The architecture of 13,000,000 pounds of opium production

Some amazing images of what it took to run a global opium industry in the 19th century. From Ptak Science Books:

These images present an excellent invitation to understanding the size and scope of one section of the opium industry in India. I found these pictures in the 29 July 1882 issue of the Scientific American, which in turn had reproduced them from the Bengal Commissioner Lt. Col. Walter S. Sherwill, who published them as color lithographs in 1850 and which (again) found their way into print in The Truth about Opium Smoking by Benjamin Broomhill1(1882). They are iconic images of a devastating trade and were frequently reproduced over many decades--mostly not for the "devastating" part of what I just wrote, but more for the industrial/business appreciation end, as was the case with this article in SciAmerican. The British interest in the trade stretched back two cneturies earlier, and of course the use of opium bends far back into Neolithic times.

[Thanks Mike!]