An essay on the cultivation of the white poppy : presented 4th February, 1830 / by Isaac Weld.

  • Weld, Isaac, 1774-1856.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on the cultivation of the white poppy : presented 4th February, 1830 / by Isaac Weld. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    7/24 (page 3)
    5 painting it must be admirable. But I have been informed that many artists of the English school do not consider it sufficiently thick and tenacious to hold the masses of co- lour which are frequently used in their full and broad style. I have been informed also, on the Continent, that Poppy Oil is not adapted for the woollen manufacture, in conse- quence of its disposition to dry. The observations which I have made on Poppy Oil of my own produce, induce me to think that it does not dry so rapidly as walnut oil, in its simple state ; but if merely boiled, it becomes thick, and will soon set like varnish. In proportion as it is exposed to heat it assumes a brownish hue, not nearly so deep, however, as that of boiled linseed oil. The cultivation of Poppies is generally found to extend after being once introduced into a country, the surest of all proofs that it is advantageous. How long it has been the practice to draw oil from the seeds, is not easily ascertained. Though Pliny enumerates several berries and seeds from which oil was usually extracted, yet he makes no allusion to the seeds of the Poppy, except as an article of food. Ne- vertheless there are few seeds which betray their oily na- ture so evidently as those of the Poppy; for if a single grain be crushed on any smooth surface of wood or stone, a spot of grease will immediately become visible; and even the oil itself, blended with the meal of the seed. Probably it began first to be used, or at least in considerable quantity, after the great loss of olive trees in the south of France, in conse- quence of severe frosts, particularly that of 1709. But the introduction of it led to commotions of a most violent cha- racter, owing to the prevailing belief, that the oil must par- take of tlie poisonous nature of the Poppy head. In vain did the lieutenant-general of police in Paris appeal to the faculty of medicine; neither their attestations of its inno-