Opium pipe

Atekkong

Note: The following text is taken from a 19th-century collection catalog and, in its language and perspective, partially reflects colonial thought patterns. We present the text in its original version to make the collection's history transparent and promote a critical examination of the colonial legacy. Certain terms and formulations may be perceived as problematic today. A 2009 research project concluded that most descriptions are factually correct and still usable; only a few details were found to be inaccurate or incorrect. The results of this project were published in the following collection catalog: https://khm-wmw-tm-library.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1457155265

"385. Opium pipe - "Ateng kong"
An opium pipe, consisting of a long bamboo tube on whose bottom end on the side there is a wooden pipe-head attachment affixed. This has a small opening at the top, which connects with the rest of the tube through a channel of the attachment. A ball of opium is placed on this small opening and lit. The smoke which develops when burning is sucked in through the tube. The smoker lies on his mattress or mat, at his side is a little box with opium and a small oil lamp with which he lights the opium ball. The room in which the opium smoker lies soon fills with a sweet smoke, the smoker himself lies apathetically on his poor mat with glazed eyes, motionless, only lighted by the matte light of the little lamp.
Opium smoking becomes a terrible passion, which enervates the individual as well as the entire population, and morally and physically drives them to the bottom, to a sure and pathetic death. Most opium smokers die from opium emaciation, the opium morass, where the person who has become like a skeleton, dull-witted, only eating small amounts of food, rolling on a miserable pallet, without will or power to stand up until he is covered with dirt and debris and breathes his last. It is impossible to break the habit of smoking opium and that is even life-threatening for the individual because when the consumption of opium is reduced the person will suffer and perish from profuse diarrhoea which cannot be healed by any medicine. Opium use is spread throughout the Indian Archipelago, but only on the coasts and inland only where there are Europeans and Chinese, the propagators of the western and eastern culture, who can sell this poison to the poor victims of their money greed. In those parts of the islands where European and Asian culture has not yet found entrance, where fanatic Arab priests have not yet managed, in opium intoxication, the opium ecstasy, to make their believers see Paradise, there where the natives still live in their childlike innocence, there opium use - as well as all other vices - are unknown.
The Dutch government is not bothered by the demoralization of the natives, in fact unfortunately they support it since the greatest material profit comes from the opium which is imported from Asia and has a high import duty. The sale of opium, monopoly of the Government, is in the hands of the Chinese through the granting of concessions. The concession throws up enormous sums. The opium concession on Java alone brings in over 13 million; on Celebes, where the interior of the island is not yet accessible and the rural people are thus far sheltered from this plague, it amounts to only one million Gulden. Two types of opium are imported, the Levant and the Bengali opium. The effects of opium are known, it should just be mentioned that by fast, excessive consumption the individual will go into a mania, rage, called "amok" a condition that has been extensively described under the description of the jaw-trap iron. This excessive use of opium is equal to the excessive consumption of alcohol in Europe, where in both cases the individual wants to forget the unpleasantness of his momentary situation in his intoxication and escapes to a realm of dreams, until he is completely exhausted and dazed and collapses or breaks out in fury. Besides all this it should again be mentioned that those who have been selected as the advance soldiers in wars have also been intoxicated with opium and exalted, so that they then, like wild animals, throw themselves against the enemy and thus open the battle."

Translation of: Czurda, F. A. J. (1883). Catalog mit Erklärungen der Etnografischen Privatsammlung des Dr. F. A. J. Czurda in Postelberg (Böhmen). (p. 82-84). Wien, Wilhelm Braumüller