PAPAVERACEÆ.

PETALA RHOADOS.

Flores Rhoados; Red Poppy Petals; F. Fleurs de Coquelicot; G. Klatschrosen.

Botanical Origin-Papaver Rhoas L.-The common Red Poppy or Corn Rose is an annual herb found in fields throughout the greater part of Europe often in extreme abundance. It almost always occurs as an accompaniment of cereal crops, frequently disappearing when this cultivation is given up. It is plentiful in England and Ireland, but less so in Scotland; is found abundantly in Central and Southern Europe and in Asia Minor, whence it extends as far as Abyssinia, Palestine, and the banks of the Euphrates. But it does not occur in India or in North America.

From the evidence adduced by De Candolle' it would appear that the plant is strictly indigenous to Sicily, Greece, Dalmatia, and possibly the Caucasus.

History-Papaver Rhaas was known to the ancients, though doubtless it was often confounded with P. dubium L. the flowers of which are rather smaller and paler. The petals were used in pharmacy in Germany in the 15th century.2

Description-The branches of the stem are upright, each terminating in a conspicuous long-stalked flower, from which as it opens the two sepals fall off. The delicate scarlet petals are four in number, transversely elliptical and attached below the ovary by very short, darkviolet claws. As they are broader than long, their edges overlap in the expanded flower. In the bud they are irregularly crumpled, but when unfolded are smooth, lustrous, and unctuous to the touch. They fall off very quickly, shrink up in drying, and assume a brownish-violet tint even when dried with the utmost care. Although they do not contain a milky juice like the green parts of the plant, they have while fresh a strong narcotic odour and a faintly bitter taste.

Chemical Composition-The most important constituent of the petals is the colouring matter, still but very imperfectly known. According to L. Meier (1846) it consists of two acids, neither of which could be obtained other than in an amorphous state. The colouring matter is abundantly taken up by water or spirit of wine but not by ether. The aqueous infusion is not precipitated by alum, but yields a dingy violet precipitate with acetate of lead, and is coloured blackishbrown by ferric salts or by alkalis.

The alkaloids of opium cannot be detected in the petals. Attfield in particular has examined the latter (1873) for morphine but without obtaining a trace of that body.

1 Géogr. botanique, ii. (1855) 649,

2 Flores Papaveris rubri-in the list of the pharmaceutical shop of the town of

Nördlingen. See Flückiger, in the Archiv der Pharm. 211 (1877) 97, No. 62.

The milky juice of the herb and capsules has a narcotic odour, and appears to exert a distinctly sedative action. Hesse obtained from them (1865) a colourless crystallizable substance, Rhoadine, CH"NO", of weak alkaline reaction. It is tasteless, not poisonous, nearly insoluble in water, alcohol, ether, chloroform, benzol, or aqueous ammonia, but dissolves in weak acids. Its solution in dilute sulphuric or hydrochloric acid acquires after a time a splendid red colour, destroyed by an alkali but reappearing on addition of an acid. Hesse further believes (1877) the milky juice to contain meconic acid.

Uses-Red Poppy petals are employed in pharmacy only for the sake of their fine colouring matter. They should be preferred in the fresh state.

CAPSULE PAPAVERIS.

Fructus Papaveris; Poppy Capsules, Poppy Heads; F. Capsules ou Têtes de Pavot; G. Mohnkapseln.

Botanical Origin-Papaver somniferum L. Independently of the garden-forms of this universally known annual plant, we may, following Boissier,' distinguish three principal varieties, viz. :—

a. setigerum (P. setigerum DC.), occurring in the Peloponnesus, Cyprus, Corsica and the islands of Hières, the truly wild form of the plant with acutely toothed leaves, the lobes sharp-pointed, and each terminating in a bristle. The leaves, peduncles, and sepals are covered with scattered bristly hairs, and the stigmata are 7 or 8 in number.

B. glabrum-Capsule subglobular, stigmata 10 to 12. Chiefly cultivated in Asia Minor and Egypt.

y. album (P. officinale Gmelin)-has the capsule more or less eggshaped and devoid of apertures. It is cultivated in Persia.

Besides the differences indicated above, the petals vary from white to red or violet, with usually a dark purplish spot at the base of each.2 The seeds also vary from white to slate-coloured.

