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Title: The Opium Habit
Author: Horace B. Day
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7293]
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Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE OPIUM HABIT,
WITH
SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE REMEDY.
"After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified
narrative of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made
public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful
example."--COLERIDGE.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM
DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER"
OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE
WILLIAM BLAIR
OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED
INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE
A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME
ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE
WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED?
OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE
INTRODUCTION.
This volume has been compiled chiefly for the benefit of
opium-eaters. Its subject is one indeed which might be made alike
attractive to medical men who have a fancy for books that are
professional only in an accidental way; to general readers who would
like to see gathered into a single volume the scattered records of the
consequences attendant upon the indulgence of a pernicious habit; and
to moralists and philanthropists to whom its sad stories of infirmity
and suffering might be suggestive of new themes and new objects upon
which to bestow their reflections or their sympathies. But for none
of these classes of readers has the book been prepared. In strictness
of language little medical information is communicated by it.
Incidentally, indeed, facts are stated which a thoughtful physician
may easily turn to professional account. The literary man will
naturally feel how much more attractive the book might have been made
had these separate and sometimes disjoined threads of mournful
personal histories been woven into a more coherent whole; but the book
has not been made for literary men. The philanthropist, whether a
theoretical or a practical one, will find in its pages little
preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the
danger of opium-eating. Possibly, as he peruses these various records,
he may do much preaching for himself, but he will not find a great
deal furnished to his hand, always excepting the rather inopportune
reflections of Mr. Joseph Cottle over the case of his unhappy friend
Coleridge. The book has been compiled for opium-eaters, and to their
notice it is urgently commended. Sufferers from protracted and
apparently hopeless disorders profit little by scientific information
as to the nature of their complaints, yet they listen with profound
interest to the experience of fellow-sufferers, even when this
experience is unprofessionally and unconnectedly told. Medical
empirics understand this and profit by it. In place of the general
statements of the educated practitioner of medicine, the empiric
encourages the drooping hopes of his patient by narrating in detail
the minute particulars of analagous cases in which his skill has
brought relief.
Before the victim of opium-eating is prepared for the services of an
intelligent physician he requires some stimulus to rouse him to the
possibility of recovery. It is not the _dicta_ of the medical
man, but the experience of the relieved patient, that the opium-eater,
desiring--nobody but he knows how ardently--to enter again into the
world of hope, needs, to quicken his paralyzed will in the direction
of one tremendous effort for escape from the thick night that blackens
around him. The confirmed opium-eater is habitually hopeless. His
attempts at reformation have been repeated again and again; his
failures have been as frequent as his attempts. He sees nothing before
him but irremediable ruin. Under such circumstances of helpless
depression, the following narratives from fellow-sufferers and
fellow-victims will appeal to whatever remains of his hopeful nature,
with the assurance that others who have suffered even as he has
suffered, and who have struggled as he has struggled, and have failed
again and again as he has failed, have at length escaped the
destruction which in his own case he has regarded as inevitable.
The number of confirmed opium-eaters in the United States is large,
not less, judging from the testimony of druggists in all parts of the
country as well as from other sources, than eighty to a hundred
thousand. The reader may ask who make up this unfortunate class, and
under what circumstances did they become enthralled by such a habit?
Neither the business nor the laboring classes of the country
contribute very largely to the number. Professional and literary men,
persons suffering from protracted nervous disorders, women obliged by
their necessities to work beyond their strength, prostitutes, and, in
brief, all classes whose business or whose vices make special demands
upon the nervous system, are those who for the most part compose the
fraternity of opium-eaters. The events of the last few years have
unquestionably added greatly to their number. Maimed and shattered
survivors from a hundred battle-fields, diseased and disabled soldiers
released from hostile prisons, anguished and hopeless wives and
mothers, made so by the slaughter of those who were dearest to them,
have found, many of them, temporary relief from their sufferings in
opium.
There are two temperaments in respect to this drug. With persons whom
opium violently constricts, or in whom it excites nausea, there is
little danger that its use will degenerate into a habit. Those,
however, over whose nerves it spreads only a delightful calm, whose
feelings it tranquillizes, and in whom it produces an habitual state
of reverie, are those who should be upon their guard lest the drug to
which in suffering they owe so much should become in time the direst
of curses. Persons of the first description need little caution, for
they are rarely injured by opium. Those of the latter class, who have
already become enslaved by the habit, will find many things in these
pages that are in harmony with their own experience; other things they
will doubtless find of which they have had no experience. Many of the
particular effects of opium differ according to the different
constitutions of those who use it. In De Quincey it exhibited its
power in gorgeous dreams in consequence of some special tendency in
that direction in De Quincey's temperament, and not because dreaming
is by any means an invariable attendant upon opium-eating. Different
races also seem to be differently affected by its use. It seldom,
perhaps never, intoxicates the European; it seems habitually to
intoxicate the Oriental. It does not generally distort the person of
the English or American opium-eater; in the East it is represented as
frequently producing this effect.
It is doubtful whether a sufficient number of cases of excess in
opium-eating or of recovery from the habit have yet been recorded, or
whether such as have been recorded have been so collated as to warrant
a positive statement as to all the phenomena attendant upon its use or
its abandonment. A competent medical man, uniting a thorough
knowledge of his profession with educated habits of generalizing
specific facts under such laws--affecting the nervous, digestive, or
secretory system--as are recognized by medical science, might render
good service to humanity by teaching us properly to discriminate in
such cases between what is uniform and what is accidental. In the
absence, however, of such instruction, these imperfect, and in some
cases fragmentary, records of the experience of opium-eaters are
given, chiefly in the language of the sufferers themselves, that the
opium-eating reader may compare case with case, and deduce from such
comparison the lesson of the entire practicability of his own release
from what has been the burden and the curse of his existence. The
entire object of the compilation will have been attained, if the
narratives given in these pages shall be found to serve the double
purpose of indicating to the beginner in opium-eating the hazardous
path he is treading, and of awakening in the confirmed victim of the
habit the hope that he may be released from the frightful thraldom
which has so long held him, infirm in body, imbecile in will,
despairing in the present, and full of direful foreboding for the
future.
In giving the subjoined narratives of the experience of opium-eaters,
the compiler has been sorely tempted to weave them into a more
coherent and connected story; but he has been restrained by the
conviction that the thousands of opium-eaters, whose relief has been
his main object in preparing the volume, will be more benefited by
allowing each sufferer to tell his own story than by any attempt on
his part to generalize the multifarious and often discordant phenomena
attendant upon the disuse of opium. As yet the medical profession are
by no means agreed as to the character or proper treatment of the
opium disease. While medical science remains in this state, it would
be impertinent in any but a professional person to attempt much more
than a statement of his own case, with such general advice as would
naturally occur to any intelligent sufferer. Very recently indeed,
some suggestions for the more successful treatment of the habit have
been discussed both by eminent medical men and by distinguished
philanthropists. Could an Institution for this purpose be established,
the chief difficulty in the way of the redemption of unhappy thousands
would be obviated. The general outline of such a plan will be found
at the close of the volume. It seems eminently deserving the profound
consideration of all who devote themselves to the promotion of public
morals or the alleviation of individual suffering.
THE OPIUM HABIT.
A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM.
In the personal history of many, perhaps of most, men, some particular
event or series of events, some special concurrence of circumstances,
or some peculiarity of habit or thought, has been so unmistakably
interwoven and identified with their general experience of life as to
leave no doubt in the mind of any one of the decisive influence which
such causes have exerted. Unexaggerated narrations of marked cases of
this kind, while adding something to our knowledge of the marvellous
diversities of temptation and trial, of success and disappointment
which make up the story of human life, are not without a direct value,
as furnishing suggestions or cautions to those who may be placed in
like circumstances or assailed by like temptations.
The only apology which seems to be needed for calling the attention of
the reader to the details which follow of a violent but successful
struggle with the most inveterate of all habits, is to be found in the
hope which the writer indulges, that while contributing something to
the current amount of knowledge as to the horrors attending the
habitual use of opium, the story may not fail to encourage some who
now regard themselves as hopeless victims of its power to a strenuous
and even desperate effort for recovery. Possibly the narrative may
also not be without use to those who are now merely in danger of
becoming enslaved by opium, but who may be wise enough to profit in
time by the experience of another.
A man who has eaten much more than half a hundredweight of opium,
equivalent to more than a hogshead of laudanum, who has taken enough
of this poison to destroy many thousand human lives, and whose
uninterrupted use of it continued for nearly fifteen years, ought to
be able to say something as to the good and the evil there is in the
habit. It forms, however, no part of my purpose to do this, nor to
enter into any detailed statement of the circumstances under which the
habit was formed. I neither wish to diminish my own sense of the evil
of such want of firmness as characterizes all who allow themselves to
be betrayed into the use of a drug which possesses such power of
tyrannizing over the most resolute will, nor to withdraw the attention
of the reader from the direct lesson this record is designed to convey,
by saying any thing that shall seem to challenge his sympathy or
forestall his censures. It may, however, be of service to other
opium-eaters for me to State briefly, that while endowed in most
respects with uncommon vigor of any tendency to despondency or
hypochondria, an unusual nervous sensibilitv, together with a
constitutional tendency to a disordered condition of the digestive
organs, strongly predisposed me to accept the fascination of the opium
habit. The difficulty, early in life, of retaining food of any kind
upon the stomach was soon followed by vagrant shooting pains over the
body, which at a later day assumed a permanant chronic form.
After other remedies had failed, the eminent physician under whose
advice I was acting recommended opium. I have no doubt he acted both
wisely and professionally in the prescription he ordered, but where is
the patient who has learned the secret of substituting luxurious
enjoyment in place of acute pain by day and restless hours by night,
that can be trusted to take a correct measure of his own necessities?
The result was as might have been anticipated: opium after a few
months' use became indispensable. With the full consciousness that
such was the case, came the resolution to break off the habit This was
accomplished after an effort no more earnest than is within the power
of almost any one to make. A recurrence of suffering more than usually
severe led to a recourse to the same remedy, but in largely increased
quantities. After a year or two's use the habit was a second time
broken by another effort much more protracted and obstinate than the
first. Nights made weary and days uncomfortable by pain once more
suggested the same unhappy refuge, and after a struggle against the
supposed necessity, which I now regard as half-hearted and cowardly,
the habit was resumed, and owing to the peculiarly unfavorable state
of the weather at the time, the quantity of opium necessary to
alleviate pain and secure sleep was greater than ever. The habit of
relying upon large doses is easily established; and, once formed, the
daily quantity is not easily reduced. All persons who have long been
accustomed to Opium are aware that there is a _maximum_ beyond
which no increase in quantity does much in the further alleviation of
pain or in promoting increased pleasurable excitement. This maximum
in my own case was eighty grains, or two thousand drops of laudanum,
which was soon attained, and was continued, with occasional
exceptions, sometimes dropping below and sometimes largely rising
above this amount, down to the period when the habit was finally
abandoned. I will not speak of the repeated efforts that were made
during these long years to relinquish the drug. They all failed,
either through the want of sufficient firmness of purpose, or from the
absence of sufficient bodily health to undergo the suffering incident
to the effort, or from unfavorable circumstances of occupation or
situation which gave me no adequate leisure to insure their
success. At length resolve upon a final effort to emancipate myself
from the habit.
For two or three years previous to this time my general health had
been gradually improving. Neuralgic disturbance was of less frequent
occurrence and was less intense, the stomach retained its food, and,
what was of more consequence, the difficulty of securing a reasonable
amount of sleep had for the most part passed away. Instead of a
succession of wakeful nights any serioious interruption of habitual
rest occurred at infrequent intervals, and was usually limited to a
single night.
In addition to these hopeful indications in encouragement of a
vigorous effort to abandon the habit, there were on the other hand
certain warnings which could not safely be neglected. The stomach
began to complain,--as well it might after so many years unnatural
service,--that the daily task of disposing of a large mass of noxious
matter constantly cumulating its deadly assaults upon the natural
processes of life was getting to be beyond its powers. The pulse had
become increasingly languid, while the aversion to labor of any kind
seemed to be settling down into a chronic and hopeless infirmity. Some
circumstances connected with my own situation pointed also to the
appropriateness of the present time for an effort which I knew by the
experience of others would make a heavy demand upon all one's
fortitude, even when these circumstances were most propitious. At this
period my time was wholly at my own disposal. My family was a small
one, and I was sure of every accessory support I might need from them
to tide me over what I hoped would prove only a temporary, though it
might be a severe, struggle. The house I occupied was fortunately so
situated that no outcry of pain, nor any extorted eccentricity of
conduct, consequent upon the effort I proposed to make, could be
observed by neighbors or by-passers.
A few days before the task was commenced, and while on a visit to the
capital of a neighboring State in company with a party of gentlemen
from Baltimore, I had ventured upon reducing by one-quarter the
customary daily allowance of eighty grains. Under the excitement of
such an occasion I continued the experiment for a second day with no
other perceptible effect than a restless indisposition to remain long
in the same position. This, however, was a mere experiment, a prelude
to the determined struggle I was resolved upon making, and to which I
had been incited chiefly through the encouragement suggested by the
success of De Quincey. There is a page in the "Confessions" of this
author which I have no doubt has, been perused with intense interest
by hundreds of opium-eaters. It is the page which gives in a tabular
form the gradual progress he made in diminishing the daily quantity of
laudanum to which he had long been accustomed. I had read and re-read
with great care all that he had seen fit to record respecting his own
triumph over the habit. I knew that he had made use of opium
irregularly and at considerable intervals from the year 1804 to 1812,
and that during this time opium had not become a daily necessity; that
in the year 1813 he had become a confirmed opium-eater, "of whom to
ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart
fulfilled its functions;" that in the year 1821 he had published his
"Confessions," in which, while leading the unobservant reader to think
that he had mastered the habit, he had in truth only so far succeeded
as to reduce his daily allowance from a quantity varying from fifty or
sixty to one hundred and fifty grains, down to one varying from seven
to twelve grains; that in the year 1822 an appendix was added to the
"Confessions" which contained a tabular statement of his further
progress toward an absolute abandonment of the drug, and indicating
his gradual descent, day by day, for thirty-five days, when the reader
is naturally led to suppose that the experiment was triumphantly
closed by his entire disuse of opium.
I had failed, however, to observe that a few pages preceding this
detailed statement the writer had given a faint intimation that the
experiment had been a more protracted one than was indicated by the
table. I had also failed to notice the fact that no real progress had
been made during the first four weeks of the attempt: the average
quantity of laudanum daily consumed for the first week being one
hundred and three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the
third, one hundred and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred
and thirty-eight drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of
more than three days had been rewarded with the indulgence of three
hundred drops on the fourth. A careful comparison of this kind,
showing that in an entire month the average of the first week had been
but one hundred and three drops, while the average of the last had
been one hundred and thirty-eight drops, and that in the fifth week a
frantic effort to abstain wholly for three days had obliged him to use
on the fourth more than double the quantity to which of late he had
been accustomed, would have prevented the incautious conclusion,
suggested by his table, that De Quincey made use of laudanum but on
two occasions after the expiration of the fourth week.
Whatever may have been the length of time taken by De Quincey "in
unwinding to its last link the chain which bound" him, it is certain
we have no means of knowing it from any thing he has recorded. Be it
shorter or longer, his failure to state definitely the entire time
employed in his experiment occasioned me much and needless
suffering. I thought that if another could descend, without the
experience of greater misery than De Quincey records, from one hundred
and thirty drops of laudanum, equivalent to about five grains of
opium, to nothing, in thirty-four or five days, and in this brief
period abandon a habit of more than nine years' growth, a more
resolved will might achieve the same result in the same number of
days, though the starting-point in respect to aggregate quantity and
to length of use was much greater. The object, therefore, to be
accomplished in my own case was to part company forever with opium in
thirty-five days, cost what suffering it might. On the 26th of
November, in a half-desperate, half-despondent temper of mind, I
commenced the long-descending _gradus_ which I had rapidly
ascended so many years before. During this entire period the quantity
consumed had been pretty uniformly eighty grains of best Turkey opium
daily. Occasional attempts to diminish the quantity, but of no long
continuance, and occasional overindulgence during protracted bad
weather, furnished the only exceptions to the general uniformity of
the habit.
The experiment was commenced by a reduction the first day from eighty
grains to sixty, with no very marked change of sensations; the second
day the allowance was fifty grains, with an observable tendency toward
restlessness, and a general uneasiness; the third day a further
reduction of ten grains had diminished the usual allowance by
one-half, but with a perceptible increase in the sense of physical
discomfort. The mental emotions, however, were entirely jubilant The
prevailing feeling was one of hopeful exultation. The necessity for
eighty grains daily had been reduced to a necessity for only forty,
and, therefore, one-half of the dreaded task seemed accomplished. It
was a great triumph, and the remaining forty grains were a mere
_bagatelle_, to be disposed of with the same serene self-control
that the first had been. A weight of brooding melancholy was lifted
from the spirits: the world wore a happier look. The only drawback to
this beatific state of mind was a marked indisposition to remain
quiet, and a restless aversion to giving attention to the most
necessary duties.
Two days more and I had come down to twenty-five grains. Matters now
began to look a good deal more serious. Only fifteen of the last forty
grains had been dispensed with; but this gain had cost a furious
conflict. A strange compression and constriction of the stomach, sharp
pains like the stab of a knife beneath the shoulder-blades, perpetual
restlessness, an apparent prolongation of time, so much so that it
seemed the day would never come to a close, an incapacity of fixing
the attention upon any subject whatever, wandering pains over the
whole body, the jaw, whenever moved, making a loud noise, constant
iritability of mind and increased sensibility to cold, with
alternations of hot flushes, were some of the phenomena which
manifested themselves at this stage of the process. The mental
elations of the first three days had become changed by the fifth into
a state of high nervous excitement; so that while on the whole there
was a prevailing hopefulness of temper, and even some remaining
buoyancy of spirits, arising chiefly from the certainty that already
the quantity consumed had been reduced by more than two-thirds, the
conviction had, nevertheless, greatly deepened, that the task was like
to prove a much more serious one than I had anticipated. Whether it
was possible at present to carry the descent much further had become a
grave question. The next day, however, a reduction of five grains was
somehow attained; but it was a hard fight to hold my own within this
limit of twenty grains. From this stage commenced the really
intolerable part of the experience of an opium-eater retiring from
service. During a single week, three-quarters of the daily allowance
had been relinquished, and in this fact, at least, there was some
ground for exultation. If what had been gained could only be secured
beyond any peradventure of relapse, so far a positive success would be
achieved.
Had the experiment stopped here for a time until the system had become
in some measure accustomed to its new habits, possibly the misery I
subsequently underwent might some of it have been spared me. However
this may be, I had not the patience of mind necessary for a protracted
experiment. What I did must be done at once; if I would win I must
fight for it, and must find the incentive to courage in the conscious
desperation of the contest.
From the point I had now reached until opium was wholly abandoned,
that is, for a month or more, my condition may be described by the
single phrase, intolerable and almost unalleviated wretchedness. Not
for a waking moment during this time was the body free from acute
pain; even in sleep, if that may be called sleep which much of it was
little else than a state of diminished consciousness, the sense of
suffering underwent little remission. What added to the aggravation of
the case, was the profound conviction that no further effort of
resolution was possible, and that every counteracting influence of
this kind had been already wound up to its highest tension. I might
hold my own; to do anything more I thought impossible. Before the
month had come to an end, however, I had a good deal enlarged my
conceptions of the possible resources of the will when driven into a
tight corner.
The only person outside of my family to whom I had confided the
purpose in which I was engaged was a gentleman with whom I had some
slight business relations, and who I knew would honor any demands I
might make in the way of money. I had assured him that by New Year's
Day I should have taken opium for the last time, and that any
extravagance of expenditure would not probably last beyond that
date. Upon this assurance, but confessedly having little or no faith
in it, he asked me to dine with him on the auspicious occasion.
So uncomfortable had my condition and feelings become in the rapid
descent from eighty grains to twenty in less than a week, that I
determined for the future to diminish the quantity by only a single
grain daily, until the habit was finally mastered. In the twenty-nine
days which now remained to the first of January, the nine days more
than were needed, at the proposed rate of diminution, would, I
thought, be sufficient to meet any emergency which might arise from
occasional lapses of firmness in adhering to my self-imposed task, and
more especially for the difficulties of the final struggle--difficulties
I believe to be almost invariably incident to any strife which human
nature is called upon to make in overcoming not merely an obstinate habit
but the fascination of a long-entranced imagination. Up to this time I had
taken the opium as I had always been accustomed to do, in a single dose on
awaking in the morning. I now, however, divided the daily allowance into
two portions, and after a day or two into four, and then into single
grains. The chief advantage which followed this subdivision of the dose was
a certain relief to the mind, which for a few days had become fully aware
of the power which misery possesses of lengthening out the time
intervening between one alleviation and another, and which shrank from the
weary continuance of an entire day's painful and unrelieved abstinence
from the accustomed indulgence. The first three days from the commencement
of this grain by grain descent was marked by obviously increased
impatience with any thing like contradiction or opposition, by an
absolute aversion to reading, and by a very humiliating sense of the
fact that the _vis vitae_ had somehow become pretty thoroughly
eliminated from both mind and body. Still, when night came, as with
long-drawn steps it did come, there was the consciousness that
something had been gained, and that this daily gain, small as it was,
was worth all it had cost. The tenth day of the experiment had reduced
my allowance to sixteen grains. The effect of this rapid diminution
of quantity was now made apparent by additional symptoms. The first
tears extorted by pain since childhood were forced out as by some
glandular weakness. Restlessness, both of body and mind, had become
extreme, and was accompanied with a hideous and almost maniacal
irritability, often so plainly without cause as sometimes to provoke a
smile from those who were about me.
For a few days a partial alleviation from too minute attention to the
pains of the experiment were found in vigorous horseback exercise. The
friend to whose serviceableness in pecuniary matters I have already
alluded, offered me the use of a saddle-horse. The larger of the two
animals which I found in his Stable was much too heroic in appearance
for me in my state of exhaustion to venture upon. Besides this, his
Roman nose and severe gravity of aspect somehow reminded me, whenever
I entered his stall, of the late Judge ----, to whose Lectures on the
Constitution I had listened in my youth, and in my then condition of
moral humiliation I felt the impropriety of putting the saddle on an
animal connected with such respectable associations. No such scruples
interfered with the use of the other animal, which was kept chiefly, I
believe, for servile purposes. He was small and mean-looking--his
foretop and mane in a hopeless tangle, with hay-seed on his eyelids,
and damp straws scattered promiscuously around his body.
Inconsiderable as this animal was, both in size and action, he was
almost too much for me, in the weak state to which I was now
reduced. This much, however, I owe him; disreputable-looking as he
was, he was still a something upon whidi my mind could rest as a point
of diversion from myself--a something outside of my own miseries. At
this time the sense of physical exhaustion had become so great that it
required an effort to perform the most common act. The business of
dressing was a serious tax upon the energies. To put on a coat, or
draw on a boot, was no light labor, and was succeeded by such a
feeling of prostration as required the morning before I could master
sufficient energy to venture upon the needed exercise. The distance to
my friend's stable was trifling. Sometimes I would find there the
negro man to whose care the horses were entrusted, but more frequently
he was absent. A feeling of humiliation at being seen by any one at a
loss how to mount a horse of so diminutive proportions, would triumph
over the sense of bodily weakness whenever he was present to bridle
and saddle him. Whenever he was not at hand the task of getting the
saddle on the pony's back was a long and arduous one. As for lifting
it from its hook and throwing it to its place, I could as easily have
thrown the horse itself over the stable. The only way in which it
could be effected was by first pushing the saddle from its hook,
checking its fall to the floor by the hand, and then resting till the
violent action of the heart had somewhat abated; next, with occasional
failures, to throw it over the edge of the low manger; then an interval
of panting rest. Shortening the halter so far as to bring the pony's
head close to the manger, next enabled me easily to push him into a
line nearly parallel with it, leaving me barely space enough to pass
between. By lengthening the stirrup strap I was enabled to get it
across his neck, and by much pulling, finally haul the saddle to its
proper place. By a kind of desperation of will I commonly succeeded,
though by no means always. Sometimes the mortification and rage at a
failure so contemptible assured success on a second trial, with
apparently less expenditure of exertion than at first. Occasionally,
however, I was forced to call for assistance from sheer exhaustion.
The bridling was comparatively an easy matter; with his head so
closely tied to the manger little scope was left for dodging. In
the irritable condition I was now in, the most trifling opposition
made me angry, and anger gave me strength; and in this sudden vigor
of mind the issue of our daily struggle was, I believe, with a single
exception, on my side.
When I led him into the yard, the insignificance of his appearance, in
contrast with the labor it had cost me to get him there, was enough to
make any one laugh, excepting perhaps a person suffering the
punishment I was then undergoing. Mounting the animal called for a
final struggle of determination with weakness. A stone next the fence
was the chief reliance in this emergency. It placed me nearly on a
level with the stirrup, while the fence enabled me to steady myself
with my hand and counteract the tremulousness of the knees, which made
mounting so difficult. On one occasion, however, my dread of being
observed induced me to make too great an effort. Hearing some one
approach, I attempted to raise myself in the stirrup without the aid
of stone or fence, but it was more than I could manage. Hardly had I
succeeded in raising myself from the ground when my extreme feebleness
was manifest, and I fell prostrate upon my back. With the help of the
colored woman, the astonished witness of my fall, I finally succeeded
in getting upon the horse. Once seated, however, I felt like another
person. The vigorous application of a whip, heartily repeated for a
few strokes, would arouse the pony into a sullen canter, out of which
he would drop with a demonstrative suddenness that made it difficult
to keep my seat. In this way considerable relief was obtained for
several days from the exasperations produced by the long continuance
of pain. After about a fortnight's use of the animal, and when I had
learned to be content with half a dozen grains of opium daily, I found
myself too weak and helpless to venture on his back, and thus our
acquaintance terminated. As this is the first, and probably the last
appearance of my equine friend in print, I may as well say that he was
sold a short time afterward in the Fifth Street Horse Market, for the
sum of forty-three dollars. This is but a meagre price, but the horse
had not then become historical.
For the week I was dropping from sixteen grains to nine the addition
of new symptoms was slight, but the aggravation of the pain previously
endured was marked. The feeling of bodily and mental wretchedness was
perpetual, while the tedium of life and occasional vague wishes that
it might somehow come to an end were not infrequent. The chief
difficulty was to while away the hours of day-light. My rest at night
had indeed become imperfect and broken, but still it was a kind of
sleep for several hours, though neither very refreshing nor very
sound. Those who were about me say that I was in constant motion, but
of this I was unconscious. I only recollect that wakening was a
welcome relief from the troubled activity of my thoughts. After my
morning's ride I usually walked slowly and hesitatingly to the city,
but as this occupied only an hour the remaining time hung wearily upon
my hands. I could not read--I could hardly sit for five consecutive
minutes. Many suffering hours I passed daily either in a large public
library or in the book-stores of the city, listlessly turning over the
leaves of a book and occasionally reading a few lines, but too
impatient to finish, a page, and rarely apprehending what I was
reading. The entire mental energies seemed to be exhausted in the one
consideration--how not to give in to the tumult of pain from which I
was suffering. Up to this time I had from boyhood made a free use of
tobacco. The struggle with opium in which I was now so seriously
engaged had repeatedly suggested the propriety of including the former
also in the contest. While the severity of the struggle would, I
supposed, be enhanced, the self-respect and self-reliance, the
opposition and even obduracy of the will would, I hoped, be enough
increased as not seriously to hazard the one great object of leaving
off opium forevcr. Still I dreaded the experiment of adding a
feather's weight to the sufferings I was then enduring. An accidental
circumstance, however, determined me upon making the trial; but to my
surprise, no inconvenience certainly, and scarce a consciousness of
the deprivation accompanied it. The opium suffering was so
overwhelming that any minor want was aimost inappreciable. The next
day brought me down to nine grains of Opium. It was now the sixteenth
day of December, and I had still fifteen days remaining before the New
Year would, as I had resolved, bring me to the complete relinquishment
of the drug. The three days which succeeded the disuse of tobacco
caused no apparent intensification of the suffering I had been
experiencing. On the fourth day, however, and for the fortnight which
succeeded, the agony of pain was inexpressibly dreadful, except for
the transient intervals when the effects of the opium were felt.
For a few days I had been driven to the alternative of using brandy or
increasing the dose of opium. I resorted to the former as the least of
the two evils. In the condition I was now in it caused no perceptible
exhilaration. It did however deaden pain, and made endurance
possible. Especially it helped the weary nights to pass away. At this
time an entirely new series of phenomena presented themselves. The
alleviation caused by brandy was of short continuance. After a few
days' use, sleep for any duration, with or without stimulants, was an
impossibility. The sense of exhausting pain was unremitted day and
night. The irritability both of mind and body was frightful. A
perpetual stretching of the joints followed, as though the body had
been upon the rack, while acute pains shot through the limbs, only
sufficiently intermitting to give place to a sensation of nerveless
helplessness. Impatience of a state of rest seemed now to have become
chronic, and the only relief I found was in constant though a very
uncertain kind of walking which daily threatened to come to an end
from general debility. Each morning I would lounge around the house as
long as I could make any pretext for doing so, and then ride to the
city, for at this time the mud was too deep to think of walking. Once
on the pavements, I would wander around the streets in a weary way for
two or three hours, frequently resting in some shop or store wherever
I could find a seat, and only anxious to get through another long,
never-ending day.
The disuse of tobacco, together with the consequences of the
diminished use of opium, had now induced a furious appetite. Dining
early at a restaurant of rather a superior character, where bread,
crackers, pickles, etc., were kept on the table in much larger
quantities than it was supposed possible for one individual to need,
my hunger had become so extreme that I consumed not only all for which
I had specially called, but usually every thing else upon the table,
leaving little for the waiter to remove except empty dishes and his
own very apparent astonishment. This, it should be understood, was a
surreptitious meal, as my own dinner-hour was four o'clock, at which
time I was as ready to do it justice as though innocent of all food
since a heavy breakfast. The hours intervening between this first and
second dinner it was difficult to pass away. The ability to read even
a newspaper paragraph had ceased for a number of days. From habit,
indeed, I continued daily to wander into several of the city
book-stores and into the public library, but the only use I was able
to make of their facilities consisted in sitting, but with frequent
change of chairs, and looking listlessly around me. The one prevailing
feeling now was to get through, somehow or anyhow, the experiment I
was suffering under.
Early in the trial my misgivings as to the result had been frequent;
but after the struggle had become thoroughly an earnest one, a kind of
cast-iron determination made me sure of a final triumph. The more the
agony of pain seemed intolerable, the more seemed to deepen the
certainty of my conviction that I should conquer. I thought at times
that I could not survive such wretchedness, but no other alternative
for many days presented itself to my mind but that of leaving off
opium or dying. I recall, indeed, a momentary exception, but the
relaxed resolution lasted only as the lightning-flash lasts, though
like the lightning it irradiated for a brilliant instant the tumult
that was raging within me. For several days previous to this transient
weakness the weather had been heavy and lowering, rain falling
irregularly, alternating with a heavy Scottish mist. During one of the
last days of this protracted storm my old nervous difficulty returned
in redoubled strength. Commencing in the shoulder, with its hot
needles it crept over the neck and speedily spread its myriad fingers
of fire over the nerves that gird the ear, now drawing their burning
threads and now vibrating the tense agony of these filaments of
sensation. By a leap it next mastered the nerves that surround the
eye, driving its forked lightning through each delicate avenue into
the brain itself, and confusing and confounding every power of thought
and of will. This is neuralgia--such neuralgia as sometimes drives
sober men in the agony of their distress into drunkenness, and good
men into blasphemy.
While suffering under a paroxysm of this kind, rendered all the more
difficult to endure from the exhausted state of the body--in doubt
even, at intervals, whether my mind was still under my own control--an
impulse of almost suicidal despair suggested the thought, "Go back to
opium; you can not stand this." The temptation endured but for a
moment, "No, I have suffered too much, and I can not go back. I had
rather die;" and from that moment the possibility of resuming the
habit passed from my mind forever.
