The air-dried exudate from the unripe seed capsule of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, or its variant, P. album. It contains a number of alkaloids, but only a few - MORPHINE; CODEINE; and PAPAVERINE - have clinical significance. Opium has been used as an analgesic, antitussive, antidiarrheal, and antispasmodic.
    

concept

Illustrations of China and its people : a series of two hundred photographs, with letterpress descriptive of the places and people represented / by J. Thomson, F.R.G.S.

Two Malay men and a woman sit and recline on the floor smoking opium. Wood-engraving, late 19th century.

John Bull as the patient of promotors of competing therapies; representing British parliamentary reform. Aquatint by S. de Wilde, 1809.

A parody astrological diagram showing opposing aspects of the life of settlers in Jamaica: langorous noons and the hells of yellow fever. Coloured aquatint after A.James, 1800.

Two Chinese opium smokers in a booth watched by a woman who fans herself. Wood-engraving, late 19th century.

Opium and the people : opiate use and drug control policy in nineteenth and early twentieth century England / Virginia Berridge.

Opiologia; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Opiums und seiner Wirkstoffe / [Otto Zekert].

Dissertatio medica inauguralis, de opio quaedam complectens / [Edward Harrison].

A philosophical and statistical history of the inventions and customes of ancient and modern nations in the manufacture and use of inebriating liquors : with the present practice of distillation in all its varieties: together with an extensive illustration of the consumption and effects of opium, and other stimulants used in the East, as substitutes for wine and spirits / By Samuel Morewood.

Drugs, politics, and diplomacy : the international connection / edited by Luiz R.S. Simmons, Abdul A. Said.

Opium

Images

Catalogue

Opium and the people : opiate use and drug control policy in nineteenth and early twentieth century England / Virginia Berridge.

Opiologia; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Opiums und seiner Wirkstoffe / [Otto Zekert].

Dissertatio medica inauguralis, de opio quaedam complectens / [Edward Harrison].

Drugs, politics, and diplomacy : the international connection / edited by Luiz R.S. Simmons, Abdul A. Said.