The smoking of pure opium, fueled in…
1736 CE
The smoking of pure opium, fueled in part by the 1729 ban on madak, which had at first effectively exempted pure opium as a potentially medicinal product, becomes more popular as the eighteenth century progresses.
The smoking of pure opium, described in 1736 by Huang Shujing, the first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan, involves a pipe made from bamboo rimmed with silver, stuffed with palm slices and hair, fed by a clay bowl in which a globule of molten opium is held over the flame of an oil lamp.
This elaborate procedure, requiring the maintenance of pots of opium at just the right temperature for a globule to be scooped up with a needle-like skewer for smoking, forms the basis of a craft of "paste-scooping" by which servant girls can become prostitutes as the opportunity arises.