It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea, cocoa, and maté, the stimulant principle is identical with cafein, the active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic alcohol; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their popularity also to narcotic poisons.
Maté:—Maté, yerba maté, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The maté of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption, about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the countries named.
Opium:—The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a large capsule (Papaver somniferum) is most commonly cultivated for the commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it. The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as medicine.
