scruple of allowing large quantities of it to the soldiers, when they are going to battle or engaged in any hazardous enterprise. The best opium in the world is said to come from Patna on the Ganges, where, at least, the greatest traffic of it is made, and whence it is exported all over India; though in some parts, especially on the Malay coasts, it is prohibited under pain of death on account of the madness, and murders consequent upon that madness, which are occasioned by it; notwithstanding which severe prohibition, however, it is plentifully smuggled into all these countries. The soil about the Ganges is accounted best for producing the strongest kind of opium. Opium, if long kept upon the skin, takes off the hair, and always occasions an itching in it; sometimes it exulcerates it, and raises little blisters, if applied to a tender part. Sometimes, on external application, it allays pain, and even occasions sleep; but it must by no means be applied to the head, especially to the sutures of the skull; for it has been known to have the most terrible effects in this application, and even to bring on death itself. It appears, too, from some curious experiments made by Dr. Leith, to act as the most powerful of all styptics. Opium contains gum resin, essential oil, salt, and earthy matter; but its narcotic or somniferous power has been experimentally found to reside in its essential oil. Agreeably to the descriptions given of the powers of opium by most medical authors, we have used the term narcotic; but Dr. Beddoes objects to it in the following words :- It is curious to see what pains medical writers have taken to imagine hypotheses, either out of mere complaisance to the term narcotic, or because opium is a drug in Christendom, and wine an article of diet, rather than suffer themselves to see that opium makes a man merry or drunk, then lays him asleep, then afterwards causes him to awake with a head-ache, in the same manner as wine.'

In 1799 the manufacture of opium in India was placed under the management of the government then under marquis Wellesley. All the abuses that had prevailed in the preparation of the drug, adulteration, fallacious envelopes of the cakes, short weight, &c., were at that period abolished, and, ever since, the utmost care has been taken, that the opium put up at the company's sales shall be in the utmost state of purity, that the envelopes shall be of the due degree of thickness, and the drug of the proper consistence. Dr. John Fleming, M. P., then president of the Medical Board at Calcutta, had the merit of having formed and recommended this plan of providing the opium, and, on his return to England in 1803, he received on this account a remuneration from the Honorable Court of Directors, of Sicca rupees 50,000, or £6250 sterling. According to Orfila, a dangerous dose of opium is rather aggravated than counteracted by vinegar. The proper remedy is a powerful emetic, such as sulphate of zinc, or sulphate of copper. See an interesting and well-treated case, in the first volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, by Dr. Marcet and Mr. Astley Cooper. The experiments of M. Magendie have shown that the salt extracted long ago from

opium by Derosnes, and which has been called narcotine, produces a stupor differing from real sleep and acts on dogs as a poison in small doses. This narcotine may be separated by sulphuric ether, from the strained watery extract of opium. The ether afterwards deposits the narcotine in crystals; while the residuary opium is supposed to be better fitted than before, for procuring tranquil sleep.

The monopoly of the opium, produced from the culture of the poppy, is the third principal branch of the East India Company's territorial revenue in India.

In 1773 the contract or extensive privilege for providing opium was granted to Meer Munkeer, in preference (as was stated by government) to any one else, because, being the person employed by the gentlemen of Patna in that business, he was the best acquainted with the proper mode of managing it, and would account for any outstanding balances. He was to delive the Bahar opium at 320 rupees, and the Oude at 350 rupees per maund.

Since that time the East India Company's annual revenue upon that article alone, has risen from eight to upwards of eighty lacs of rupees, or more than £1,000,000 sterling. By a report, dated East India House, 29th February 1816, which was at that time laid before Parliament, the sale of opium in Bengal for the year 181314, amounted to ninety-six lacs, 40,729 current rupees, the advances and charges upon which, only amounted to ten lacs, 77,638 current rupees.

But the opium used in Britain is principally supplied from Turkey. The gross amount of duty upon opium., imported into Great Britain in the year 1816, was only £2,651 13s., while the average quantity consumed in Britain is 14,400 lbs., which is chargeable with a duty of 8s. 8d. per pound. There are besides from 250 to 300 chests of opium imported from Turkey, and lodged in bond warehouses for exportation, each chest containing from 150 lbs. to 200 lbs. of opium. This statement was made by a member of the Turkey Company in London.

The following account of the Indian method of cultivating opium, as practised in the province of Baha, is given by Mr. Kerr:- The field,' he says, being well prepared by the plough and harrow, and reduced to an exact level superficies, it is then divided into quadrangular areas of seven feet long, and five feet in breadth, leaving two feet of interval, which is raised five or six inches, and excavated into an aqueduct for conveying water to every area, for which purpose they have a well in every cultivated field. The seeds are sown in October or November. The plants are allowed to grow six or eight inches distant from each other, and are plentifully supplied with water. When the young plants are six or eight inches high, they are watered more sparingly. But the cultivator strews all over the areas a nutrient compost of ashes, human excrements, cow-dung, and a large portion of nitrous earth, scraped from the highways and old mud walls. When the plants are nigh flowering, they are watered profusely, to increase the juice. When the capsules are half grown, no more wa

ter is given, and they begin to collect the opium. At sun-set they make two longitudinal double incisions upon each half-ripe capsule, passing from below upwards, and taking care not to penetrate the internal cavity of the capsule. The incisions are repeated every evening until each capsule has received six or eight wounds; they are then allowed to ripen their seeds. The ripe capsules afford little or no juice. If the wound was made in the heat of the day, a cicatrix would be too soon formed. The night dews, by their moisture, favor the extillation of the juice. Early in the morning, old women, boys, and girls, collect the juice by scraping it off the wounds with a small iron scoop, and deposit the whole in an earthen pot, where it is worked by the hand in the open sunshine, until it becomes of a considerable spissitude. It is then formed into cakes of a globular shape, and about four pounds in weight, and laid into little earthen basins, to be further exsiccated. These cakes are covered over with the poppy or tobacco leaves, and dried until they are fit for sale. There are about 600,000 lbs. of it annually exported from the Ganges.'

It appears highly probable that the white poppy might be cultivated for the purpose of obtaining opium to great advantage in Britain. The milky juice, drawn by incision from poppy-heads, and thickened either in the sun or shade, even in this country, has all the characters of good opium; its color, consistence, taste, smell, faculties, phenomena, are all the same; only, if carefully collected, it is more pure and more free of feculencies.' Indeed the cultivation of it has been in several instances attempted with

success.

Opium, called also Opium Thebaicum, from being anciently prepared chiefly at Thebes, has been a celebrated medicine from the remotest times. It differs from the meconium, which by the ancients was made of the expressed juice or decoction of the poppies. It has a reddish brown color, and a strong peculiar smell; its taste at first is nauseous and bitter, but soon becomes acrid, and produces a slight warmth in the mouth; a watery tincture of it forms an ink, with a chalybeate solution. The use of this celebrated medicine, though not known to Hippocrates, can be clearly traced back to Diagoras, who was nearly his contemporary, and its importance has ever since been gradually advanced by succeeding physicians of different nations. Its extensive practical utility, however, has not been long well understood; and in this country, perhaps, may be dated from the time of Sydenham. Opium is the chief narcotic now employed; it acts directly upon the nervous power, diminishing the sensibility, irritability, and mobility of the system. From this sedative power of opium, by which it allays pain, inordinate action, and restlessness, it naturally follows, that it may be employed with advantage in a great variety of diseases. Indeed, there is scarcely any disorder in which, under some circumstances, its use is not found proper; and, though in many cases it fails of producing sleep, yet if taken in a full dose, it occasions a pleasant tranquillity of mind, and a drowsiness which approaches to

sleep, and refreshes the patient. The requisite dose of opium varies in different persons, and in different states of the same person. A quarter of a grain will in one adult produce effects which ten times the quantity will not do in another; and a dose that might prove fatal in cholera or cholic, would not be perceptible in many cases of tetanus or mania. The lowest fatal dose, to those unaccustomed to take it, seems to be about four grains; but a dangerous dose is so apt to produce vomiting, that it has seldom time to occasion death. When given in too small a dose, it often produces disturbed sleep, and other disagreeable consequences; and in some cases it seems impossible to be made to agree in any dose or form. Often, on the other hand, from a small dose, sound sleep and alleviation of pain will be produced, while a larger one occasions vertigo and delirium. Some prefer the repetition of small doses; others the giving a full dose at once; its operation is supposed to last about eight hours.

