In 1578 the celebrated Chinese savant, Li-Shi-Shen, published his great book on the materials employed in medicine, to which he had devoted his whole life. In this book he gives the history of the poppy and its cultivation, dividing that history into three parts, the first relating to the early days when its properties were little known, that is to say, from the eighth to the eleventh century; the second to the time when the juice of the capsules was discovered to have medicinal properties and became used to alleviate affections of the stomach; and the third when opium was imported in solid form. Li-Shi-Shen justly remarks that it is in the capsule or seed-pod that the opium juice is secreted, and he recommends the use of that juice mixed with honey for certain maladies. He makes fun of a doctor who lived before his time, and had said that the juice of the poppy could kill as surely as a stroke from a sword, but dwells on the immense relief which those suffering from rheumatism and asthma had obtained from its use. This sage of the sixteenth century adds, that in Pekin opium pills are used to arouse sexual passion. There is nothing surprising in this assertion to those who know the Chinese and their fondness for such queer diet as swallows' nests, ginger, the fins of sharks, sea-urchins, etc., because they think they stimulate the senses. It must, however, be added in justice to the Celestials, that they are far less sensual than their neighbours, the Japanese, and this is no small praise. Though Li-Shi-Shen was right in laughing at the doctor whose assertion is quoted above, the abuse of the newly-discovered drug of opium did cause a great many deaths, and in the seventeenth century many Imperial edicts were issued forbidding its use, but so deeply rooted had the love of it become, that these fulminations against it were powerless to prevent its importation. The mortality was doubled when the Chinese learnt to mix opium with Hashish, or the potent drug known in India as bhang, prepared from hemp. [Sidenote: A PERNICIOUS MIXTURE]