And doubt in manhood, save when seen.’”
In the narrative of the voyage of H.M.S.Samarang, Mr. A. Adams informs us, that in a large caravansary belonging to the Malay village near Singapore, he had an opportunity of observing the effects of opium on the physical aspect of the Malay. One of these was a feeble, worn out old man, with an unearthly brilliancy in his eye. His body was bent forwards and greatly emaciated—his face was shrunken, wan, and haggard—his long skinny arm, wasted fingers, and sharp pointed nails resembled more the claw of some rapacious bird, than the hand of a lord of the creation—his head was nodding and tremulous—his skin wrinkled and yellow, and his teeth were a few decayed, pointed, and black stained fangs. As he was approached, he raised his body from the mat on which he was reposing. There was something interesting and at the same time melancholy in the physique of the old man, who now in rags, appeared from the silver ornaments he wore, and by his embroidered jacket, to have been formerly a person of some distinction; but the fascinating influence of the deadly drug had fastened on him, and a pallet in a caravansary was the reward of self-indulgence. “In my experience of opium,” says Mr.————, “which has not, however, been very extensive, I cannot say I have found as much pleasure as the English opium-eater in his Confessions would lead us to believe fell to his lot. After three or four Chinese opium pipes, I found my brain very much unsettled, and teeming with thoughts ill-arranged, and pursuing each other in wanton dreamy play, without order or connection, the circulating system being at the time much excited, the frame tremulous, the eyeballs fixed, and a peculiar and agreeable thrilling sensation extending along the nerves. The same succession of image crowding upon image, and thoughts revelling in strange disorder, continues for some time, during which a person appears to be in the condition of the madman alluded to by Dryden in his play of the ‘Spanish Fryar.’
“‘He raves, his words are loose,
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense
So high he’s mounted on his airy throne,
That now the wind has got into his head,
And turned his brains to frenzy.’
Unutterable melancholy feelings succeed to this somewhat pleasurable period of excitement, but a soft languor steals shortly across the senses, and the half-poisoned individual falls asleep. The next day there is great nausea and sickness of stomach, headache, and tormenting thirst, which makes you curse opium, and exclaim, with Shakespeare’s ‘King John,’
“‘And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw;