Opium and the poppy plant

 Danilo Anron

Poppy (Papaver somniferum) is one of the oldest medicinal plants of the Afro-eurasian world.  It is an annual herbaceous plant that grows naturally in Asia Minor and other regions of the Near and Middle East. Its seeds are edibles and are not psychoactive. However, when the capsule is scratched, a milky, rubbery material seeps out which upon hardening turns brown. This substance, which has very special properties, is called opium.

Poppy was domesticated in ancient times. There are tablets in Sumer in Mesopotamia (6,000 or 7,000 years ago) that mention the poppy, and medicinal Assyrian tablets relate to its healing power. In the seventeenth century BC Egyptian doctors prescribed opium for children crying, just as many centuries later, the Victorian nannies would use opiates to calm babies.

Historically, opium was not smoked, but rather was drunk with wine or swallowed as pills. It was (and is) used to relieve pain, achieve a state of euphoria or as an aphrodisiac.

In ancient Crete poppy was planted from Minoan times (third and second millennium before the common era).

There are ceramic jars dating 1,500 bd in Cyprus showing stylized incisions in poppy capsules ^18.. Twelve century BC ivory pipes were also found in a temple of the same island an it is thought they were used to inhale the fumes of opium (one of the few examples of "smoking pipes" that is reported in the Mediterranean before European expansion in America).

The Greek feminine deity Demeter, the Mother Goddess, was both goddess of grain and poppies.

In Greece and Rome opium was usually administered as a pain reliever. To this end it was recommended by the founders of the European medicine: Hippocrates (c.400 BC), Dioscorides and Galen (130-200 AD).

It is thought that the potion that prepared Helen of Troy in Homer's Odyssey " to quell the pain and sorrow and bring oblivion every discomfort" was prepared based on the opium poppy. Similarly, some argue that the vinegar mingled with "gall" offered to Christ in the cross (Matthew 27:34) also contained opium. It is symptomatic that in ancient Hebrew, the word used to designate the "gall" Rosh , referred also to opium.

From the seventh and eighth centuries, medicine opium was also part of the Islamic civilization. Arab traders spread the opium in Persia, India, the Malay region and finally China.

In 1530 the German-Swiss physician   Paracelsus developed a new type of medicine that somehow integrated classical and medieval practices. Paracelsus was a fan of the powers of opium which he called "the stone of immortality" and always carry it with him.

The opium-based drug that had more significance was the tincture laudanum. It was prepared by dissolving opium in alcohol.  Paracelsus had great success with this recipe spreading rapidly throughout Europe.

For more than three centuries laudanum was "the" medicine that could not miss in any medical kit.  Its use spread to the affluent classes in all the states of the continent, to the clubs of London and Paris and to high political and military spheres. For most of the nineteenth century most of the aristocrats had become fans of laudanum (ie opium and alcohol).

The Muslim advance carried opium consumption to India, which, over time, would end up being the largest producer of poppy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mogul monarchs gave opium to their soldiers, and emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, drunk opium in his wine. 

Even today, in India construction workers and agricultural laborers a small ball of opium into their mouths ingesting it with their tea. However, in the Indian subcontinent, opium consumption never reached the social dimension which would  later reach into China, especially during the nineteenth century during the Opium War.
From "Peoples, Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anron, Piriguazu Ediciones. 
Blog in Spanish: daniloanton.blogspot.com

Tobacco, Medicine or Vice?

Danilo Anton

 Tobacco was considered medicine in most Native American cultures. It was used it for healing and ceremonial purposes.

The properties of the various varieties of wild and traditional tobacco plants s are little known. We know that tobbaco is smoked by the shaman to receive answers that allow to heal the sick or decide the best ways for communities. The Charruas of Uruguay smoked tobacco before taking important decisions. Among the Guarani M'bya, during ceremonies and meetings, women blow tobacco smoke to their husbands and children to give them strength.

Amazonian peoples also smoke tobacco and use the leavess for medicinal purposes. They ingest the leaves whole or grounded, in order to obtain visionary experiences. 

In that sense, its role is very similar to ayahuasca, it has a psychoactive effect although less intense. There is general agreement among the native shamans that tobacco is the "little sister" of ayahuasca.

The medicinal use of tobacco did not spread in the same way as their recreational use.  Ritual use has been gradually abandoned.

At the same time tobacco smoking spread to Europe first, and then to the rest of the world.

In recent decades, driven by cigarette industrial companies, low nicotine tobacco consumption has increased. This augmented its need and led into addictive behavior.

Global cultivation of tobacco

Tobacco is one of the most widespread global society crops. It reaches million tons kilograms and the amount of money circulating in tobacco trade exceeds those of any other agro-industrial sector. 

While tobacco it can be used in various ways, today virtually all consumption is based on smoking it, especially in the form of cigarettes, made with crushed leaves industrially prepared using special paper, usually presented in small boxes of cardboard with full color printed trademarks.

It is consumed also, although to a much lesser extent, as grounded tobacco (industrially made or "scratched" by hand from solid masses of tobacco or "naco"). This last one is smoked in pipes and cigarettes prepared manually. The leaves can be rolled up and smoked in a "cigar" or "tuscan".

Tobacco diffusion is due to the addictive nature of industrial cigarettes specially modified for maximum addiction.

Normally wild tobacco is much less addictive.

Economic and cultural globalization of tobacco

The processes of globalization in production and trade that ensued after the Second World War, further increased the economic role of industrial tobacco whose production has exceeded 50 million tons annually. Because of its high value per unit of weight this product became one of the leading agro-industrial selling items.

During this period, industrialized tobacco spread to almost all cultures and social layers of the planet.

Today there are about 1,000 million addicts, and probably more than 50 million deaths per year can be linked to harmful effects caused by artificial tobacco especially "designed" to cause addiction.

In recent years, due to the severity of the problem, social movements have emerged to combat the use of tobacco. 

It has been banned or its advertising limited, industrial processing companies have been cornered by numerous legal actions (especially in the US), and in some cases, had to pay large sums to compensate the victims of its consumption. 

While many major European and US fortunes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were built on the money generated by the production and trade of tobacco, in recent years the "business" is gradually losing its lucrative nature. 

Tobacco companies are "diversifying" their industrial and commercial branches, and gradually the industry has begun a slow decline of their "participation" in world trade. But still, presently many people, perhaps millions of are dying annually affected by toxic products added to cigarettes.

Unfortunately as a result of this widespread alienation, it has been lost sight of the true benefactor nature of tobacco, which has been for so long such an important medicinal plant in the world. It could be again in the future if society relearns the respect for the old plant.

From "Peoples,Drugs and Serpents", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones