[{17}] This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Harriott’s Struggles through Life, vol. iii. p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout he took forty drops, the next night sixty, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever; and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott’s case into a trifle; and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published gratis.
[{18}] See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced to desperation by ill-luck at gambling.
[{19}] The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking, because else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us that he is obliged to quit even mathematics for want of encouragement.
[{20}] William Lithgow. His book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedantically written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting.
[{21}] In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in a retrograde state.
[{22}] On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary:—
First Week Second Week
Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud.
Mond. June 24 ... 130 Mond. July 1 ... 80
25 ... 140 2 ... 80
26 ... 130 3 ... 90
27 ... 80 4 ... 100
28 ... 80 5 ... 80
29 ... 80 6 ... 80
30 ... 80 7 ... 80
Third Week Fourth Week
Mond. July 8 ... 300 Mond. July 15 ... 76
9 ... 50 16 ... 73.5
10 } 17 ... 73.5
11 } Hiatus in 18 ... 70
12 } MS. 19 ... 240
13 } 20 ... 80
14 ... 76 21 ... 350
Fifth Week
Mond. July 22 ... 60
23 ... none.
24 ... none.
25 ... none.
26 ... 200
27 ... none.
What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, &c.? The impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the motive, where any motive blended with this impulse, was either the principle, of “reculer pour mieux sauter;” (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awakening found itself partly accustomed to this new ration); or else it was this principle—that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now, whenever I ascended to my large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne anything.