OPIUM

327
last  of  the  Ming  Emperors  (1628-44)  prohibited  tobacco
smoking  in  his  dominions.  The  first  of  the  Manchu
Emperors,  before  his  occupation  of  Peking,  while  he  was
Emperor  of  the  Manchus  but  not  of  the  Chinese,  issued  in
1641  an  edict  on  archery,  in  which  he  says  :  “  To  smoke
tobacco  is  a  fault,  but  not  so  great  a  fault  as  to  neglect
practice  with  the  bow.  As  to  the  prohibition  of  tobacco
smoking,  it  became  impossible  to  maintain  it  because  you
princes  and  others  smoked  privately,  though  not  publicly  ;
but  as  to  the  use  of  the  bow,  this  must  not  be  neglected.”
Other  prohibitive  edicts  followed,  but  were  quite  as  ineffective ­
  ;  and  to-day  in  China,  with  few  exceptions,  every
man,  woman,  and  weaned  child  is  a  smoker  of  tobacco  :
the  “  Society  of  Total  Abstainers  ”  (from  wine,  tobacco,  and
tea)  is  in  times  of  trouble  classed  with  the  secret  societies,
for  which  extermination  is  the  prescribed  treatment.
Formosa  is  a  land  of  jungle  and  malaria,  and  where
malaria  prevails  opium  is  a  natural  resource,  as  exemplified
by  the  opium  pills  of  the  Norfolk  fen-men  a  short  century
ago.  Of  the  tropical  jungle  we  have  a  note  of  Jacobus
Bontius,  a  Dutch  physician  of  Java,  dated  Batavia,  1629,
in  which  he  says  that  “  unless  we  had  opium  to  use  in
these  hot  countries,  in  cases  of  dysentery,  cholera,  burning
fever,  and  various  bilious  affections,  we  should  practise
medicine  in  vain.”  In  Formosa  malaria  is  deadly  to  this
day,  and  the  early  colonists  mixed  with  their  tobacco
various  ingredients  to  neutralise  the  effects  of  the  fever,
among  them  opium  and  arsenic  :  the  latter  is  still  used
by  the  Chinese  in  what  is  called  “  water  tobacco,”  and  is
prescribed  in  cases  of  malaria  by  Western  physicians  when
for  any  reason  quinine  is  contra-indicated.  Kaempfer
visited  Java  in  1689,  and  in  his  account  of  Batavia  is  the
first  mention  of  an  “  opium-smoking  divan,”  in  which  was
smoked  “opium  diluted  with  water  and  mixed  with  tobacco”  ;
and  as  the  Dutch  controlled  the  trade  of  Formosa  from  1624
to  1662,  it  seems  probable  that  the  practice  of  smoking
mixed  tobacco  and  opium  was  introduced  from  Java.
From  F  ormosa  the  practice  extended  to  the  mainland