HOW OPIUM IS SMOKED.

Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 69, 24 March 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW OPIUM IS SMOKED.

Few persons know how opium is smoked. The smoker lies curled up, with his head resting on a bamboo or earthenware pillow about five inches high; near him stands an opium lamp, the flame of which is protected by a glass shade low enough for the point of the flame to project above the top of the shade. The smoker takes a wire and dips it into a little box containing 1 prepared opium, which rather resembles treacle. A small quantity adheres to the point of the wire, which is then held over the flame of the lamp until the heat has swollen it lo about ten times its original size. This is rolled over and over on the flat side of the clay bowl, the opium all the' time adhering to the wire. When it has been rolled to a soft, solid mass, it is again applied to the lamp, and this alternate roasting and rolling is kept up for at least ten minutes, by which time it is the shape of a pill and ready for use. The aperture in the pipe is so small that it can only receive the smallest quantity, and the mo3t careful manipulation is needed to transfer the tiny ball of opium from the end of the wire to the bowl of the pipe. The point of the wire is inserted into tho hole of the pipe and worked round and round until the soft opium forms into a conical-shaped ring round the wire. | By twirling the wire, the drug is gradually detached from it, leaving a hole through the opium about as large as the hole of the pipe-bowl, with which it communicates. The pipe is now ready, and the bowl is held over the lamp so that the opium comes in contact with the name. A. spluttering noise ensues as the smoker sucks at his pipe. After each successive draw he ejects from his nose and mouth a volume of smoke, the very smell of which is enough to turn a horse's stomach. By the end of the fourth or fifth whiff", the pipe is empty. The smoker scoops out another dose of opium, rolls it into a pill, and repeats the operation with the same patience as before, and smokes away until the pipe falls from his hands, and he is lost in dreamland. One thing is very certain, that if tobacco-smoking were only the same trouble tobbacconists would soon have to shut up shop.