out into loud laughter, from the most trifling causes, or without any apparent cause at all, unless it be from the train of thoughts passing through their excited imaginations. The next phase presents a vacancy of countenance, with a pallor and shrinking of the features, so that they resemble people convalesc- ing from a fever. A dead silence precedes a deep sleep, which con- tinues from half an hour to three or four hours. In this state the pulse becomes much slower, softer, and smaller than before the debauch. Such is the general proceess almost invariably observed among the Chinese; but with the Malays it is often very different. Instead of the placidity that ushers in the profound sleep, the Malays frequently become outrageously violent and quarrelsome, and lives are occasion- ally lost in these frightful orgies.
The chandoo is sometimes employed for the purpose of self-des- truction: but from its strong smell and taste, it is never used as poison for others.
It does not appear that sudden death is ever pro- duced by an overdose of chandoo when used in smoking. When an inordinate quantity has been expended in this way, headach,
headach, vertigo, and nausea are the effects, and are only relieved by vomiting
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