It was at night, however, that the suffering from this change of habit
became most unendurable. While the day-light lasted it was possible to
go out-of-doors, to sit in the sunlight, to walk, to do something to
divert attention from the exhausted and shattered body; but when
darkness fell, and these resources failed, nothing remained except a
patient endurance with which to combat the strange torment. The only
disposition toward sleep was now limited to the early evening. Double
dinners, together with the disuse of tobacco, began at this time to
induce a fullness of habit in spite of bodily pain. In addition to
this, the liver was seriously affected--which seems to be a
concomitant of the rapid disuse of opium--and a tendency to heavy
drowsiness resulted, as usually happens when this organ is
disordered. As early as six or seven o'clock an unnatural heaviness
would oppress the senses, shutting out the material world, but not
serving wholly to extinguish the consciousness of pain, and which
commonly lasted for an hour or two. For no longer period could sleep
be induced upon any terms. During these wretched weeks the moments
seemed to prolong themselves into hours, and the hours into almost
endless durations of time. The monotonous sound of the ticking clock
often became unendurable. The calmness of its endlessly-repeated beats
was in jarring discord with my own tumultuous sensations. At times it
seemed to utter articulate sounds. "Ret-ri-bu-tion" I recollect as
being a not uncommon burden of its song. As the racked body, and the
mind, possibly beginning to be diseased, became intolerant of the
odious sound, the motion of the clock was sometimes stopped, but the
silence which succeeded was even worse to the disordered imagination
than the voices which had preceded it. With the eyes closed in harmony
with the deadly stillness, all created nature seemed annihilated,
except my single, suffering self, lying in the midst of a boundless
void. If the eyes were opened, the visible world would return, but
peopled with sights and sounds that made the misty vastness less
intolerable. There appeared to be nothing in these sensations at all
approaching the phenomena exhibited in delirium tremens. On the
contrary, the mind was always and perfectly aware, except for the
instant, of the unreal nature of these deceptions and illusions.
A single case will sufficiently illustrate the nature of some of these
apparitions. In the absence of sleep, and while engaged as was not
unusual at this period in the perpetration of doggerel verse, the
irritation of the stomach became intolerable. The sensation seemed
similar to what. I had read of the final gnawings of hunger in persons
dying of starvation; a new vitality appeared to be imparted to the
organ, revealing to the consciousness a capacity for suffering
previously unsuspected. In the earlier stages, this feeling, which did
not exhibit itself till somewhat late in the process of leaving off
opium, was marked by an insatiable craving for stimulus of some sort,
and a craving which would hardly take denial. While suffering in this
way intolerably on one occasion, and after having attempted in vain to
find some possible alleviation suggested in the pages of De Quincey,
which lay near me, I threw myself back on the bed with the old
resolution to fight it out. Almost immediately an animal like a weasel
in shape, but with the neck of a crane and covered with brilliant
plumage, appeared to spring from my breast to the floor. A venerable
Dutch market-woman, of whom I had been in the habit of purchasing
celery, seemed to intervene between me and the animal, begging me not
to look at it, and covering it with her apron. Just as I was about to
remonstrate against her interference, something seemed to give way in
the chest and the violence of the pain suddenly abated.
It may aid the reader to form some adequate notion of the dreary
length to which these nights drew themselves along, to mention that on
one occasion, wearied out and disgusted with such illusions, I
resolved neither to look at the clock nor open my eyes for the next
two hours. It then wanted ten minutes to one; at ten minutes to three
my compact with myself would close. For what seemed thousands upon
thousands of times I listened to the clock's steady ticking. I heard
it repeat with murderous iteration, "Ret-ri-bu-tion," varied
occasionally, under some new access of pain, with other
utterances. Though ordinarily so little endowed with the poetic gift
as never to have attempted to write a line of verse, yet at this time,
and for a few days previous, I had experienced a strange development
of the rhythmical faculty, and on this particular occasion I made
verses, such as they were, with incredible ease and rapidity. I
remember being greatly troubled by the necessity for a popular
national hymn, and manufactured several with extempore rapidity. Had
their merit at all corresponded with the frightful facility with which
they were composed, they would have won universal popularity.
Unfortunately, the effusions were never written down, and can
not, therefore, be added to that immense mass of trash which
demonstrates the still possible advent of a true American
_Marseillaise_.
With these tasks accomplished, and with a suspicion that the allotted
hours must have long expired, I would yet remind myself that I was in
a condition to exaggerate the lapse of time; and then, to give myself
every assurance of fidelity to my purpose, I would start off on a new
term of endurance. I seemed to myself to have borne the penance for
hours, to have made myself a shining example of what a resolute will
can do under circumstances the most inauspicious. At length, when
certain that the time must have much more than expired, and with no
little elation over the happy result of the experiment, I looked up to
the clock and found it to be just three minutes past one! Little as
the mind had really accomplished, the sense of its activity in these
few minutes had been tremendous. Measuring time by the conscious
succession of ideas may, if I may say it parenthetically, be no more
than the same infirmity of our limited human faculties which just now
is leading so many men of science, consciously or unconsciously, to
recognize in Nature co-ordinate gods, self-subsisting and independent
of the ever-living and all-present God.
During the five days in which I was descending from the use of six
grains of opium to two, the indications of the changes going on in the
system were these: The gnawing sensation in the stomach continued and
increased; the plethoric feeling was unabated, the pulse slow and
heavy, usually beating about forty-seven or forty-eight pulsations to
the minute; the blood of the whole system seemed to be driven to the
extremities of the body; my face had become greatly flushed; the
fingers were grown to the size of thumbs, while they, together with
the palms of the hands and the breast, parted with their cuticle in
long strips. The lower extremities had become hard, as through the
agency of some compressed fluid. A prickling sensation over the body,
as if surcharged with electricity, and accompanied with an apparent
flow of some hot liquid down the muscles of the arms and legs,
exhibited itself at this time. A constant perspiration of icy coldness
along the spine had also become a conspicuous element in this strange
aggregation of suffering. The nails of the fingers were yellow and
dead-looking, like those of a corpse; a kind of glistening leprous
scales formed over the hands; a constant tremulousncss pervaded the
whole system, while separate small vibrations of the fibres on the
back of the hand were plainly visible to the eye. To these symptoms
should be added a dimness of sight often so considerable as to prevent
the recognition of objects even at a short distance.
With an experience of which this is only a brief outline, Christmas
Day found me using but two grains of opium. Seven days still remained
to me before I was to be brought by my pledge to myself to the last
use of the drug. For several days previous to this I had abandoned my
bed, through apprehension of falling whenever partial sleep left the
tumbling and tossing body exempt from the control of the will, and had
betaken myself to a low couch made up before the fire, with a second
bed on the floor by its side. The necessity for such precaution was
repeatedly indicated, but through the kindest care of those whose
solicitude never ceased, and who added inexpressibly to this kindness
by controlling as far as possible every appearance of solicitude, no
injury resulted.
Under the accumulated agony of this part of the trial I began to fear
that my mind might give way. I was conscious of occasional fury of
temper under very slight provocation. An expressman had charged me
what was really an extortionate sum for bringing out a carriage from
the city. I can laugh now over the absurd way in which I attacked
him, not so much I am sure to save the overcharge as to get rid on so
legitimate an object of my accumulated irritability. After nearly an
hour's angry dispute, in which I watched successfully and with a
malicious ingenuity for any opening through which I could enrage him,
and for doing which I am certain he would forgive me if he had known
how much I was suffering, he at last gave up the contest by
exclaiming, "For heaven's sake give me any thing you please--only let
me go!" I had not only saved my money, but felt myself greatly
refreshed at finding there was so much life left in me.
It should have been stated before, that when the daily allowance had
been reduced to six grains that quantity was divided into twelve
pills, and that as this was diminished the size of the pills became
gradually smaller till each of them only represented an eighth of a
grain. As the daily amount of opium became smaller, although its
general effect on the system was necessarily diminished, the conscious
relief obtained from each of its fractional parts was for a few
minutes more apparent than when these sub-divisions were first made.
In this way it was possible so to time the effect as to throw their
brief anodyne relief upon the dinner-hour or any other time when it
might be convenient to have the agony of the struggle a little
alleviated.
While I am not desirous of going into needless detail respecting all
the particular phenomena of the process through which I was now
passing, it may yet give the reader a more definite idea of the
extremely nervous state to which I was reduced, if I mention that so
nearly incapable had my hand become of holding a pen, that whenever it
was absolutely necessary for me to write a few lines I could only
manage it by taking the pen in one quivering hand, then grasp it with
the other to give it a little steadiness, watching for an interval in
the nervous twitching of the arm and hand, and then, making an
uncertain dash at the paper, scrawl a word or two at long
intervals. In this way I continued for several weeks to prepare the
few brief notes I was obliged to write. My signature at this period I
regard with some curiosity and more pride. It is certainly better than
that of Guido Faux, affixed to his examination after torture, though
it is hardly equal to the signature of Stephen Hopkins to the
Declaration of Independence.
Christmas Day found me in a deplorable condition. No symptom of
dissolving nature seemed alleviated; indeed the aggravation of the
previous ones, especially of the already unendurable irritation of the
stomach, was very obvious. In addition to this, the protracted
wakefulness at night began to tell upon the brain, and I resolved to
make my case known to a physician. I should have done this long
before, but I had been deterred by two things--a long-settled
conviction that all recovery from such habits must be essentially the
patient's own resolute act, and my misfortune in never having found
among my medical friends any one who had made the opium disease a
special study, or who knew very much about it. The weather was
excessively disagreeable, the heavens, about forty feet off,
distilling the finest and most penetrating kind of moisture, while the
limestone soil under the influence of the long rain had made walking
almost impossible. With frantic impatience I waited until an omnibus
made its appearance long after it was due, but crowded outside and
in. The only unoccupied spot was the step of the carriage. How in my
enfeebled condition I could hold on to this jolting standing-place for
half an hour was a mystery I could not divine. With many misgivings I
mounted the step, and by rousing all my energies contrived for a few
minutes to retain my foot-hold. My knees seemed repeatedly ready to
give way beneath me, my sight became dim, and my brain was in a whirl;
but I still held on. I would gladly have left the omnibus, but I was
certain that I should fall if I removed my hands from the frame-work
of the door by which I was holding on. At length, a middle-aged Irish
woman who had been observing me said, "You look very pale, Sir; I am
afraid you are sick. You must take my seat." I thanked her, but told
her I feared I had not strength enough to step inside. Two men helped
me in, and a few minutes afterward an humble woman was kneeling in her
wet clothing in the Church of St. ----, not the less penetrated, I
trust, with the divine spirit of that commemorative day by her
self-denying kindness to a stranger in his extremity. When the paved
sidewalk was at last reached I started, after a few minutes' rest, in
search of a physician. Purposely selecting the least-frequented
streets, in dread of falling if obliged to turn from a direct course,
as might be necessary in a crowded thoroughfare, I walked down to the
office of the medical man whom I wished to consult; but when I arrived
it seemed to me that my case was beyond human aid, and I walked on. I
can, perhaps, find no better place than this in which to call the
distinct attention of opium-eaters who may be induced to start out on
their own reformation, to the all-important fact that no part of the
body will be found so little affected by the rapid disuse of opium as
the muscles used in walking. I am no physiologist, and do not pretend
to explain it, but it is a most fortunate circumstance that in the
general chaos and disorder of the rest of the system, the ability to
walk, on which so much of the possibility of recovery rests, is by far
the least affected of all the physical powers.
During the morning, however, my wretchedness drove me again to the
office of the same physician. He listened courteously to my statement;
said it was a very serious case, but outside of any reliable
observation of his own, and recommended me to consult a physician of
eminence residing in quite a different part of the city. He also
expressed the hope, though I thought in no very confident tone, that I
might be successful, and pretending to shut the door, watched my
receding footsteps till I turned a distant corner. I now pass the
house of the other physician to whom I was recommended to apply,
several times every week, and I often moralize over the apprehension
and anxieties with which I then viewed the two or three steps which
led to his dwelling. When I arrived opposite his house I stopped and
calculated the chances of mounting these steps without falling. I
first rested my hand upon the wall and then endeavored to lift my feet
upon the second step, but I had not the strength for such an
exertion. I thought of crawling to the door, but this was hardly a
decorous exhibition for the most fashionable street of the city,
filled just then with gayly-dressed ladies. Why I did not ask some
gentleman to aid me I can not now recall. I only recollect waiting for
several minutes in blank dismay over the seeming impossibility of ever
entering the door before me. Finally I went to the curbstone and
walked as rapidly and steadily as possible to the lower step, and
summoning all my energies made a plunge upward and fortunately caught
the door-knob. The physician was at dinner, which gave me some time to
recover myself from the agitation into which I had been thrown. After
I had narrated my case with special reference to the suspicion of
internal inflammation and its possible effect upon the brain, he
assured me that no danger of the kind needs to be anticipated. He
hoped I might succeed in my purpose, but thought it doubtful. An uncle
of his own, a clergyman of some reputation, had died in making the
effort. However, if I would take care of my own resolution, he would
answer for my continued sanity. He prescribed some preparation of
valerian and red pepper, I think, which I used for a week with little
appreciable benefit. Finding no great relief from this prescription,
or from those of other medical men whom for a few days about this time
I consulted, and feeling a constant craving for something bitter, I at
last prescribed for myself. Passing a store where liquor was sold, my
eye accidentally rested upon a placard in the window which read
"Stoughton's Bitters." This preparation gave me momentary relief, and
the only appreciable relief I found in medicine during the experiment.
The nights now began to bring new apprehensions. A constant dread
haunted my mind, in spite of the physician's assurances, that my brain
might give way from the excitement under which I labored. I was
especially afraid of some sudden paroxysm of mania, under the
influence of which I might do myself unpremeditated injury. I never
feared any settled purpose of self-injury, but I had become nervously
apprehensive of possible wayward and maniacal impulses which might
result in acts of violence.
My previous business had frequently detained me in the city till a
late hour, sometimes as late as midnight. A part of the road that led
to my house was quite solitary, with here and there a dwelling or
store of the lowest kind. A railroad in process of construction had
drawn to particular points on the road small collections of hovels,
many of which were whisky-shops, and past these noisy drinking-places
it was considered hazardous to walk alone at a late hour. In
consequence of the bad reputation of this neighborhood I had purchased
a large pistol which I kept ready for an emergency. Now, however, this
pistol began to rest heavily upon my mind. The situation of my house
was peculiarly favorable for the designs of any marauder. Directly
back of it a solitary ravine extended for half a mile or more until it
opened upon a populous suburb of the city. This suburb was largely
occupied by persons engaged in navigation, or connected with
boat-building, or by day-laborers, representing among them many
nationalities. The winter of which I am writing was one of unusual
stagnation in business and a hard one for the poor to get over. In the
nervously susceptible state of my mind at this time, this ravine
became a serious discomfort. When the stillness of night settled
within and around the house, the rustling of leaves and the distant
foot-falls in the ravine became distinctly audible. By some fancy of
Judge ----, who built it, the house had no less than seven outside
entrances. At intervals I would hear burglars at one of the doors,
then at another, nearer or more remote: the prying of levers, the
sound of boring, the stealthy footsteps, the carefully-raised window,
the heavy breathing of an intruder. Then came the appalling sense of
some strange presence, where no outward indication of such presence
could be perceived, followed by gliding shaddos revealed by the
occasional flicker of the waning fire.
Illusions of this nature served to keep the blood at feverheat during
the hours of darkness. Night after night the pistol was placed beneath
the pillow in readiness for these ghostly intruders. A few days,
however, brought other apprehensions worse than those of thieves and
burglars. The uncontrollable exasperation of the temper obliged me at
length to draw the charge from the pistol, through fear of yielding to
some sudden impulse of despair. I had also put out of reach my razors,
a hammer, and whatever else might serve as an impromptu means of
violence. I remember the grim satisfaction with which I looked upon
the brass ornaments of the bedroom fire-place, and reflected that, if
worse came to worst, I was not wholly without a resource with which to
end my sufferings. For nearly a fortnight previously I had refrained
from shaving, dreading I scarce knew what.
