Three men, one under the effects of alcohol, one under the effects of opium, and the last under the effects of hemp, arrived one night at the closed gates of a city. “Let us break down the gates,” said the alcohol drinker in a fury of rage, “I can do it with my sword!” “Nay,” said the opium eater, “We can rest here outside in comfort till the morning, when the gates will be opened, and we may enter.” “Why all this foolish talk?” whined the one under the effects of hemp. “Let us creep in through the key-hole. We can make ourselves small enough!” APPENDIX. AN HISTORICAL NOTE ON OPIUM IN INDIA AND BURMA. It is doubtful whether there is a more valuable drug in the Materia Medica than opium. Fundamentally, it is the dried juice of the _Papaver Somniferum_ or white poppy, and although all varieties of poppy are capable of producing opium, the best comes from the white, and it is this variety that is systematically cultivated for the world’s supply of opium. Opium has been the cause of at least one war, namely, the war between England and China, and a perusal of the accounts of piracy in the eastern seas during the sixteenth century affords numerous instances of pitched battles between traders and pirates whose one object seems to have been to get possession of valuable cargoes of opium. The cultivation of the poppy, as a garden flower at any rate, was certainly practised as far back as eight hundred years before Christ. Homer, who lived between 800 B.C. and 700 B.C.[6] mentions it in his Iliad.[7] Cornelius Nepos also mentions the poppy in Italy; when Tarquin indicated to the envoy sent to him by his son Sextus Tarquinius, what he wanted done to the chief inhabitants of Etruria, by striking down all the tallest poppies in his garden.[8] Hippocrates, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, and who is famous as the founder of Greek medical literature, is the first to mention poppy juice, and the virtues of the poppy were undoubtedly known to him; but the physical effects of opium were not definitely mentioned until the first century before Christ, when Vergil, who lived from 70 B.C. to 19 B.C., writes of the “Poppy pervaded with Lethean sleep,”[9] and the “Sleep-giving poppy.”[10] It may be mentioned in passing, that in Greek mythology Lethe is a river that flows through the regions of the dead, the waters of which, if drunk by anyone, cause oblivion in regard to their past existence. In the first century after Christ, opium was known as a medicine. Opium is mentioned by this name by Pliny[11] and by Dioscorides[12] both of whom lived in this century and its soporific effect was well known. The poppy was cultivated for opium on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and as the bulk of the trade between Europe and the Indies passed through these countries, it is certain that this drug, whose value was known, must have formed a part of the trade, though not, perhaps, to such a great extent as to attract attention.