OPOBALSAM. The most precious of the balsams is that commonly called balm of Gilead, opobalsamum, balsamæleon, balsamum verum album, Egyptiacum, Judaicum, Syriacum, è Mecca, &c. This is the produce of the amyris opobalsamum.

The true balsam is of a pale yellowish color, clear and transparent, about the consistence of Venice turpentine, of a strong, penetrating, agreeable, aromatic smell, and a slightly bitterish pungent taste. By age it becomes yellower, browner, and thicker, losing by degrees, like volatile oils, some of its finer and more subtile parts. To spread, when dropped into water, all over the surface, and to form a fine thin rainbow-colored cuticle, so tenacious that it may be taken up entire by the point of a needle, were formerly infallible criteria of the genuine opobalsam. Neumann, however, had observed that other balsams, when of a certain degree of consistence, exhibit these phenomena equally with the Egyptian. According to Bruce, if dropped on a woollen cloth, in its pure and fresh state, it may be washed out completely and readily with simple water.

OPOCALPASUM, OPOCARBASUM, or APOCALPASUM, a gummy resinous substance, which has a strong resemblance to the best liquid myrrh, and which in the time of Galen they mixed with myrrh. It was difficult, according to this writer, to distinguish the one from the other unless by their effects. It was a poisonous juice, which frequently produced lethargy and sudden strangling. He has known several persons who died in consequence of inadvertently taking myrrh in which there was a mixture of opocarbasum. Perhaps it was only a juice composed of a solution of euphorbia, in which drops of opium were macerated. Poisons of this kind have from time immemorial been as common in Africa as that of arrows poisoned with the juice of the mancanilla is in America.

OPODELDOC, a quack medicine, compounded of camphor, soap and spirits, similar to the medical prescription called by regular practitioners the saponaceous balsam; only the opodeldoc has a larger proportion of soap. It is

prescribed for rheumatisms, chilblains, and all kinds of sprains.

:

OPOPONAX is the name of a medicinal gum of a tolerably firm texture, sometimes in masses formed of a number of small granules connected by a quantity of matter of the same kind; but these are usually loaded with extraneous matter, and are greatly inferior to the pure loose kind. The drops or granules of the fine opoponax are on the outside of a brownish-red color, and of a dusky yellowish or whitish color within they are of a somewhat unctuous appearance, smooth on the surface: and are to be chosen in clear pieces, of a strong smell and acrid taste. This gummy substance is obtained from the roots of an umbelliferous plant, which grows spontaneously in warm countries, and bears the cold of this. The juice is brought from Turkey and the East Indies; and it is an attenuating and aperient medicine. Boerhaave frequently employed it, along with ammoniacum and galbanum, in hypochondriacal disorders, obstructions of the abdominal viscera, and suppressions of the menstrual evacuations, from a sluggishness of mucous humors; with these intentions it is a useful ingredient in the pilule gummosæ and compound powder of myrrh of the London Pharmacopoeia, but it is not employed in any composition of the Edinburgh. It may be given by itself in the dose of a scruple, or half a drachm: a whole drachm proves in many constitutions gently purgative: also dispels flatulencies, is good in asthmas, in inveterate coughs, and in disorders of the head and nerves.

OPORINUS (John), a celebrated German printer born at Basil, in 1507. His father was a painter, and being a man of education taught him Latin himself, in which he improved himself farther when he studied Greek at Strasburg. He afterwards kept a school, transcribed MSS., and became a corrector of the press. He married an old woman, the widow of one Xelotect, a canon of Lucerne, who, though rich, was a perfect Xantippe, and, when relieved by her death, he was as poor as ever. He married, however, three times afterwards. He studied physic, and was for two years secretary to the famous Paracelsus. He at last commenced printer; and published many valuable works, from old MSS., with notes; as well as some original pieces of his own. He died in 1568, aged sixty-one.

