BALTIMORE If the entire materia medica at our disposal were limited to the choice and use of only one drug, I am sure that a great many, if not the majority, of us would choose opium; and I am convinced that if we were to select, say half a dozen of the most important drugs in the Pharmacopeia, we should all place opium in the first rank. If we were to inquire, however, into how much the great majority of the medical men know about the history of this wonderful product of plant life, which,

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... judiciously employed, has proved such a boon to suffering humanity, if we were to ask about the origin of some of our most familiar reme-dies\p=m-\laudanumor paregoric, for instance\p=m-\Ifear the information gleaned would be meager. It is doubtful whether it is even generally known that opium, so widely used in China, is not indigenous to that country, but was introduced there at a comparatively late date. This were apology enough for a brief historical sketch on the subject, but a glance at the history of opium and its derivatives from the earliest time to the present may teach us more. If the aim of the history of medicine is not altogether the recitation of inter¬ esting anecdotes, but rather to trace the progressive development of our noble art and science, then is the history of no other drug more calculated and better fitted to illustrate. the gradual transition from the obscurity and mysticism of the ancient Dreck-Apotheke or polypharmacy and kakopharmacy to the rational therapeutics of the present clay.x EARLY HISTORY