The day succeeding Christmas I rode to the city and walked the length
of innumerable by-streets as my weakness would allow. When too
exhausted to walk further, and looking for some place of rest, I
observed a barber's sign suspended over a basement room. Fortunately
the barber stood in the door-way and helped me to descend the
half-dozen stone steps which led to his shop. I told the man to cut my
hair, shave me, and shampoo my head. As he began his manipulations it
seemed as though every separate hair was endowed with an intense
vitality. It was impossible to refrain from mingled screams and groans
as I repeatedly caught his arm and obliged him to desist. Luckily the
barher was a man of sense, and by his extreme gentleness contrived in
the course of an hour to calm down my excitement.
When he had finished his work the sense of relief and refreshment was
astonishing. In this barber-shop I learned for the first time in what
the perfection of earthly happiness consists. The sudden cessation of
protracted and severe pain brings with it so exquisite a sense of
enjoyment that I do not believe that successful ambition, or requited
love, or the gratification of the wildest wishes for wealth, has a
happiness to bestow at all comparable to the calm, contented,
all-satisfying happiness that comes from a remission of intolerable
pain. For the first time in a month I felt an emotion that could be
called positively pleasant. As I left the shop I needed no assistance
in reaching the sidewalk, and waiked the streets for an hour or two
with something of an assured step.
Among other indications of the change taking place at this time in the
system was the increased freezing perspiration perpetually going on,
especially down the spine. This sense of dampness and icy coldness has
now continued for many months, and for nearly a year was accompanied
with a heavy cold. During the opium-eating years I do not remember to
have been affected at all in this latter way; but a severe cold at
this time settled upon the lungs, one indication of which was frequent
sternutation, consequent apparently upon the inflammation of the
mucous membrane.
In the entire week from Christmas to New Year's the progress in
abandonment of opium was but a single grain. I am sure there was no
want of resolution at this trying time. Day by day I exhausted all my
resources in the vain endeavor to get on with half, three-quarters,
even seven-eighths of a grain; but moans and groans, and biting the
tongue till the blood came, as it repeatedly did, would not carry me
over the twenty-four hours without the full grain. It seemed as if
tortured nature would collapse under any further effort to bring the
matter to a final issue.
Brandy and bitters after a few day's use had been abandoned, under the
apprehension that they were connected with the tendency to internal
inflammation which I have noticed as possibly affecting the brain. For
a day or two I resorted to ale, but a disagreeable sweetness about it
induced the substitution of Schenck beer, a weak kind of
_lager_. This I found satisfied the craving for a bitter liquid,
and it became for two or three weeks my chief drink. I should have
mentioned that the day subsequent to the disuse of tobacco I had also
given up tea and coffee, partly from a disposition to test the
strength of my resolution, and partly from the belief that they might
have some connection with a constant sensation in the mouth as if
salivated with mercury. I soon learned that the real difficulty lay in
the liver, and that this organ is powerfully affected in persons
abandoning the long-continued use of opium. Had I known this fact at
an earlier day it would have been of service in teaching me to control
the diseased longing for rich and highly-seasoned food which had now
become a passion. Eat as much as I would, however, the sense of hunger
never left me; and this diseased craving, in ignorance of its
injurious effects, was gratified in a way that might have taxed
unimpaired powers of digestion.
At length the long-anticipated New Year's Day, on which I was to be
emancipated forever from the tyranny of opium, arrived. For five weeks
of such steady suffering as the wealth of all the world would not
induce me to encounter a second time, I had kept my eye steadily fixed
upon this day as the beginning of a new life. This was also the day on
which I was to dine with my friend. As the dinner-hour approached it
became evident that no opium meant no dinner, and a little later, that
dinner or no dinner the opium was still a necessity. A half grain I
thought might carry me through the day, but in this I was mistaken. As
I lay upon my friend's sofa, suffering from a strange medley of
hunger, pain, and weakness, it seemed that years must elapse before
the system could regain its tone or the bodily sensations become at
all endurable. Soon after dinner I felt obliged to take another
half-grain. My humiliation in failing to triumph when and how I had
resolved to do, was excessive. In spite of the strongest resolutions,
I was still an opium-eater. I somehow felt that after all I had gone
through I ought, to have succeeded. I was in no mood to speculate
about the causes of the failure; it was enough to know that I had
failed, and what was worse, that apparently nothing whatever had been
gained in the last four days. While I certainly felt no temptation to
give in, I thought it possible that some of the functions of the body,
from the long use of opium, might have completely lost their powers of
normal action, and that I should be obliged to continue a very
moderate use of the drug during the remainder of my life. I saw, in
dismal perspective, that small fractional part of the opium of years
which was now represented by a single grain, looming up in endless
distance, not unlike that puzzling metaphysical necessity in the
perpetual subdivision of a unit, which, carried as far as it may be,
always leaves a final half undisposed of. But in this I did myself
injustice. I had really gained much in these few days, and the proof
of it lay in the use of but half a grain on the day which succeeded
New Year's. The third day of January, greatly to my surprise, a
quarter-grain I found carried me through the twenty-four hours with
apparently some slight remission of suffering.
As I now look back upon it, the worst of the experiment lay in the
three weeks intervening between the 10th and the 31st of December. So
far as mere pain of body was concerned, there was little to choose
between the agony of one day and another; but the apprehension that
insanity might set in, certainly aggravated the distress of the later
stages of the trial. When a man knows that he is practicing
self-control to the very utmost, and holding himself up steadily to
his work in spite of the gravest discouragements, the consciousness
that a large vacuum is being gradually formed in his brain is not
exhilarating.
The next day--to me a very memorable one--the fourth of January, I sat
for most of the day rocking backward and forward on a sofa or a chair,
speaking occasionally a few words in a low sepulchral voice, but with
the one bitter feeling, penetrating my whole nature, that come what
would, on that day _I would not_.
When the clock struck twelve at midnight, and I knew that for the
first time in many years I had lived for an entire day without opium,
it excited no surprise or exultation. The capacity for an emotion of
any kind was exhausted. I seemed as little capable of a sentiment as a
man well could be, this side of his winding-sheet. I knew, of course,
that in these forty days save one, I had worked out the problem, How
to leave off opium, and that I had apparently attained a final
deliverance: but it was several weeks before I appreciated with any
confidence the completion of the task I had undertaken.
Although the opium habit was broken, it was only to leave me in a
condition of much feebleness and suffering. I could not sleep, I
could not sit quietly, I could not lie in any one posture for many
minutes together. The nervous system was thoroughly deranged. Weak as
I had become, I felt a continual desire to walk. The weather was
unfavorable, but I managed to get several miles of exercise almost
daily. But this relief was limited to four or five hours at most, and
left the remainder of the day a weary weight upon my hands. The
aversion to reading had become such that some months elapsed before I
took up a book with any pleasure. Even the daily papers were more than
I could well fix my attention upon, except in the briefest and most
cursory way. Within a week, however, the sense of acute pain rapidly
diminished, but the irritability, impatience, and incapacity to do any
thing long remained unrelieved. The disordered liver became apparently
more disordered with the progress of time, producing such effects upon
the bowels as may with more fitness be told a physician than recorded
here. The tonsils of the throat were swollen, the throat itself
inflamed, while the chest was penetrated with what seemed like
pulsations of prickly heat. There was also a sense of fullness in the
muscles of the arms and legs which seemed to be permeated, if I may so
express it, with heated electricity. The general condition of the
nervous system will be sufficiently indicated by the statement that it
was between three or four months before I could hold a pen with any
degree of steadiness. Meantime, singular as it may seem, the
appearance of health and vigor had astonishingly increased. I had
gained more than twenty pounds in weight, partly, I suppose, the
result of leaving off opium and tobacco, and partly the consequence of
the insatiable appetite with which I was constantly followed. Within a
month after the close of the opium strife, I was repeatedly
congratulated upon my healthy, vigorous condition. Few men in the
entire city bore about them more of the appearance of perfect health,
and fewer still were probably in such a state of exhausted vitality.
During the time I was leaving off opium I had labored under the
impression that the habit once mastered, a speedy restoration to
health would follow. I was by no means prepared, therefore, for the
almost inappreciable gain in the weeks which succeeded, and in some
anxiety consulted a number of physicians, who each suggested in a
timid way the trial, some of strychnine, some of valerian, some of
lupuline, hyoscyamus, ignatia, belladonna, and what not. I do not know
that I derived the slightest benefit from any of these prescriptions,
or from any other therapeutic agency, unless I except the good effects
for a few days of bitters, and of cold shower-baths from a tank in
which ice was floating.
The most judicious of the medical gentlemen whose aid I invoked, was,
I think, the one who replied to my inquiry for his bill, "What for? I
have done you no good, and have learned more from you than you have
from me."
This constitutes the entire history of my medical experience, and is
mentioned as being the only, and a very small adjunct to the great
remedy--patient, persistent, obstinate endurance. So exceeding slow
has been the process toward the restoration of a natural condition of
the system, that writing now, at the expiration of more than a year
since opium was finally abandoned, it seems to me very uncertain when,
if ever, this result will be reached. Between four and five months
elapsed before I was at all capable of commanding my attention or
controlling the nervous impatience of mind and body. I then assented
to a proposal which involved the necessity of a good deal of steady
work, in the hope that constant occupation would divert the attention
from the nervousness under which I suffered and would restore the
self-reliance which had so long failed me. It was a foolish
experiment, and might have proved a fatal one. The business I had
undertaken required a clear head and average health, and I had
neither. The sleep was short and imperfect, rarely exceeding two or
three hours. The chest was in a constant heat and very sore, while the
previous bilious difficulties seemed in no way overcome. The mouth was
parched, the tongue swollen, and a low fever seemed to have taken
entire possession of the system, with special and peculiar
exasperations in the muscles of the arms and legs.
The difficulty of thinking to any purpose was only equalled by the
reluctance with which I could bring myself to the task of holding a
pen. For a few weeks, however, the necessity of not wholly disgracing
myself forced me on after a poor fashion; but at the end of two months
I was a used-up man. I would sit for hours looking listlessly upon a
sheet of paper, helpless of originating an idea upon the commonest of
subjects, and with a prevailing sensation of owning a large emptiness
in the brain, which seemed chiefly filled with a stupid wonder when
all this would end.
More than an entire year has now passed, in which I have done little
else than to put the preceding details into shape from brief memoranda
made at the time of the experiment. While the physical agony ceased
almost immediately after the opium was abandoned, the irritation of
the system still continues. I do not know how better to describe my
present state than by the use of language which professional men may
regard as neither scientific nor accurate, but which will express, I
hope, to unprofessional readers the idea I wish to convey, when I say
that the entire system seems to me not merely to have been poisoned,
but saturated with poison. Had some virus been transfused into the
blood, which carried with it to every nerve of sensation a sense of
painful, exasperating unnaturalness, the feeling would not, I imagine,
be unlike what I am endeavoring to indicate.
ADDENDA.--At the time of writing the preceding narrative I had
supposed that the entire story was told, and that the intelligent
reader, should this record ever see the light, would naturally infer,
as I myself imagined would be the case, that the unnatural condition
of the body would soon become changed into a state of average
health. In this I was mistaken. So tenacious and obstinate in its hold
upon its victim is the opium disease, that even after the lapse of ten
years its poisonous agency is still felt. Without some reference to
these remoter consequences of the hasty abandonment of confirmed
habits of opium-eating, the chief object of this narrative as a guide
to others (who will certainly need all the information on the subject
that can be given them) would fail of being secured. While
unquestionably the heaviest part of the suffering resulting from such
a change of habit belongs to the few weeks in which the patient is
abandoning opium, it ought not to be concealed that this brief period
by no means comprises the limit within which he will find himself
obliged to maintain the most rigid watch over himself, lest the
feeling of desperation which at times assaults him from the hope of
immediate physical restoration disappointed and indefinitely
postponed, should drive him back to his old habits. Indeed, with some
temperaments, the greatest danger of a relapse comes in, not during
the process of abandonment, but after the habit has been broken. Great
bodily pain serves only to rouse up some natures to a more earnest
strife, and, as their sufferings become more intense, the
determination not to yield gains an unnatural strength. The mind is
vindicating itself as the master of the body. While in this state,
tortures and the fagot are powerless to extort groans or confessions
from the racked or half-consumed martyr. Many a sufferer has borne the
agony of the boots or the thumb-screw without flinching, whose courage
has given way under the less painful but more unendurable punishment
of prolonged imprisonment. In the one case all a man's powers of
resistance are roused; he feels that his manhood is at stake, and he
endures as men will endure when they see that the question how far
they are their own masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great
number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in
vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course
of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down
into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were
unquestionably willing to die.
In the same way a man will for a time endure even frightful suffering
in relinquishing a pernicious habit, while he may fail to hold up his
determination against the assaults of the apparently never-ending
irritation, discomfort, pain, and sleeplessness which may be counted
on as being, sometimes at least, among the remoter consequences of the
struggle in which he has engaged. I wish it, however, distinctly
understood that I do not suppose that the experience of others whose
use of opium had been similar to my own, would necessarily correspond
to mine in all or even in many respects. Opium is the Proteus of
medicine, and science has not yet succeeded in tearing away the many
masks it wears, nor in tracing the marvellously diversified aspects it
is capable of assuming. Among many cases of the relinquishment of
opium with which I have been made acquainted, nothing is more
perplexing than the difference of the specific consequences, as they
are exhibited in persons of different temperaments and habits. For
such differences I do not pretend to account. That is the business of
the thoroughly educated physician, and no unprofessional man, however
wide his personal experience, has the right to dogmatize or even to
express with much confidence settled opinions upon the subject. My
object will be fully attained if I succeed in giving a just and
truthful impression of the more marked final consequences of the hasty
disuse of opium in this single case, leaving it to medical men to
explain the complicated relations of an opium-saturated constitution
to the free and healthy functions of life.
In my own case, the most marked among the later consequences of the
disease of opium, some of which remain to the present time and seem to
be permanently engrafted upon the constitution, have been these:
1. Pressure upon the muscles of the limbs and in the extremities,
sometimes as of electricity apparently accumulated there under a
strong mechanical force.
2. A disordered condition of the liver, exhibiting itself in the
variety of uncomfortable modes in which that organ, when acting
irregularly, is accustomed to assert its grievances.
3. A sensitive condition of the stomach, rejecting many kinds of food
which are regarded by medical men as simple and easy of digestion.
4. Acute shooting pains, confined to no one part of the body.
5. An unnatural sensitiveness to cold.
6. Frequent cold perspiration in parts of the body.
7. A tendency to impatience and irritability of temper, with paroxysms
of excitement wholly foreign to the natural disposition.
8. Deficiency and irregularity of sleep.
9. Occasional prostration of strength.
10. Inaptitude for steady exertion.
I mention without hesitancy these consequences of the abandonment of
opium, from the belief that any person really in earnest in his desire
to relinquish the habit will be more likely to persevere by knowing at
the start exactly what obstacles he may meet in his progress toward
perfect recovery, than by having it gradually revealed to him, and
that at times when his body and mind are both enfeebled by what he has
passed through. With a single exception, the dismost serious one I
have been obliged to encounter. Whether it is one of the specific
effects of the disuse of opium, or only one of the many general
results of a disordered constitution, I do not know.
I can only say in my own case, that after the lapse of years, this
particular difficulty is not wholly overcome. This electric condition,
so to call it, still continues a serious annoyance. But when it
occurs, the pain is of less duration, and gradually, but very slowly,
is of diminished frequency. Violent exercise will sometimes relieve
it; a long walk has often the same effect. The use of stimulants
brings alleviation for a time, but there seems to be no permanent
remedy except in the perfect restoration of the system by time from
this effect of the wear and tear of opium upon the nerves.
Irregularity in the action of the liver, while singularly marked
in the earlier stages of the experiment, and continuing for years
to make its agency manifestly felt, is in a considerable degree
checked and controlled by a judicious use of calomel.