OPORTO, or the Port, a large city, the second place of commercial consequence in Portugal, stands near the mouth of the Douro on its north bank, and covers an acclivity rising from the brink of the river. It is the grand outlet for all the products of the northern part of the kingdom, and particularly of the wine so well known by its name, and of which from 50,000 to 70,000 pipes are annually shipped. It has an old wall, five or six feet thick, flanked at intervals with towers, and is further protected by a small fort: but, as the harbour is extremely difficult of entrance, the Portuguese government have given little attention of late to the fortifications. The quay extends the whole length of the town; on one side

is a street, the other side is walled and raised for the purpose of fastening ships' cables. At certain seasons, in consequence of the rains, or of the melting of the snow on the mountains, the Douro is swelled here to a great size, and becomes a mighty torrent, when a number of booms are placed on the quay to secure the vessels. The roadstead of Oporto is very spacious. The streets on the declivity of the hill are narrow, crooked, and dirty, but several of those on the top are fine and broad. Indeed Oporto is allowed on the whole to be the cleanest and most agreeable town in Portugal. The steepness of the hill, however, renders walking or riding difficult: on the east of the town the houses overhanging the side of the river are built on so steep a declivity, as to be accessible only by steps cut out of the rock.

The climate here is moist in winter, both from the vicinity of the Atlantic, and the mountains and woods of the neighbourhood. The cold is therefore keen for the latitude, but seldom reaches to frost: in summer, on the other hand, the heat would be intense, were it not moderated by thewinds which blow regularly from the east in the morning, from the south in the middle of the day, and at night from the west. The gardens in the environs of the town are beautiful and pleasant, producing, according to their respective degrees of elevation, the fruits of the northern or southern latitudes: and the whole appearance of the place to a stranger is very imposing.

On the opposite bank of the Douro westward is Gaya, reputed to occupy the site of the ancient town of Cale, and considered now as a suburb of Oporto, which was once called Portus Cale. In process of time it became the more considerable town of the two, and took the title of () Porto (the Port), and the kingdom took that of Portus Cale (Portugal). To the east of Gaya is another small but populous town, called Villa Nova do Porto, inhabited by mechanics and the lower orders. Altogether the population of the two towns on the south bank is not short of 20,000. Between Gaya and Villa Nova are immense warehouses for storing the wine from the interior. The vicinity exhibits many traces of metallic ores, and particularly veins of copper.

The wine exported is produced, not strictly in the adjacent country, so much as in the extensive province of Tras los Montes, to the northwest, and in some districts of Entre Douroe Minho. The amount exported differs in different years. A chartered company for the regulation of this trade was established by the government in 1756. The lesser exports are linen, oil, sumach, and oranges. The imports are woollen, cotton, and hardware manufactures, all chiefly from England; fish from the west of England and Newfoundland; hemp and flax from the Baltic; and rice from the United States. Oporto has long been the seat of a British factory. The established commercial houses of the British are in number about thirty; but in addition there is always a number of English in Oporto as temporary visitors. They have an exchange or place of daily meeting in a part of the High Street covered with canvas. They have also a casino, or house fitted up with reading rooms. The ex

change with this country is computed as at Lisbon, in milrees, of which about sixty-five (more or less according to circumstances) are reckoned to £1 sterling.

Oporto, in addition to its commercial establishments, contains a naval arsenal and dock yard, but the harbour, partly from rocks at the mouth of the Douro, and partly from the accumulation of sand, is seldom entered by ships of war. It is a bishop's see, the seat of a corregidor, a provedor, a military commander, and a theatre. The population of the whole, including the suburbs to the south, is about 70,000.

This city was in the possession of the French in 1808, and the spring of 1809, when marshal Soult was surprised here by lord Wellington. It remained ever after undisturbed by the French. It is 172 miles north by east of Lisbon, and forty-nine north of Coimbra.

