Page "Opium" Paragraph 31

ladies.

" He described an expedition sent by the Chenghua Emperor in 1483 to procure opium for a price " equal to that of gold " in Hainan, Fujian, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Shaanxi where it is close to Xiyu.

A century later, Li Shizhen listed standard medical uses of opium in his renowned Compendium of Materia Medica ( 1578 ), but also wrote that " lay people use it for the art of sex ," in particular the ability to " arrest seminal emission.

" This association of opium with sex continued in China until the twentieth century.

Opium smoking began as a privilege of the elite and remained a great luxury into the early nineteenth century, but by 1861, Wang Tao wrote that opium was used even by rich peasants, and even a small village without a rice store would have a shop where opium was sold.