Chandu
Chandu or Chandoo (from Hindi canḍū ) is an inhalable form of opium that was industrially manufactured and marketed by the British.
properties
Chandu has been described as superior to regular opium, as "purified" opium, the process itself as a "purification". The raw opium experienced a high, around fifty percent weight loss during the production of the Chandoo and it was believed to be a high quality, very strong extract.
In 1900 the handbook of the German drug trade called the expensive Chandu “thickened watery extract of the opium obtained from white poppy seeds, it is significantly weaker than the Turkish opium”.
After each “impasting”, the opium had been “stretched” with three times the amount of vegetable fibers. This also explains why the otherwise well-preserved opium was able to spoil in its new form.
Manufacturing
As described by Paul Gide in 1910 in Das Opium , opium was "impasted" for production. That means rolled out, stirred up, formed into flat cakes, macerated , decanted, filtered, freed of residual residues, evaporated, loosened with cold air, fermented with the Aspergillus Niger and pasteurized. At least one step worth mentioning, stretching, was omitted from this list - either out of one's own ignorance or against my better judgment (see properties).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Merriam-Webster Dictionary: chandu .
- ^ Schmidt's yearbooks of domestic and foreign entire medicine, volume 40 . 1843, p. 143 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Thomas Geschwinde: Drugs: Market forms and modes of action . 2007, ISBN 978-3-540-72044-7 ( page 363 in the Google book search).