OPOSSUM, in zoology. See DIDELPHIS. OPPIA LEX, the Oppian law, in Roman antiquity, a law introduced by C. Oppius, the tribune, A U. C. 540. It enacted, that no woman should wear above half an ounce of gold, have party colored garments, or be carried in any city or town, or to any place within a mile, unless to celebrate some sacred festival. It was made while Hannibal was in Italy, and Rome was in great distress, but created much discontent. The Roman ladies, eighteen years after, petitioned for its repeal. Cato opposed the repeal, and satirised the ladies for appearing in public to solicit votes. The tribune Valerius answered the sage's objections, and carried the repeal with the unanimous consent of all the Comitia, Cato alone excepted. Liv. xxxiii.

OPPIANUS, a poet and grammarian of Anazarba in Cilicia in the second century. He composed a poem on Hunting, and another on Fishing, for which Antoninus Caracalla gave him as many golden crowns as there were verses in his poems; they were hence called Oppian's golden verses. He died in the thirtieth year of his age. OPPELN, a considerable government of Prussian Silesia, containing the principality of Oppeln, Neissy, and Ratibor, together with the Prussian part of Jagerndorf and Troppau, or an area of 5000 square miles, divided into the

circles of

The principality of Oppeln, more than a third covered with forests, occupies more than the half of this government. It lies to the south of Breslau and Oels, and is still more backward than the rest, being inhabited almost exclusively by an illiterate race, of Vandal descent. It was governed by its own dukes of the race of Piast, till 1532, when, the family becoming extinct, it fell to Bohemia, and was acquired by Prussia, with the rest of Silesia, in 1742.

OPPELN, the capital of the above principality and government, situated on the Oder, has several churches, a collegiate foundation, a seminary for priests, two monasteries, and an hospital; also some linen manufactures and tanneries. Inhabitants 3200. It is fifty miles south-east of Breslau, and eighty-five north-east of Olmutz.

OPPENAU, a thriving town of Baden. The article of cherry brandy is here a principal object of export; also pitch, turpentine, and tar, prepared in the neighbouring mountains of the Black Forest. Population 1700. Fifteen miles east of Strasburg.

OPPENHEIM, a town of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the west of the Rhine. Population 1700. Here general Sacken's corps of the Prussian army crossed the Rhine on the 1st of January, 1814, in the invasion of France, and the troops took, in the presence of their king, a redoubt, with 700 prisoners and six cannon. Ten miles south by east of Mentz.

OPPENHEIM, a post-town of Montgomery county, New York, on the north bank of the Mohawk River, fifteen miles west of Johnstone; and fifty-six W. N.W. of Albany.

OPPIDO, a large town of Naples, in Calabria Ultra, situated among the mountains which form the south-west extremity of the Appennines. It is the see of a bishop, but was much injured by the earthquake of 1783. Population 8000. Twenty miles north-east of Reggio, and twenty E. N. E. of Messina, in Sicily.

OPPIG'NERATE, v. a. Lat. oppignero. To pledge; pawn. Obsolete.

The duke of Guise Henry was the greatest usurer in France, for that he had turned all his estate into obligations; meaning that he had sold and oppignorated all his patrimony, to give large donatives to

other men.

OPPILATE, v. a.
OPPILATION, n. s.
OPPILA TIVE.

structive.

Bacon.

Lat. oppilo. To heap up obstructively: the obstruction caused: ob

The ingredients prescribed in their substance actuate the spirits, reclude oppilations, and mundify the blood. ·Harvey. OPPONENT, adj. & n. a. Latin opponens. Antagonist; adverse: one who opposes or takes the opposite side of the dispute or argument.

Inasmuch as ye go about to destroy a thing which is in force, and to draw in that which hath not as yet been received, to impose on us that which we think not ourselves bound unto; that therefore ye are not to claim in any conference other than the plaintiff's or opponent's part.

Hooker.

How becomingly does Philopolis exercise his office, and seasonably commit the opponent with the respondent, like a long practised moderator.

More.