2-982-623 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opium-smoking in China - from drawings by a native artist, 1858. Fig. 4. 'Having disposed of his costly garments, the victim next sells his furniture, and at a ruinous sacrifice obtains the means for further indulgence...Fig. 5...[his] means being all exhausted, he becomes dependent upon his wife and child, who support him by the scanty wages obtained by winding silk...Fig. 6....disease and misery have done their work, premature death has seized its prey. The wife and brother mourn over the body laid out on a mat...sticks of incense and rice cakes are presented as an offering to the dead...The engravings show the views of the Chinese themselves as to the evil effects which follow opium-smoking. Reliable witnesses assure us that these illustrations are by no means exaggerated...We cannot but regard it as a blot on the character of our East Indian Government [ie the British East India Company] that for purposes of revenue it should be engaged in cultivating and selling a drug which, invaluable as a medicinal agent, is so antagonistic to the weal of all who employ it as an indulgence. Every well-wisher of his fellow-men must sincerely desire the suppression of a traffic which carries destitution and death into so many Chinese families'. From "Illustrated London News", 1858.