The condition of the digestive organs is less impaired than I should
have supposed possible, judging from the experience of others. A
moderate degree of attention to the quality of what is eaten, with
proper care to avoid what is not easily digested, with the exercise of
habitual self-control in respect to quantity, suffices to prevent, for
the most part, all unendurable feelings of discomfort in this part of
the system. Whether the habitually febrile condition of the mouth,
and the swollen state of the tongue, is referable to a disturbed
action of the stomach or of the liver I can not say. It is certain
that none of the effects of opium-eating are more marked or more
obstinately tenacious in their hold upon the system than these. I
barely advert to the frequent impossibility of retaining some kinds of
food upon the stomach, which has been one unpleasant part of my
experience, because I doubt whether this return of a difficulty which
began in childhood has any necessary connection with the use of
opium. For many years before I knew any thing of the drug I had been a
daily sufferer from this cause. Indeed the use of opium seemed to
control this tendency, and it was only when the remedy was abandoned
that the old annoyance returned. For a few months the stomach rejected
every kind of food; but in less than a year, and subsequently to the
present time, this has been of only occasional ocurrence.
I am also at a loss how far to connect the disuse of opium with the
lancinating pains which have troubled me since the time to which I
refer. These pains began long before I had recourse to opium, they did
not cease their frequent attacks while opium was used, nor have they
failed to make their potency felt since opium was abandoned. While it
is not improbable that the neuralgic difficulties of my childhood
might have remained to the present time, even if I had never made use
of opium, I think that the experience of all who have undergone the
trial shows that similar pains are invariably attendant upon the
disuse of opium. How long their presence might be protracted with
persons not antecedently troubled in this way, is a question I can not
answer. I infer from what little has been recorded, and from what I
have learned in other ways, that the reforming opium-eater must make
up his mind to a protracted encounter with this great enemy to his
peace. That the struggle of others with this difficulty will be
prolonged as mine has been I do not believe, unless they have been
subjected for a lifetime to pains connected with disorder in the
nervous system.
The unnatural sensitiveness to cold to which I have alluded is rather
a discomfort than any thing else. It merely makes a higher temperature
necessary for enjoyment, but in no other respect can it be regarded as
deserving special mention. With the thermometer standing at 80° to
85° the sensation of agreeable warmth is perfect; with the mercury at
70° or even higher, there is a good deal of the feeling that the bones
are inadequately protected by the flesh, that the clothing is too
limited in quantity, and in winter that the coal-dealer is hardly
doing you justice.
The cold perspiration down the spine, which was so marked a sensation
during the worst of the trial, has not yet wholly left the system, but
is greatly limited in the extent of surface it affects and in the
frequency of its return.
The tendency to impatience and irritability of temper to which I have
adverted is by far the most humiliating of the effects resulting from
the abandonment of opium. Men differ very widely both in their
liability to these excesses of temper as well as in their power to
control them; but under the aggravations which necessarily attend an
entire change of habit, this natural tendency, whether it be small or
great, to hastiness of mind is greatly increased. So long as the
disturbing causes remain, whether these be the state of the liver or
the stomach, or a want of sufficient sleep, or the excited condition
of the nervous system, the patient will find himself called upon for
the exercise of all his self-control to keep in check his exaggerated
sensibility to the daily annoyances of life.
Intimately connected with the preceding is the frequent recurrence of
sleepless nights, which seem invariably to attend upon the abandonment
of the habit. Possibly some part of this state of agitated wakefulness
may pertain to the natural temperament of the patient, but this
tendency is greatly aggravated by the condition of the nerves, so
thoroughly shattered by the violent struggle to oblige the system to
dispense with the soothing influence of the drug upon which it has so
long relied. Whatever method others may have found to counteract this
infirmity, I have been able as yet to find no remedy for
it. Especially are those nights made long and weary which
_precede_ any long continuance of wet weather. A moist condition
of the atmosphere still serves the double purpose of setting in play
the nervous sensibilities, and, as a concomitant or a consequence, of
greatly disturbing, if not destroying sleep.
In connection with this matter something should be said on the subject
of dreaming, to which De Quincey has given so marked a prominence in
his "Confessions" and "Suspiris de Profundis." In my own case, neither
when beginning the use of opium, nor while making use of it in the
largest quantities and after the habit had long been established, nor
while engaged in the painful process of relinquishing it, nor at any
time subsequently, have I had any experience worth narrating of the
influence of the drug over the dreaming faculty. On the contrary, I
doubt whether many men of mature age know so little of this peculiar
state of mind as myself. The conditions in this respect, imposed by
my own peculiarities of constitution, have been either no sleep
sufficiently sound as to interfere with the consciousness of what was
passing, or mere restlessness, or sleep so profound as to leave behind
it no trace of the mind's activity. While it is therefore certain that
this exaggeration of the dreaming faculty is not necessarily connected
with the use of opium, but is rather to be referred to some
peculiarity of temperament or organization in De Quincey himself, I
find myself in turn at a loss to know how far to regard other
phenomena to which I have previously alluded as the natural and
necessary consequences of opium, or how far they may be owing to
peculiarities of constitution in myself. Opium-eaters have said but
little on the subject. The medical profession, so far as I have
conversed with them, and I have consulted with some of the most
eminent, are not generally well informed on any thing beyond the
specific effects of the drug as witnessed in ordinary medication. In
the absence of sufficient authority, it may be safer to say that the
remoter consequences of the disuse of opium consist in a general
disorder and derangement of the nervous system, exhibiting itself in
such particular symptoms as are most accordant with the temperament,
constitutional weaknesses, and personal idiosyncrasies of the
patient. That some considerable suffering must be regarded as
unavoidable seems to be placed beyond question from the nature of the
trial to which the body has been subjected, as well as from what
little has been said on the subject by those who have relinquished the
habit.
I close this brief reference to the remoter consequences of the habits
of the opium-eater by calling the attention of the reader to the
physical weakness with consequent inaptitude for continuous exertion
which forms a part of my own experience. Unable as I am to refer it to
any _immediate_ cause, frequent and sudden prostration of
strength occurs, accompanied by slight dizziness, impaired sight, and
a sense of overwhelming weakness, though never going to the extent of
absolute faintness. Its recurrence seems to be governed by no rule. It
sometimes comes with great frequency, and sometimes weeks will elapse
without a return. Neither the state of the weather, nor any particular
condition of the body, appears to call it out. It sometimes is
relieved by a glass of water, by the entrance of a stranger, by the
very slightest excitement, and it sometimes resists the strongest
stimulants and every other attempt to combat it. I can record nothing
else respecting this visitant except that its presence is always
accompanied with a singular sensation in the stomach, and that the
entire nervous system is affected by its attack.
The inaptitude for steady exertion is not merely the consequence of
this occasional feeling of exhaustion, but is for a time the
inevitable result of the accumulated pain and weakness to which his
system, not yet restored to health, is still subject. This impatience
of continued application to work, which is common to all opium-eaters,
and which does not cease with the abandonment of the habit, seems to
result in the first case from some specific relation between the drug
and the meditative faculties, promoting a state of habitual reverie
and day-dreaming, utterly indisposing the opium-user for any
occupation which will disturb the calm current of his thoughts, and in
the other, proceeding from the direct disorder of the nervous
organization itself. Strange as it may seem, the very thought of
exertion will often waken in the reforming opium-eater acute nervous
pains, which cease only as the purpose is abandoned. In other cases,
where there is no special nervous suffering at the time, work is easy
and pleasant even beyond what is natural.
One effect of opium upon the _mind_ deserves to be mentioned; its
influence upon the faculty of memory. The logical memory, De Quincey
says, seems in no way to be weakened by its use, but rather the
contrary. His own devotion to the abstract principles of political
economy; the character of Coleridge's literary labors between the
years 1804-16, when his use of opium was most inordinate; together
with the cast of mind of many other well-known opium-eaters, confirms
this suggestion of De Quincey. His further statement that the memory
of dates, isolated events, and particular facts, is greatly weakened
by opium, is confirmed by my own experience. However physiologists may
explain this fact, a knowledge of it may not be without its use to
those who desire to be made thoroughly acquainted with all the
consequences of the opium habit.
If to these discomforts be added a prevailing tendency to a febrile
condition of body, together with permanent disorder in portions of the
secretory system, the catalogue of annoyances with which the
long-reformed opium-eater may have to contend is completed. This
statement is not made to exaggerate the suffering consequent upon the
disuse of opium, but is made on the ground that a full apprehension of
what the patient may be called upon to go through will best enable him
to make up his mind to one resolute, unflinching effort for the
redemption of himself from his bad habits.
So far as the body is concerned, there is much in my experience which
induces me to give a general assent to the opinion expressed by a
medical man of great reputation whom I repeatedly consulted in
reference to the discouraging slowness of my own restoration to
perfect health. "I can not see," he said, "that your constitution has
been permanently injured; but you were a great many years getting into
this state, and I think it will take nearly as many to get you out of
it."
It may not be amiss to add that those opium-eaters whose circumstances
exempt them from harassing cares, who meet only with kindness and
sympathy from friends, and who have resources for enjoyment within
themselves, have in respect to these subsequent inconveniences greatly
the advantage of those whose position and circumstances are less
fortunate.
These free and almost confidential personal statements have been made,
not without doing some violence to that instinctive sense of propriety
which prompts men to shrink from giving publicity to their weaknesses
and from the vanity of seeming to imply that their individual
experience of life is of special value to others. Leaving undecided
the question whether under any circumstances a departure from the
general rule of good sense and good taste in such matters is
justifiable, I have, nevertheless, done what I could to give to
opium-eaters a truthful statement of the consequences that may ensue
from their abandonment of the habit. The path toward perfect recovery
is certainly a weary one to travel; but in all these long years, with
nervous sensibilities unnaturally active, in much pain of body,
through innumerable sleepless nights, with hope deferred and the
expectation of complete restoration indefinitely prolonged, I have
never lost faith in the final triumph of a patient and persistent
resolution. Many men seem to know little of the wonderful power which
simple endurance has, in determining every conflict between good and
evil. The triumph which is achieved in a single day is a triumph
hardly worth the having; but when all impatience, unreasonableness,
weaknesses and vanities have been burned out of our natures by the
heat of suffering; when the resolution never falters to endure
patiently whatever may come in the endeavor to measure one's own case
justly, and exactly as it is; and when time has been allowed to exert
its legitimate influence in calming whatever has been disturbed and
correcting whatever has been prejudiced, a conscious strength is
developed far beyond what is natural to men possessed only of ordinary
powers of endurance. It is chiefly through patient waiting that the
confirmed victim of opium can look for relief. All who have made
heroic efforts to this end, and yet have failed in their attempt, have
done so through the absence of adequate confidence in the efficacy of
time to bring them relief. The _one_ lesson, however, which the
reforming opium-eater must learn is, never to relinquish any gain,
however slight, which he may make upon his bad habit. Patience will
bring him relief at last, and though he may and will find his progress
continually thwarted and himself often tempted to give over the
contest in despair, he may be sure that year by year he is steadily
advancing to the perfect recovery of all that he has lost.
The opium-eater will not regard as amiss some few suggestions as to
the mode in which his habit may most easily be abandoned. The best
advice that can be given--the _only_ advice that will ever be
given by an opium-eater--is, never to begin the habit. The objection
at once occurs, both to the medical man and to the patient suffering
from extreme nervous disorder, What remedy then shall be given in
those numerous cases in which the protracted use of opium, laudanum,
or morphine is found necessary? The obvious answer is, that no medical
man ever intends to give this drug in such quantities or for so long a
time as to establish in the patient a confirmed habit. The frequent,
if not the usual history of confirmed opium-eaters is this: A
physician prescribes opium as an anodyne, and the patient finds from
its use the relief which was anticipated. Very frequently he finds not
merely that his pain has been relieved, but that with this relief has
been associated a feeling of positive, perhaps of extreme enjoyment. A
recurrence of the same pain infallibly suggests a recurrence to the
same remedy. The advice of the medical man is not invoked, because the
patient knows that morphine or laudanum was the simple remedy that
proved so efficacious before, and this he can procure as well without
as with the direction of his physician. He becomes his own doctor,
prescribes the same remedy the medical man has prescribed, and charges
nothing for his advice. The resort to this pleasant medication after
no long time becomes habitual, and the patient finds that the remedy,
whose use he had supposed was sanctioned by his physician, has become
his tyrant. If patients exhibited the same reluctance to the
administration of opium that they do to drugs that are nauseous, if
the collateral effects of the former were no more pleasurable than
lobelia or castor oil, nothing more could be said against
self-medication in one case than the other. Opium-eaters are made
such, not by the physician's prescription of opium to patients in
whose cases its use is indispensable, but by their not giving together
with such prescriptions emphatic and earnest caution that the remedy
is not to be taken except when specially ordered, in consequence of
the hazard that a habit may be formed which it will be difficult to
break. Patients to whom it is regularly administered are not at first
generally aware how easily this habit is acquired, nor with what
difficulty it is relinquished, especially by persons of nervous
temperament and enfeebled health. The number of cases, I suspect, is
small in which the use of opium has become a necessity, where the
direction of a physician may not be pleaded as justifying its original
employment.
The object I have in view is not, however, so much to make suggestions
to medical men as it is to awaken in the victims of opium the feeling
that they can master the tyrant by such acts of resolution, patience,
and self-control as most men are fully capable of exhibiting. Certain
conditions, however, seem to be the almost indispensable preliminaries
to success in relinquishing opium by those who have been _long_
habituated to its use. The first and most important of these is a firm
conviction on the part of the patient that the task can be
accomplished. Without this he can do nothing. The narratives given in
this volume show its entire practicability. In addition to this, it
should be remembered that these experiments were most of them made in
the absence of any sufficient guidance, from the experience of others,
as to the method and alleviations with which the task can be
accomplished. A second condition necessary to success, is sufficient
physical health, with sufficient firmness of character to undergo, as
a matter of course, the inevitable suffering of the body, and to
resist the equally inevitable temptation to the mind to give up the
strife under some paroxysm of impatience, or in some moment of dark
despondency. With a very moderate share of vigor of constitution, and
with a will, capable under other circumstances of strenuous and
sustained exertion, there is no occasion to anticipate a failure
here. Even in cases of impaired health, and with a diminished capacity
for resolute endeavor, success is, I believe, attainable, provided
sufficient time be taken for the trial.
A further condition lies in the attempt being made under the most
favorable circumstances in respect to absolute leisure from business
of every kind. That nothing can be accomplished by persons whose time
is not at their own command, by a graduated effort protracted through
many months, I do not say, for I do not believe it; but any speedy
relinquishment of opium--that is, within a month or two--seems to me
to be wholly impossible, except to those who are so situated that they
can give up their whole time and attention to the effort.
This effort should be made with the advice and under the eye of an
intelligent physician. So far as I have had opportunity to know, the
profession generally is not well informed on the subject. In my own
case I certainly found no one who seemed familiar with the phenomena
pertaining to the relinquishment of opium, or whose suggestions
indicated even in cases where the physician has had no experience
whatever in this class of disorders, he can, if a well-educated man,
bring his medical knowledge and medical reasoning to bear upon the
various states, both of body and mind, which the varying sufferings of
the patient may make known to him. Were there, indeed, no professional
helps to be secured by such consultation, it is still of infinite
service to the patient to know some one to whom he can frequently
impart the history of his struggle and the progress he is making. Such
confidence may do much to encourage the patient, and no one is so
proper a person in whom to repose this confidence as an intelligent
physician.
The amount of time which should be devoted to the experiment must
depend very greatly upon these considerations--the constitution of
the patient, the length of time which has elapsed since the habit was
formed, and the quantity habitually taken. When the habit is of recent
date, and the daily dose has not been large--say not more than ten or
twelve grains--if the patient has average health, his emancipation
from the evil may be attained in a comparatively short period, though
not without many sharp pangs and many wakeful nights which will call
for the exercise of all his resolution.