History The poppy has been known from a remote period throughout the eastern countries of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and Central Asia, in all which regions its cultivation is of very ancient date.3

Syrup of poppies, a medicine still in daily use, is recommended as a sedative in catarrh and cough in the writings of the younger Mesue (ob. A.D. 1015) who studied at Bagdad, and subsequently resided at Cairo as physician to the Caliph of Egypt. Their medicinal use seems to have reached Europe at an early period, for the Welsh "Physicians of Myddvai" in the 13th century already stated: "Poppy heads bruised in wine will induce a man to sleep soundly." They even prepared pills with the juice of poppy, which they called opium. In the Ricettario Fiorentino (see Appendix R) a formula is given for the syrup

1 Flora Orientalis, i. (1867) 116.

2 English growers prefer a white-flowered poppy.

For further particulars consult Ritter, Erdkunde von Asien, vi. (1843) 773, etc.;

4

Unger, Botanische Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete der Culturgeschichte, ii. (1857) 46.

4 Meddygon Myddfai, Llandovery, 1861, 50. 216. 400.

as Syroppo di Papaveri semplici di Mesue; in the first pharmacopoeia of the London College (1618), the medicine is prescribed as Syrupus de Meconio Mesuæ.

Description—The fruit is formed by the union of 8 to 20 carpels, the edges of which are turned inwards and project like partitions towards the interior, yet without reaching the centre, so that the fruit is really one-celled. In the unripe fruit, the sutures of the carpels are distinctly visible externally as shallow longitudinal stripes.

The fruit is crowned with a circular disc, deeply cut into angular ridge-like stigmas in number equal to the carpels, projecting in a stellate manner with short obtuse lobes. Each carpel opens immediately below the disc by a pore, out of which the seeds may be shaken; but in some varieties of poppy the carpel presents no aperture even when fully ripe. The fruit is globular, sometimes flattened below, or it is ovoid; it is contracted beneath into a sort of neck immediately above a tumid ring at its point of attachment with the stalk. Grown in rich moist ground in England, it often attains a diameter of three inches, which is twice that of the capsules of the opium poppy of Asia Minor or India. While growing it is of a pale glaucous green, but at maturity becomes yellowish brown, often marked with black spots. The outer wall of the pericarp is smooth and hard; the rest is of a loose texture, and while green exudes on the slightest puncture an abundance of bitter milky juice. The interior surface of the pericarp is rugose, and minutely and beautifully striated transversely. From its sutures spring thin and brittle placentæ directed towards the centre and bearing on their perpendicular faces and edges a vast number of minute reniform seeds.

The unripe fruit has a narcotic odour which is destroyed by drying; and its bitter taste is but partially retained.

Microscopic Structure-The outer layer consists of a thin cuticle exhibiting a large number of stomata; the epidermis is formed of a row of small thick-walled cells. Fragments of these two layers, which on the whole exhibit no striking peculiarity, are always found in the residue of opium after it has been exhausted by water.

The most interesting part of the constituent tissues of the fruit is the system of laticiferous vessels, which is of an extremely complicated nature inasmuch as it is composed of various kinds of cells intimately interlaced so as to form considerable bundles.' The cells containing the milky juice are larger but not so much branched as in many other plants.

Chemical Composition-The analyses of poppy heads present discrepant results with regard to morphine. Merck and Winckler detected it in the ripe fruit to the extent of 2 per cent., and it has also been found by Groves (1854) and by Deschamps d'Avallon (1864). Other chemists have been unable to find it.

In recent pharmacopoeias poppy heads are directed to be taken previous to complete maturity, and both Meurein and Aubergier have shown that in this state they are richer in morphine than when more advanced. Deschamps d'Avallon found them sometimes to contain

1 For particulars see Trécul, Ann. des Sciences Nat. v. (1866) 49; also Flückiger,

Grundlagen der Pharmaceutischen Waarenkunde, 1873. 45.

narcotine. He also obtained mucilage perceptible by neutral acetate of lead, ammonium salts, meconic, tartaric, and citric acid, the ordinary mineral acids, wax, and lastly two new crystalline bodies, Papaverin, and Papaverosine. The former is not identical with Merck's alkaloid of the same name; although nitrogenous and bitter, it has an acid reaction (?), yet does not combine with bases. It yields a blue precipitate with a solution of iodine in iodide of potassium.

Papaverosine on the other hand is a base to which sulphuric acid imparts a violet colour, changing to dark yellowish-red on addition of

nitric acid.

In ripe poppy heads, Hesse (1866) found Rhoadine. Groves in 1854 somewhat doubtfully announced the presence of Codeine. Fricker' stated to have obtained from the capsules 010 per cent. of alkaloid, and Krause 2 was able to prove the presence of traces of morphine, narcotine, and meconic acid. Ripe poppy capsules (seeds removed) dried at 100° C. afforded us 14-28 per cent. of ash, consisting chiefly of alkaline chlorides and sulphates, with but a small quantity of phosphate.

