B545 <=> B547 (BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 546)

“’This Dover’s powder is, I don’t know why, a very popular remedy among us in Russia, and it is used by almost all the peoples of our enormous empire.

“’Many hundreds of thousands of packets of powder are used here daily all over the country and the opium this powder ought to contain is, as you know, no cheap thing and if real opium were put into this powder, the opium alone would cost us pharmacists six or eight kopecks a packet, and we have to sell this powder for three to five kopecks. Besides, even if all the opium from the whole of the globe were collected the position would be the same, there would not be enough for our Russia alone.

“’So instead of the prescription of Doctor Dover we pharmacists have invented another prescription consisting of such substances as are easily obtainable and which are accessible and profitable for everybody.

“’That is why we pharmacists make this powder of soda, burn sugar, and a small quantity of quinine; all of these substances are cheap . . . well, quinine is, it is true, a little expensive . . . but then, you see, not much of it is required. Of the total 100 per cent of the composition of these powders, there will only be about 2 per cent of quinine.’

“Here I could not help interrupting him: ‘You don’t mean it? . . . But it’s not possible! . . . Has no one ever discovered that instead of Dover’s powder you give them this particular mess?’

“’Of course not,’ laughingly replied this good acquaintance of mine. ‘These things can be detected only by sight and taste; and this Dover’s powder which we make, however you turn it and under whatever microscope you examine it, is in color the same as it should be according to the genuine prescription of this Doctor Dover. And as to taste, it is absolutely impossible thanks chiefly to the proportion of quinine which we put into it, to distinguish it from the genuine powder made with the real opium.’