The question will naturally suggest itself to others, as it has often
done to myself, whether a less sudden relinquishment of opium would
not be preferable as being attended with less present and less
subsequent suffering. Numerous cases have come under my notice where a
very gradual reduction was attempted, but which resulted in
failure. Only two exceptions are known to me: in one of these the
patient, himself a physician, effected his release by a graduated
reduction extending through five months. The other is the case of
Dr. S., a physician of eminence in Connecticut many years ago. This
gentleman had made so free use of opium to counteract a tendency to
consumption that the habit became established. After several years,
and at the suggestion of his wife, he made a resolution to abandon it,
engaging to take no opium except as it passed through her hands, but
with the understanding that the process of relinquishment was to be
slow and gradual. His allowance at this time was understood to be from
twenty to thirty grains of crude opium daily. At the end of two years
the habit was abandoned, with no very serious suffering during the
time, and so far as his daughter was informed, with no subsequent
inconvenience to himself. He lived many years after his disuse of
opium, in the active discharge of the duties of his profession, and
died at last in the ninetieth year of his age. The hazard of this
course, however, consists in the possibility, not to say with some
temperaments the probability, that somewhere in the course of so very
gradual a descent the same influences which led originally to the use
of opium may recur, with no counteracting influence derived from the
excitement of the mind produced by the earnestness of the
struggle. With some constitutions I have no doubt that a process even
so slow as that of Dr. S.'s might be successful, but I suspect, with
most men, that some mood of excited feeling, and some conscious sense
of conflict, will be found necessary, in order to bring them up
resolutely to the work of self-emancipation. On the other hand, I am
satisfied that my own descent was too rapid. Had the experiment of
between five and six weeks been protracted to twice that time, much of
the immediate suffering, and probably more of that which soon
followed, might have been prevented. As in the constitution of every
person there is a limit beyond which further indulgence in any
pernicious habit results in chronic derangement, so also there seems
to be a limit in the discontinuance of accustomed indulgence, going
beyond which is sure to result in some increased physical disorder. In
the cure of _delirium tremens_, the first step of the physician
is to stimulate. With more moderate drinkers abrupt cessation from the
use of stimulants is the only sure remedy. In the first instance the
nervous system is too violently agitated to dispense entirely with the
accustomed habit; in the second, the nerves are presumed to be able to
bear the temporary strain imposed upon them by the condition of the
stomach and other organs. But with opium the case is otherwise.
Insanity, I think, would be the general result of an attempt
immediately to relinquish the habit by those who have long indulged
it. The most the opium-eater can do is to diminish his allowance as
rapidly as is safe. For the same reason that no sensible physician
would direct the confinement of a patient and the absolute disuse of
opium with the certainty that mania would result, so it would be
equally ill advised to recommend a diminution so rapid as necessarily
to call out the most serious disorder and derangement of all the
bodily functions, especially if these could be made more endurable by
being spread over a longer period. In one respect the opium-eater has
greatly the advantage over those addicted to other bad habits. Those
who have used distilled or fermented drinks, tobacco, and sometimes
coffee and tea in excess, experience for a time a strong and definite
craving for the wonted indulgence. This is never the case with the
opium-eater; he has no specific desire whatever for the drug. The only
difficulty he has to encounter is the agony of pain--for no other word
adequately expresses the suffering he endures--conjoined with a
general desire for relief. Yet in the very _acme_ of his punishment
he will be sensible of no craving for opium at all like the craving
of the drunkard for spirits. As De Quincey justly represents
it, the feeling is more that of a person under actual torture, aching
for relief, though with no care from what source that relief comes. So
far from there being any particular desire for opium, there ensues
very speedily, I suspect, after the attempt to abandon it is begun,
and long before the necessity for its use has ceased, and even while
the suffering from its partial disuse is most unendurable, a feeling
in reference to the drug itself not far removed from disgust. The only
occasion that I have had of late years to make use of opium or any of
its preparations, was within a twelvemonth after it had been laid
aside. A morbid feeling had long troubled me with the suggestion that
should a necessity ever arise for the medical use of opium, I might be
precipitated back into the habit. I was not sorry, therefore, when the
necessity for its use occurred, that I might test the correctness of
my apprehension. To my surprise, not only was no desire for a second
trial of its virtues awakened, but the very effort to swallow the pill
was accompanied with a feeling akin to loathing.
The final decision of the question, How long a time should be allowed
for the final relinquishment of the drug? must, I imagine, be left to
a wider experience than has yet been recorded. The general strength of
the constitution, the force of the will, the degree of nervous
sensibility, together with the external circumstances of one's life,
have all much to do with its proper explication.
The general directions I should be disposed to suggest for the
observance of the confirmed opium-eater would be something as follows:
1. To diminish the daily allowance as rapidly as possible to
one-half. A fortnight's time should effect this without serious
suffering, or any thing more than the slight irritation and some other
inconveniences that will be found quite endurable to one who is in
earnest in his purpose.
2. For the first week, if the previous habit has been to take the
daily dose in a single portion, or even in two portions, morning and
night, it will be found advisable to divide the diminished quantity
into four parts. Thus, if eighty grains has been the customary
quantity taken, four pills of fifteen grains each, taken at regular
intervals, say one at eight and one at twelve o'clock in the morning,
and one at four and one at eight in the evening, will be found nearly
equal in their effect to the eighty grains taken at once in the
morning. A further diminution of two grains a day, or of half a grain
in each of these four daily portions, will within the week reduce the
quantity taken to fifty grains, and this without much difficulty, and
with positive gain in respect to elasticity of spirits, arising, in
part, from the newly-awakened hope of ultimate success. A second week
should suffice for a reduction to forty grains. It will probably be
better to divide the slightly diminished daily allowance into five
portions, to be taken at intervals of two hours from rising in the
morning till the daily quantity is consumed. With such a graduated
scale of descent, it will be found at the end of two weeks that
one-half of the original quantity of opium has been abandoned, and
that, with so little pain of body, and so much gain to the general
health and spirits, that the completion of the task will seem to the
patient ridiculously easy. He will soon learn, however, that he has
not found out all the truth.
In the third week a further gain of ten grains can the more easily be
made by still further dividing the daily portion into an increased
number of parts, say ten. The feeling of restlessness and irritability
by this time will have become somewhat annoying, and the actual
struggle will be seen to have commenced. It will doubtless require at
this point some persistence of character to bear up against the
increased impatience, both of body and spirit, which marks this stage
of the descent. The feelings will endeavor to palm off upon the
judgment a variety of reasons why, for a time, a larger quantity
should be taken; but this is merely the effect of the diminished
amount of the stimulant. Sleep will probably be found to be of short
continuance as well as a good deal broken. Reading has ceased to
interest, and a fidgety, fault-finding temper not unlikely has begun
to exhibit itself. At this point, I am satisfied, most opium-eaters
who have endeavored in vain to renounce the habit, have broken down.
Their resolution has failed them not because they were unable to stand
much greater punishment than had yet been inflicted, but because they
yielded to the impression that some other time would prove more
opportune for the final experiment. Under this delusion they have
foolishly thrown away the benefit of their past self-control, with the
certainty that should the trial be again made, they would once more be
assailed by a similar temptation. But if this stage of the process has
been safely passed, the next--that of reducing the daily quantity from
thirty grains to twenty-five, still dividing the day's allowance into
ten portions--would probably have added little aggravation to the
uncomfortable feeling which already existed, but not without some
conscious addition, on the other hand, to their enjoyment from the
partially successful result of the experiment. Thus in four weeks a
very substantial gain, by the reduction of the needed quantity from
eighty grains to twenty-five, would have been attained.
If the patient should find it necessary to stop at this point for a
week, a fortnight, or even longer, no great harm would necessarily
result; it would only postpone by so much his ultimate triumph. He
should never forget, however, that the one indispensable condition of
success is this: _Never under any circumstances to give up what has
been once gained_. If in any manner the patient has been able to
get through the day with the use of only twenty-five grains, it is
certain that he can get through the next, and the next, and the
subsequent day with the same amount, with the further certainty that
the habit of being content with this minimum quantity will soon begin
to be established, and that speedily a further advance may be made in
the direction of an entire disuse. Whenever the patient finds his
condition to be somewhat more endurable, whether the time be longer or
shorter, he should make a still further reduction, say to one-quarter
of his original dose. If this abatement of quantity be spread over the
entire week the aggravation of his discomfort will not be great, while
the elation of his spirits over what he has already accomplished will
go far in enabling him to bear the degree of pain which necessarily
pertains to the stage of the experiment which he has now reached. The
caution, however, must be borne continually in mind that under no
circumstances and on no pretext must the patient entertain the idea
that any part of that which he has gained can he surrendered. Better
for him to be years in the accomplishment of his deliverance than to
recede a step from any advantage he may have secured. If he persists,
he will in a few days, or at the longest in a few weeks, find his
condition as to bodily pain endurable if nothing more. There may not,
probably will not be any very appreciable gain from day to day. The
excited sufferer, judging from his feelings alone, may think that he
has made no progress whatever; but if after the lapse of a week he
will contrast his command of temper, or his ability to fix his
attention upon a subject, as evinced at the beginning and end of this
period, he can hardly fail to see that there has been a real if not a
very marked advance in his status. Such a person has no right to
expect, after years of uninterrupted indulgence, that the most
obstinate of all habits can be relinquished with ease, or that he can
escape the penalty which is wisely and kindly attached to all
departures from the natural or supernatural laws which govern the
world. It should be enough for him to know that there is no habit of
mind or of body which may not be overcome, and that the process of
overcoming, in its infinite variety of forms, is that out of which
almost all that is good in character or conduct grows, and that the
amount of this good is usually measured by the struggle which has been
found necessary to ensure success.
Considerations of this nature, however, are of too general a character
to be of much service to one enduring the misery of the reforming
opium-eater. He has now arrived at a point where he is obliged to ask
himself when and how the contest is to end. He has succeeded in
abandoning three-quarters of the opium to which he has so long been
accustomed. A few weeks have enabled him to accomplish this much. He
endures, indeed, great discomfort by day and by night; but hope has
been re-awakened; his mind has recovered greater activity than it has
known for years; and, on the whole, he feels that he has been greatly
the gainer from the contest.
Let me repeat, that the main thing for the patient at this point of
his trial is not to forego the advantage he has already attained--"not
to go back." If he can only hold his own he has so far triumphed, and
it is only a question of time when the triumph shall be made
complete. _When_ this shall be effected _he_ must decide.
The rapidity of his further progress must be determined by what
he himself is conscious he has the strength, physical and moral,
to endure. With some natures any very sudden descent is impossible;
with others, whatever is done must be done continuously and rapidly or
is not done at all. The one temperament can not stand up against the
assaults of a fierce attack, the other loses courage except when the
fight is at the hottest. For the former ample time must be given or he
surrenders; the latter will succumb if any interval is allowed for
repose. It is, therefore, difficult to suggest from this point
downward any rule which shall apply equally to temperaments
essentially unlike. I think, however, that the suggestion to divide
the daily allowance, whether the descent be a slow or a rapid one,
into numerous small parts to be taken at equal intervals of time, will
be found to facilitate the success of the attempt in the case of
both. The chief value of such subdivision probably consists in its
throwing the aggregate influence of the day's opium nearer the hour of
bed-time, when it is most needed, than to an earlier hour, when its
soporific power is less felt. In addition to this, the importance to
the excited and irritated patient of being able to look forward during
the long-protracted hours to frequent, even if slight, alleviations of
his pain, should not be left out of the account. In general it may be
said that whenever the patient feels that he can safely, that is,
without danger of failing in his resolution, adventure upon a further
diminution of the quantity, an additional amount, smaller or greater
according to circumstances, should be deducted till the point is
reached where the suffering becomes unendurable; then after a delay of
few or many days, as may be needed to make him somewhat habituated to
the diminished allowance, a still further reduction should be made,
and so on for such time as the peculiarities of different
constitutions and circumstances may make necessary, till the quantity
daily required has become so small, say a grain or two, that by still
more minute subdivisions, and by dropping one of them daily, the final
victory is achieved.
I have not ventured to say in how short a time confirmed habits of
opium-eating may be abandoned. In my own case it was thirty-nine days,
but with my present experience I should greatly prefer to extend the
time to at least sixty days; and this chiefly with reference to the
violent effects upon the constitution produced by the suddenness of
the change of habit. Some constitutions may possibly require less time
and some probably, more. While I regard the abandonment of the first
three-quarters of the accustomed allowance as being a much easier task
than the last quarter, and one which can be accomplished with
comparative impunity in a brief period, I would allow at least twice
the time for the experiment of dispensing with the last quarter;
unless, indeed, I should be apprehensive that my resolution might
break down through the absence of the excitement which is
unquestionably afforded by the feeling that you are engaged in a
deadly but doubtful conflict. So far, also, as can be inferred from
cases subsequently narrated in this volume, the probability of success
would seem to be enhanced by devoting a longer time to the trial. It
can not, however, be too often repeated, that however slow or however
rapid the pace may be, the rule to be rigidly observed is this: Never
to increase the minimum dose that has once been attained. This is the
only rule of safety, and by adhering to it, persons in infirm health,
or with weakened powers of resolution, will ultimately succeed in
their efforts.
I subjoin my own record of the quantity of opium daily consumed, for
the possible encouragement of such opium-eaters as may be disposed to
make trial of their own resources in the endurance of bodily and
mental distress.
Saturday, Nov. 25....80 grains, = 2000 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 26....60 " 1500 " "
Monday, " 27....50 " 1250 " "
Tuesday, " 28....40 " 1000 " "
Wednesday, " 29....30 " 750 " "
Thursday, " 30....25 " 625 " "
Friday, Dec. 1....20 " 500 " "
--- -----
Average of 1st week....44 " 1089 " "
Saturday, Dec. 2.....19 grains, = 475 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 3.....18 " 450 " "
Monday, " 4.....17 " 425 " "
Tuesday, " 5.....16 " 400 " "
Wednesday, " 6.....15 " 375 " "
Thursday, " 7.....15 " 375 " "
Friday, " 8.....15 " 375 " "
---- ----
Average of 2d week.....16.43" 411 " "
Saturday, Dec. 9.....14 grains, = 350 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 10.....13 " 325 " "
Monday, " 11.....13 " 325 " "
Tuesday, " 12.....12 " 300 " "
Wednesday, " 13.....12 " 300 " "
Thursday, " 14.....11 " 275 " "
Friday, " 15.....10 " 250 " "
---- ----
Average of 3d week.....12.14" 304 " "
Saturday, Dec.16..... 9 grains, = 225 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 17..... 8 " 200 " "
Monday, " 18..... 8 " 200 " "
Tuesday, " 19..... 7 " 175 " "
Wednesday, " 20..... 6 " 150 " "
Thursday, " 21..... 5 " 125 " "
Friday, " 22..... 4 " 100 " "
---- ----
Average of 4th week.....6.71" 168 " "
Saturday, Dec.23..... 3 grains, = 75 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 24..... 3 " 75 " "
Monday, " 25..... 2 " 50 " "
Tuesday, " 26..... 2 " 50 " "
Wednesday, " 27..... 2 " 50 " "
Thursday, " 28..... 2 " 50 " "
Friday, " 29..... 1 " 25 " "
---- ----
Average of 5th week.....2.14" 54 " "
Saturday, Dec.30..... 1 grain, = 25 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 31..... 1 " 25 " "
Monday, Jan. 1..... 1 " 25 " "
Tuesday, " 2.....1/2 " 12 " "
Wednesday, " 3.....1/4 " 6 " "
---- ----
Average of 6th week....0.75 " 18 " "
The fourth and fifth weeks I found to be immeasurably the most
difficult to manage. By the sixth week the system had become somewhat
accustomed to the denial of the long-used stimulant. At any rate,
though no abatement of the previous wretchedness was apparent, it
certainly seemed less difficult to endure it. It is at this stage of
the process that I regard the advice and encouragement of a physician
as most important. He may not indeed be able to do much in direct
alleviation of the pain incident to the abandonment of opium, for I
suspect that little reliance can be placed upon the medicines
ordinarily recommended. The system has become accustomed to the
stimulant to an exorbitant degree; the suffering is consequent upon
the effort to accustom the system to get on without it. Other kinds of
stimulants, like spirits or wine, will afford a slight relief for a
few days, especially if taken in sufficiently large quantities to
induce sleep. It is the sedative qualities of the opium that are
chiefly missed, for as to excitement the patient has quite as much of
it as he can bear. For this reason malt liquors are preferable to
distilled spirits--they stupefy more than they excite. But to malt
liquors this serious objection exists, they tend powerfully to
aggravate all disorders of the liver. This tendency the reforming
opium-eater can not afford to overlook, for no one effect of the
experiment is more distressing than the marvellous and unhealthy
activity given to this organ by the process through which he is
passing. The testimony of all opium-eaters on this point is
uniform. For months and even years this organ in those who have
relinquished the drug remains disordered. When in its worst state, the
use of something bitter, the more bitter the better, is exceedingly
grateful. The difficulty lies in finding any thing that has a properly
bitter taste. Aloes, nux vomica, colocynth, quassia, have a flavor
that is much more sweet than bitter. These serious annoyances from the
condition of the liver, as well as those arising from the state of the
stomach and some of the other organs, may be somewhat mitigated by the
skill of an intelligent medical man, who, even if he happens to know
little about the habit of opium-eating, should know much as to the
proper regimen to be observed in cases where these organs are
disordered.