Production-Poppies are grown for medicinal uses in many parts of England, mostly on a small scale. The large and fine fruits (poppy heads) are usually sold entire; the smaller and less slightly are broken and the seeds having been removed are supplied to the druggist for pharmaceutical preparations. The directions of the pharmacopoeia as to the fruit being gathered when "nearly ripe" does not appear to be much regarded.

Uses In the form of syrup and extract, poppy heads are in common use as a sedative. A hot decoction is often externally applied as an anodyne.

In upper India an intoxicating liquor is prepared by heating the capsules of the poppy with jagghery and water,3

OPIUM.

Botanical Origin-Papaver somniferum L., see preceding article. History The medicinal properties of the milky juice of the poppy have been known from a remote period. Theophrastus who lived in the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. was acquainted with the substance in question, under the name of Mykovov. The investigations of Unger (1857; see Capsula Papaveris,) have failed to trace any acquaintance of ancient Egypt with opium.

Scribonius Largus in his Compositiones Medicamentorum (circa A.D. 40) notices the method of procuring opium, and points out that the true drug is derived from the capsules, and not from the foliage of the plant.

1 Dragendorff's Jahresbericht, 1874. 148. 2 Archiv der Pharm. 204 (1874) 507.

8 Catal. Ind. Departm. Internat. Exhibition. 1862. No. 742.

For more particulars see Dr. Rice's learned notes in New Remedies, New York,

1876, 229, reprinted in Pharm. Journ. vii. (2 Dec. 1876; 23 June 1877), pp, 452 and 1041.

22.

5 Ed. Bernhold, Argent. 1786, c. iii. sect.

About the year 77 of the same century, Dioscorides' plainly distinguished the juice of the capsules under the name of oós from an extract of the entire plant, unkovetov, which he regarded as much less active. He described exactly how the capsules should be incised, the performing of which operation he designated by the verb oπíčew. may infer from these statements of Dioscorides that the collection of opium was at that early period a branch of industry in Asia Minor. The same authority alludes to the adulteration of the drug with the milky juices of Glaucium and Lactuca, and with gum.

Pliny devotes some space to an account of Opion, of which he describes the medicinal use. The drug is repeatedly mentioned as Lacrima papaveris by Celsus in the 1st century, and more or less particularly by numerous later Latin authors. During the classical period of the Roman Empire as well as in the early middle ages, the only sort of opium known was that of Asia Minor.

The use of the drug was transmitted by the Arabs to the nations of the East, and in the first instance to the Persians. From the Greek word omós, juice, was formed the Arabic word Afyun, which has found its way into many Asiatic languages.

The introduction of opium into India seems to have been connected with the spread of Islamism, and may have been favoured by the Mahommedan prohibition of wine. The earliest mention of it as a production of that country occurs in the travels of Barbosa who visited Calicut on the Malabar coast in 1511. Among the more valuable drugs the prices of which he quotes, opium occupies a prominent place. It was either imported from Aden or Cambay, that from the latter place being the cheaper, yet worth three or four times as much as camphor or benzoin.

Pyres in his letter about Indian drugs to Manuel, king of Portugal, written from Cochin in 1516, speaks of the opium of Egypt, that of Cambay and of the kingdom of Coûs (Kus Bahár, S.W. of Bhotan) in Bengal. He adds that it is a great article of merchandize in these parts and fetches a good price; that the kings and lords eat of it, and even the common people, though not so much because it costs

dear.

Garcia d'Orta informs us that the opium of Cambay in the middle of the 16th century was chiefly collected in Malwa, and that it is soft and yellowish. That from Aden and other places near the Erythrean Sea is black and hard. A superior kind was imported from Cairo, agreeing as Garçia supposed with the opium of the ancient Thebaïd, a district of Upper Egypt near the modern Karnak and Luksor.

In India the Mogul Government uniformly sold the opium monopoly,

1 Lib. iv. c. 65.

* Lib. xx. c. 76.

3 There are no ancient Chinese or Sanskrit names for opium. In the former language the drug is called O-fu-yung from the Arabic. Two other names Ya-pien and O-pien are adaptations to the Chinese idiom of our word opium. There are several other designations which may be translated Smoking dirt, Foreign poison, Black commodity, &c.

Coasts of East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Soc.), Lond. 1866. 206, 223.

Journ, de Soc. Pharm. Lusit. ii. (1838) 36, Pires, or Pyres, was the first ambassador from Europe to China: Abel Rémusat, Nouv. mélanges asiatiques, ii. (1829) 203. See also Pedro José da Silva, Elogio historico e noticia completa de Thomé Pires, pharmaceutico e primeiro naturalista da India, Lisboa, 1866 (Library of the Pharm. Soc., London, Pamphlets, No. 30).

6 Aromatum Historia, edit Clusius, Antv. 1574. lib. i. c. 4.