The White Poppy A History of Opium James Maurice Scott

The white poppy : a history of opium Scott, J. M. Published by Heinemann (1969)  Investigates the impact of opium seed products on art, crime, and medicine throughout history.
 Hardcover

Heroin, morphine, codeine and at least fifty other compounds are all manufact- ured from the same plant, the opium poppy, Papavar somniferum. Chemists continue today to isolate yet more new drugs from this remarkable plant which is both a panacea and a scourge to man- kind and which we grow here in our flower beds for ornamental purposes. In this lucid and stimulating book J. M. Scott traces the history of opium from the earliest Arab, Greek and Roman records, discussing its influence on art, medicine, crime and life throughout the centuries. He tells how the drug is extracted and of its use by writers like De Quincey, Crabbe and Coleridge and by physicians from Paracelsus and Avicenna to the present day; of its old history as a murder and suicide weapon; of the war in China which it caused; of the sixty-year-long moral debate which raged in the columns of the newspapers in the last century before at last attempts were made to bring its cultivation and distribution under control. Today, the wheel comes full circle. While one body of opinion thinks all drugs, and delusive opium especially, should be banned except for strictly medicinal purposes, another looks to them as a whole new world to open up the con- sciousness of man. This comprehensive and fascinating study of the small plant in which the most devastating power of all is locked becomes of especial rele- vance.
















.