In respect to food it seems impossible to lay down any general
rule. De Quincey advises beefsteak, not too much cooked, and stale
bread as the chief diet, and doubtless this was the best diet for
him. Yet it is not the less true that "what is one man's meat is
another man's poison," and food that is absolutely harmless to one may
disorder the entire digestion of another. Roast pork, mince pies, and
cheese do not, I believe, rank high with the Faculty for ease of
digestion, yet I have found them comparatively innoxious, while
poultry, milk, oysters, fish, some kinds of vegetables, and even dry
toast have caused me serious inconvenience. The appetite of the
recovering opium-eater will probably be voracious and not at all
discriminating during the earlier stages of his experiment, and will
continue unimpaired even when the stomach begins to be fastidious as
to what it will receive. Probably no safer rule can be given than to
limit the quantity eaten as far as practicable, and to use only such
food as in each particular case is found to be most easy of digestion.
Too much prominence can not be given to bodily exercise as intimately
connected with the recovery of the patient. Without this it seems to
me doubtful whether a person could withstand the extreme irritation of
his nervous system. In his worst state he can not sit still; he must
be moving. The complication of springs in the famous Kilmansegge leg,
is nothing compared with the necesity for motion which is developed in
the limbs of the recovering opium-eater. Whatever his health,
whatever his spirits, whatever the weather, walk he must. Ten miles
before breakfast will be found a moderate allowance for many months
after the habit has been subdued. A patient who could afford to give
up three months of his time after the opium had been entirely
discarded, to the perfect recovery of his health, could probably turn
it to no better account than by stretching out on a pedestrian
excursion of a thousand miles and back. This would be at the rate of
nearly twenty-six miles a day, allowing Sunday as a day of rest. This
advice is seriously given for the consideration of those who can
command the time for such a thorough process of restoration. Nor
should any weight be given to the objection that the body is in too
enfeebled a state to make it safe to venture upon such an
experiment. Account for it as physiologists may, it is certain that
the debilitating effects of leaving off opium much more rapidly pass
away from the lower extremities than from the rest of the body. At no
time subsequent to my mastery of opium have I found any difficulty in
accomplishing the longest walks; on the contrary they have been taken
with entire ease and pleasure. Yet to this day, any considerable
exercise of the other muscles is attended with extreme debility. In
the absence of facilities for walking, gymnastic exercise is not
wholly without benefit, and if this exercise is followed by a cold
bath, some portion of the insupportable languor will be
removed. Walking, however, is the great panacea, nor can it well be
taken in excess. So important is this element in the restorative
process that it may well be doubted whether without its aid a
confirmed opium-eater could be restored to health.
It is useless for any person to think that he can break off even the
least inveterate of his habits without effort, or the more obstinate
ones without a struggle. Wine, spirits, tobacco, after years of
habitual use, require a degree of resolution which is sometimes found
to be beyond the resources of the will. Much more does opium, whose
hold upon the system is vastly more tenacious than all these combined,
call for a resolute determination prepared to meet all the possible
consequences that pertain to a complete and perfect mastery of the
habit. It should be remembered, however, that the experience here
recorded is that resulting from years of large and uninterrupted use
of opium. The entire system had necessarily conformed itself to the
artificial habit. For years the proper action of the nervous,
muscular, digestive, and secretory system had been impeded and forced
in an unnatural direction. In time all the vital functions had
conformed as far as possible to the necessity imposed upon
them. Scarce a function of the body that had not been daily drilled
into a highly artificial adaptation to the conditions imposed upon the
system by the use of opium. Nature, indeed, for a time rebels and
resists the attempt to impose unnatural habitudes upon her action; but
there is a limit to her resistance, and she is then found to possess a
marvellous power of reconciling the processes of life with the
disturbance and disorder of almost the entire human organization.
This power of adaptation, while it unquestionably lures on to the
continued indulgence of all kinds of bad habits, is, on the other
hand, the only hope and assurance the sufferer from such causes can
have of ultimate recovery from his danger. If it requires years to
establish bad habits in the animal economy, why should we expect that
they can be wholly eradicated except by a reversal, in these respects,
of the entire current of the life, or without allowing a commensurate
time for that perfect restoration of the disordered functions which is
expected?
If this view of the case is not encouraging to the veteran consumer of
opium, it certainly is not without its suggestive utility to that
larger class whose use of opium has been comparatively limited both in
time and quantity. Fortunately, much the greater number of
opium-eaters take the drug in small quantities or have made use of it
for only a limited period. In their case the process of recovery is
relatively easy; the functions of their physical organization still
act for the most part in a normal way; they have to retrace
comparatively few steps and for comparatively a short time. Even to
the inveterate consumer of the drug it has been made manifest that he
may emancipate himself from his bondage if he will manfully accept the
conditions upon which alone he can accomplish it. In the worst
conceivable cases it is at least a choice between evils; if he
abandons opium, he may count upon much suffering of body, many
sleepless nights, a disordered nervous system, and at times great
prostration of strength. If he continues the habit, there remains, as
long as life lasts, the irresolute will, the bodily languor, the
ever-present sense of hopeless, helpless ruin. The opium-eater must
take his choice between the two. On the one hand is hope, continually
brightening in the future--on the other is the inconceivable
wretchedness of one from whom hope has forever fled.
DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER."
Under this title an article appeared in the "London Magazine" for
December, 1821, which attracted very general attention from its
literary merit and the novelty of its revelations. So considerable
was the interest excited in these "Confessions" that the article was
speedily republished in book form both in London and this country. The
reading public outside of the medical profession were thus for the
first time made generally acquainted with the tremendous potency of a
drug whose fascinations have since become almost as well known to the
inhabitants of England and America as to the people of India or
China. The general properties of the drug had of course been familiar
to intelligent men from the days of Vasco de Gama, but how easily the
habit of using it could be acquired, and with what difficulty when
acquired it could be left off, were subjects respecting which great
obscurity rested on the minds even of medical men. Such parts only of
these "Confessions" as have relation to De Quincey's habits as an
opium-eater, have been selected for republication; such extracts from
his other writings are added as embody his entire experience of opium
so far as he has given it to the world.
* * * * *
I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable
period of my life. According to my application of it, I trust that it
will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable
degree useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have
drawn it up, and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through
that delicate and honorable reserve which for the most part restrains
us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities.
Guilt and misery shrink by a natural instinct from public notice: they
court privacy and solitude; and, even in the choice of a grave, will
sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the
church-yard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family
of man, and wishing--in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth--
'Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.'
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all that it
should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a
disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do any thing
to weaken them. But on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not
amount to a confession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible that,
if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an
experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast
over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed,
and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not,
of necessity, imply guilt. They approach or recede from the shades of
that dark alliance in proportion to the probable motives and prospects
of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offense;
in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and
the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the
last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may
affirm that my life has been on the whole the life of a philosopher;
from my birth I was made an intellectual creature; and intellectual in
the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my
school-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am
bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet
_recorded_ [Footnote: "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there
is one celebrated man of the present day [Coleridge] who, if all be
true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity.]
of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against
this fascinating enthrallment with a religious zeal, and have at
length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other
man--have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain
which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in
counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist
that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the
self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name
shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall
be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if I did, it is possible
that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in
consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole
class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say, a
very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago,
by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of
English society (the class of men distinguished for talent, or of
eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as
opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent
-----, the late Dean of -----; Lord -----; Mr. -----, the philosopher;
a late under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation
which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words of
the Dean of -----, viz., "that he felt as though rats were gnawing and
abrading the coats of his stomach"); Mr. -----; and many others,
hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now if one
class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases
(and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a
natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish
a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I
doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that
it was not incorrect. I will mention two: 1. Three respectable London
druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened
lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the
number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at
this time immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these
persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were
purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble
and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2, (which
will possibly surprise the reader more,) some years ago, on passing
through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers
that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of
opium-eating; so much so that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of
the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in
preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate
occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time
would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising,
it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not
readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries
of opium, will afterward descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of
alcohol, I take it for granted
"That those eat now who never ate before;
And those who always ate, now eat the more."
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater,
and have suffered very unjustly in the opinion of my acquaintance,
from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings
which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this
practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of
pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my
case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take
opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but, so long
as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all
material bad consequences by the necessity of interposing long
intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew
the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating
pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first
began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth
year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had
first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great
strength. This affection had originally been caused by the
extremities of hunger suffered in my boyish days. During the season of
hope and redundant happiness which succeeded (that is, from eighteen
to twenty-four) it had slumbered; for the three following years it had
revived at intervals; and now, under unfavorable circumstances, from
depression of spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to
no remedies but opium.
It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling
incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal
events are not to be forgotten; and, from circumstances connected with
it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During
that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time
since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in
the following way: From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my
head in cold water at least once a day. Being suddenly seized with
toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental
intermission of that practice; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into
a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The
next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating
rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any
respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it
was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets; rather to run
away, if possible, from my torments than with any distinct purpose. By
accident I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium!
dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I
had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a
sound it was at that time! what solemn chords does it now strike upon
my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy
remembrances! It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a
duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy
Sunday in London. My road homeward lay through Oxford Street, and near
the "Pantheon" I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious
minister of celestial pleasures!), as if in sympathy with the rainy
Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be
expected to look on a Sunday, and when I asked for the tincture of
opium he gave it to me as any other man might do; and furthermore, out
of my shilling returned to me what seemed to be a real copper
half-penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite
of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind
as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist sent down to earth on a
special mission to myself.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the
whole art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took, I took under
every disadvantage. But I took it; and in an hour--O heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner
spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had
vanished was now a trifle in my eyes--this negative effect was
swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had
opened before me in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly
revealed. Here was a panacea, a _phaomakon nepenfes_, for all
human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers
had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered. Happiness might now
be bought for a penny and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable
ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind
could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I talk in this
way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him that
nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium. Its pleasures even
are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the
opium-eater can not present himself in the character of
_L'Allegro_; even then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il
Penseroso_.
And first one word with respect to its bodily effects; for upon all
that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by
travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old
immemorial right) or by professors of medicine, writing _ex
cathedra_, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce--Lies!
lies! lies! I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered
to the world in regard to opium: thus it has been repeatedly affirmed
by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in color, and this, take
notice, I grant; secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I
grant--for in my time East India opium has been three guineas a pound,
and Turkey eight; and thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most
probably you must do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of
regular habits, viz., die. These weighty propositions are, all and
singular, true; I can not gainsay them; and truth ever was and will be
commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted
the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of
opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for
further discoveries, stand aside and allow me to come forward and
lecture on this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted by all
who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can
produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo periculo_,
that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the
tincture of opium, commonly called laudanum, _that_ might certainly
intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? because
it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much
opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of
producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced
by alcohol; and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_; it
is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that
it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting
and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium,
when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours; the first,
to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute,
the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a
steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that
whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary
(if taken in a proper manner), introduces among them the most
exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his
self-possesion; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and
clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid
exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the
hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity
and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive; and, with
respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply
that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which
would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or
antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an
expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then with
this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of
kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is always more or
less of a maudlin character which exposes it to the contempt of the
by-stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed
tears--no mortal knows why--and the sensual creature is clearly
uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to
opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state
which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any
deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with
the impulse of a heart originally just and good. Wine constantly leads
a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain
point it is sure to volatilize and to dispence the intellectual
energies; whereas opium always seens to compose what had been
agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to
sum up all in one word, a man who is, inebriated, or tending to
inebriation, is, and feels that he is in a condition which calls up
into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his
nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from
any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner
part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in
a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the
majestic intellect.
This is the doctrine of the true Church on the subject of opium: of
which Church I acknowledge myself to be the only member--the alpha and
omega; but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground
of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the
unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of
those who have written expressly on the _materia medica_, make it
evident from the horror they express of it that their experimental
knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly
acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its
intoxicating power such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a
surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to
him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking
nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him by
suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from
opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not _prima facie_, and of
necessity an absurd one; but the defense _is_. To my surprise,
however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the
right. "I will maintain," said he, "that I _do_ talk nonsense;
and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon
principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply," said
he, "solely and simply--solely and simply," repeating it three times
over, "because I am drunk with opium; and that daily." I confess, that
the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may
seem a weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my
experience, which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand
drops a day; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man
unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication,
yet it struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the
word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it
generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead of restricting
it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement connected with
certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that
they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London,
for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great
respect, assured me the other day that a patient in recovering from an
illness had got drunk on a beefsteak.
Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to
opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third; which are,
that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily
followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even
immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and
mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply
denying; assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took
opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed
myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.
With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were
to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany
the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is
classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may
produce in the end, but the primary effects of opium are always, and
in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first
stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for
upward of eight hours, so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater
himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak
medically) as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may
descend upon his sleep.
Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, produce
inactivity or torpor. On the contrary it often led me into markets and
theatres. Yet, in candor, I will admit that markets and theatres are
not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater when in the divinest
state incident to his enjoyment. In that state crowds become an
oppression to him; music, even, too sensual and gross. He naturally
seeks solitude and silence as indispensable conditions of those
trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation
of what opium can do for human nature.
Courteous, and I hope indulgent reader, having accompanied me thus
far, now let me request you to move onward for about eight years; that
is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium
first began) to 1812. And what am I doing? Taking opium. Yes, but
what else? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as
well as for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying German
metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, etc. And I
still take opium? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have taken it
unblushingly ever since "the rainy Sunday," and "the Pantheon," and
"the beatific druggist" of 1804? Even so. And how do I find my health
after all this opium-eating? in short, how do I do? Why, pretty well,
I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as
can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth
(it must not be forgotten that hitherto I thought, to satisfy the
theories of medical men, I ought to be ill), I was never better in my
life than in the spring of 1812; and I hope sincerely that the
quantity of claret, port, or "particular Madeira," which in all
probability you, good reader, have taken and design to take for every
term of eight years during your natural life, may as little disorder
your health as mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the eight
years between 1804 and 1812. To this moderation and temperate use of
the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet at least (that
is, in 1812) I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors
which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same
time I have been only a _dilettante_ eater of opium; eight years'
practice even, with the single precaution of allowing sufficient
intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make
opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a
different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer
of the year we have just quitted I had suffered much in bodily health
from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This
event, being no ways related to the subject now before me further than
through bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I
know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a
most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as
that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied
by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative
on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what
follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing
dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience
by such a detail of my malady and of my struggles with it as might
suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer
with irritation and constant suffering, or, on the other hand, by
passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the
benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of the reader, and
must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having slipped by the
easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons from the first to the
final state of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be
a lurking predisposition in most readers from my previous
acknowledgments). Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your
good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort.
No; believe all that I ask of you, viz., that I could resist no
longer. Whether, indeed, afterward, I might not have succeeded in
breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts
would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which
I _did_ make might not have been carried much further, and my
gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up
much more energetically, these are questions which I must
decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but--shall I
speak ingenuously?--I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine,
that I am too much of an Eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a state
of happiness, both for myself and others; I can not face misery,
whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness; and am
little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any
reversionary benefit.
The issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned; and from
this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed
opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or
had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed
respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. Now then, reader,
from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down and
loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years
more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new
character.
This year which we have now reached, stood, I confess, as a
parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of
brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), set, as it
were, and insulated in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of
opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time
descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three
hundred and twenty grains of opium (that is, eight [Footnote: I here
reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of
opium, which I believe is the common estimate. However, as both may be
considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in
strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no
infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons
vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about one
hundred drops--so that eight thousand drops are about eighty times a
tea-spoonful.] thousand drops of laudanum) per day to forty grains, or
one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of
profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black
vapors that I have seen roll away from the summits of mountains, drew
off in one day; passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as
a ship that has been stranded and is floated off by a spring tide--
"That moveth altogether, if it move at all."
Now, then, I was again happy. I now took only one thousand drops of
laudanum per day--and what was that? A latter spring had come to close
up the season of youth. My brain performed its functions as healthily
as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or
fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves
to all around me. And, by the way, I remember about this time a little
incident, which I mention because trifling as it was the reader will
soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully
than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What
business a Malay could have to transact among English mountains I can
not conjecture, but possibly he was on his road to a sea-port about
forty miles distant.
The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl born and bred
among the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any
sort. His turban, therefore, confounded her not a little; and as it
turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same
extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf
fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened
to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed
learning of her master (and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge
of all the languages of the earth, besides perhaps a few of the lunar
ones), came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon
below whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the
house. I did not immediately go down, but when I did the group which
presented itself--arranged as it was by accident--though not very
elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the
statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the opera-house,
though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen,
but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing
resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a
kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trowsers of dingy white
relieved upon the dark panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the
girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain
intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her
countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And
a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful
English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with
her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and
bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by
marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish
gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay
was a little child from a neighboring cottage, who had crept in after
him and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upward at
the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, while with one hand he
caught at the dress of the young woman for protection.
My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive,
being, indeed, confined to two words--the Arabic word for barley and
the Turkish for opium (madjoon), which I have learned from
Anastasius--and as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even
Adelung's "Mithridates," which might have helped me to a few words, I
addressed him in some lines from the Iliad; considering that of such
language as I possessed, the Greek, in point of longitude, came
geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshiped me in a devout
manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved
my reputation with my neighbors, for the Malay had no means of
betraying the secret He lay down upon the floor for about an hour and
then pursued his journey. On his departure I presented him with a
piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must
be familiar, and the expression of his face convinced me that it
was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I
saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and (in the school-boy
phrase) bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one
mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their
horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature. But what could be
done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life,
on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must
be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any
human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by
having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening
him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English
idol. No; there was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for
some days I felt anxious; but as I never heard of any Malay being
found dead, I became convinced that he was used [Footnote: This,
however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect
produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London
magistrate (Harriot'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. Harriot's case into a trifle.] to opium, and that I
must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of
respite from the pains of wandering.
This incident I have digressed to mention because this Malay (partly
from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the
anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterward
upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself,
that ran "a-muck" [Footnote: 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.] at me, and led me into a world of troubles.
And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my
condition as it stood about 1816-1817, up to the middle of which
latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man.
But now farewell, a long farewell to happiness, winter or summer!
farewell to smiles and laughter! farewell to peace of mind! farewell
to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of
sleep! For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from
these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record
_the pains of opium._
Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your
attention to a brief explanatory note on three points:
1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for
this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give
the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from
memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and
some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant
them from the natural or chronological order I have not scrupled to do
so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few
of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to
which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the
impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has
been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the
task of either recalling or constructing into a regular narrative the
whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly
I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a
helpless sort of person who can not even arrange his own papers
without assistance, and I am separated from the hands which are wont
to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis.
2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and
communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of
writing is rather to think aloud and follow my own humors than much to
consider who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is
proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt
whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a
distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose
myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and
wishing to have some record of a time, the entire history of which no
one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the
efforts I am now capable of making because I know not whether I can
ever find time to do it again.
3. It will occur to you often to ask, Why did I not release myself
from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? To this
I must answer briefly--it might be supposed that I yielded to the
fascinations of opium too easily; it can not be supposed that any man
can be charmed by its terrors. The reader may be sure, therefore, that
I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. I add, that those
who witnessed the agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the
first to beg me to desist. But could not I have reduced it a drop a
day, or by adding water have bisected or trisected a drop? A thousand
drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce, and
that would certainly not have answered. But this is a common mistake
of those who know nothing of opium experimentally. I appeal to those
who do, whether it is not always found that down to a certain point it
can be reduced with ease and even pleasure, but that after that point
further reduction causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless
persons, who know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a
little low spirits and dejection for a few days. I answer, no; there
is nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits
are uncommonly raised, the pulse is improved, the health is better. It
is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resemblance to the
sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a state of unutterable
irritation of stomach (which surely is not much like dejection),
accompanied by intense perspirations, and feelings such as I shall not
attempt to describe without more space at my command.
I shall now enter "_in medias res_" and shall anticipate, from a
time when my opium pains might be said to be at their _acme_, an
account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.
My studies have now been long interrupted. I can not read to myself
with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance; yet I read aloud
sometimes for the pleasure of others, because reading is an
accomplishment of mine--and in the slang use of the word
_accomplishment_, as a superficial and ornamental attainment,
almost the only one I possess--and formerly, if I had any vanity at
all connected with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with
this, for I had observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Of late,
if I have felt moved by any thing in books, it has been by the grand
lamentations of Sampson Agonistes, or the great harmonies of the
Satanic speeches in "Paradise Regained," when read aloud by myself.
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one; and I owe
it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of gratitude, to
mention what that was. The sublimer and more passionate poets I still
read, as I have said, by snatches and occasionally, but my proper
vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic
understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are
continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary
efforts. Mathematics, for instance, intellectual philosophy, etc.,
were all become insupportable to me; I shrunk from them with a sense
of powerless and infantine feebleness that gave me an anguish the
greater from remembering the time when I grappled with them to my own
hourly delight; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the
labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms, and
fruits to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one single work,
to which I had presumed to give the title of an unfinished work of
Spinoza's, viz., "_De Emendatione Humani Intelectus_." This was
now lying locked up, as by frost, like any Spanish bridge or aqueduct,
begun upon too great a scale for the resources of the architect; and,
instead of surviving me as a monument of wishes at least, and
aspirations, and a life of labor dedicated to the exaltation of human
nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great
an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes
defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of
foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the
grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility I had
for amusement turned my attention to political economy. In 1819 a
friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and, recurring to
my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some legislator for
this science, I said, before I had finished the first chapter, "Thou
art the man!" Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been
dead in me. Yet I wondered once more: I wondered at myself that I
could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading; and much more
I wondered at the book.
Thus did one simple work of profound understanding avail to give me a
pleasure and an activity which I had not known for years--it roused me
even to write, or at least to dictate what M. wrote for me. It seemed
to me that some important truths had escaped even "the inevitable eye"
of Mr. Ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature
that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by
algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of
economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being
so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I
was of all general exertion, I drew up my "Prolegomena to all Future
Systems of Political Economy." I hope it will not be found redolent of
opium; though, indeed, to most people, the subject itself is a
sufficient opiate.
This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the sequel
showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements were made at a
provincial press about eighteen miles distant for printing it. An
additional compositor was retained for some days on this account. The
work was even twice advertised, and I was, in a manner, pledged to the
fulfillment of my intention. But I had a preface to write, and a
dedication--which I wished to make a splendid one--to Mr. Ricardo. I
found myself quite unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements
were countermanded, the compositor dismissed, and my "Prolegomena"
rested peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in terms
that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which
I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering,
I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom
could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words to
any that I received was the utmost that I could accomplish, and often
_that_ not until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my
writing-table. Without the aid of M. all records of bills paid, or
_to be_ paid, must have perished, and my whole domestic
economy--whatever became of Political Economy--must have gone into
irretrievable confusion. I shall not afterward allude to this part of
the case.
It is one, however, which the opium-eater will find in the end as
oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity
and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident to the neglect
or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the
remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a
reflective and conscientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his
moral sensibilities or aspirations; he wishes and longs as earnestly
as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted
by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible
infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power
to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies
in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly
confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who
is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of
his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from
motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk;
but he is powerless as an infant, and can not even attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter confessions, to
the history and journal of what took place in my dreams; for these
were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part
of my physical economy was from the re-awaking of a state of eye
generally incident to childhood or exalted states of irritability. I
know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most,
have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of
phantoms. In some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the
eye; others have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or
summon them; or as a child once said to me when I questioned him on
this matter, "I can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they
come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had
almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion
over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this
faculty became positively distressing to me. At night, when I lay
awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes
of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as
if they were stones drawn from times before dipus or Priam, before
Tyre, before Memphis. And at the same time a corresponding change took
place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up
within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than
earthly splendor. And the four following facts may be mentioned as
noticeable at this time:
I. That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed
to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in
one point--that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a
voluntary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my
dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty.
II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by
deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly
incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not
metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless
abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I
could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had
re-ascended. This I do not dwell upon, because the state of gloom
which attended these gorgeous spectacles--amounting at last to utter
darkness, as of some suicidal despondency--can not be approached by
words.
III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both
powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in
proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space
swelled and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This,
however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time. I
sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one
night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium
passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits
of any human experience.
IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later
years, were often revived. I could not be said to recollect them, for
if I had been told of them when waking I should not have been able to
acknowledge them as parts of my past experience; but placed as they
were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their
evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I _recognized_
them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relative of
mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and
being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance
which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest
incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she
had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and
every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can
believe. I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern
books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, viz.,
that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is in
fact the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel
assured, that there is no such thing as _forgetting_ possible to
the mind. A thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between
our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind;
accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike,
whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever--just as
the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas in
fact we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a
veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring
day-light shall have withdrawn.
And now came a tremendous change, which unfolding itself slowly like a
scroll through many months, promised an abiding torment; and, in fact,
it never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human
face had often mixed in my dreams--but not despotically, nor with any
special power of tormenting--but now that which I have called the
tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part
of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now
it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face began
to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to
the heavens; faces, imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upward by
thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries: my agitation was
infinite, my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean.
_May_, 1818.--The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I
have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic
scenes. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical
sunlights I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles,
all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all
tropical regions, and assembled them together in China or
Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods
under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered
at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was
fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol;
I was the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the
wrath of Bramah through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me;
Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I had
done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled
at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies
and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I
was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and laid, confounded
with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental dreams,
which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous scenery
that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner
or later came a reflux of feeling that swallowed up the astonishment
and left me not so much in terror as in hatred and abomination of what
I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless
incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me
into an oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with
one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical
horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But
here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles,
especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of
more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with
him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I
escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses with cane
tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became
instinct with life. The abominable head of the crocodile and his
leering eyes looked out at me multiplied into a thousand repetitions,
and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous
reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was broken
up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear
every thing when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke. It was broad
noon, and my children were standing hand in hand at my bedside, come
to show me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them
dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from
the damned crocodile and the other unutterable monsters and abortions
of my dreams to the sight of innocent _human_ natures and of
infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and
could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces.
It now remains that I should say something of the way in which this
conflict of horrors was finally brought to its crisis. The reader is
already aware that the opium-eater has, in some way or other,
"unwound, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which bound
him." By what means? To have narrated this according to the original
intention would have far exceeded the space which can now be
allowed. It is fortunate, as such a cogent reason exists for abridging
it, that I should on a maturer view of the case have been exceedingly
unwilling to injure by any such unaffecting details the impression of
the history itself as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience of
the yet unconfirmed opium-eater, or even (though a very inferior
consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The interest of
the judicious reader will not attach itself chiefly to the subject of
the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power. Not the
opium-eater, but the opium is the true hero of the tale, and the
legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was to
display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for pleasure or for
pain. If that is done, the action of the piece has closed.
However, as some people in spite of all laws to the contrary will
persist in asking what became of the opium-eater, and in what state he
now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium had long
ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was solely by the
tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that it kept its
hold. Yet as other tortures, no less it may be thought, attended the
non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and
_that_ might as well have been adopted, which, however terrific
in itself, held out a prospect of final restoration to happiness. This
appears true; but good logic gave the author no strength to act upon
it. However, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for
other objects still dearer to him, and which will always be far dearer
to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I saw
that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if
that should be required, to die in throwing it off. How much I was at
that time taking I can not say; for the opium which I used had been
purchased for me by a friend who afterward refused to let me pay him,
so that I could not ascertain even what quantity I had used within a
year. I apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that
I varied from about fifty or sixty grains to one hundred and fifty a
day. My first task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and, as fast
as I could, to twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_
state. Think of me as of one, even when four months had passed, still
agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and much,
perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked, as I collect the
torments of that state from the affecting account of them left by a
most innocent sufferer [William Lithgow] of the time of James
I. Meantime I derived no benefit from any medicine except one
prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz.,
ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my
emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed
by a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only
to mislead. At all events it would be misplaced in this situation. The
moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore
of necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and
tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my
case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and
an eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced; and that
he may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that
with a stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results
with less. This may be true. I would not presume to measure the
efforts of other men by my own. I heartily wish him more energy; I
wish him the same success. Nevertheless, I had motives external to
myself which he may unfortunately want, and these supplied me with
conscientious supports which mere personal interests might fail to
supply to a mind debilitated by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to
die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of diminishing
the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of
existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort of
physical regeneration, and I may add that ever since, at intervals, I
have had a restoration of more than youthful spirits, though under the
pressure of difficulties, which in a less happy state of mind I should
have called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains: my dreams are not
yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have
not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing
off, but not all departed; my sleep is tumultuous, and like the gates
of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is
still, in the tremendous line of Milton--
"With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms."
The preceding narrative was written by De Quincey in the summer of
1821. In December of the next year a further record of his experience
was published in the form of the following _Appendix._
Those who have read the "Confessions" will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This
impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because
the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering
necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case
as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing
it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking
from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had
descended from so large a quantity as eight thousand drops to so small
a one, comparatively speaking, as a quantity ranging between three
hundred and one hundred and sixty drops, might well suppose that the
victory was in effect achieved. In suffering my readers, therefore, to
think of me as of a reformed opium-eater, I left no impression but
what I shared myself, and, as may be seen, even this impression was
left to be collected from the general tone of the conclusion and not
from any specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the
literal truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became
sensible that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy
than I had anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more
apparent every month. In particular I became aware of an increasing
callousness or defect of sensibility in the stomach, and this I
imagined might imply a scirrhous state of that organ either formed or
forming. An eminent physician, to whose kindness I was at that time
deeply indebted, informed me that such a termination of my case was
not impossible, though likely to be forestalled by a different
termination in the event of my continuing the use of opium. Opium,
therefore, I resolved wholly to abjure as soon as I should find myself
at liberty to bend my undivided attention and energy to this
purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June last that any
tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt arrived. On
that day I began my experiment, having previously settled in my own
mind that I would not flinch, but would "stand up to the scratch"
under any possible "punishment." I must premise that about one hundred
and seventy or one hundred and eighty drops had been my ordinary
allowance for many months. Occasionally I had run up as high as five
hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred. In repeated preludes to my
final experiment I had also gone as low as one hundred drops, but had
found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth day, which, by the
way, I have always found more difficult to get over than any of the
preceding three. I went off under easy sail--one hundred and thirty
drops a day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to
eighty. The misery which I now suffered "took the conceit" out of me
at once, and for about a month I continued off and on about this mark;
then I sunk to sixty, and the next day to--none at all. This was the
first day for nearly ten years that I had existed without opium. I
persevered in my abstinence for ninety hours; that is, upward of half
a week. Then I took--ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what would
ye have done? Then I abstained again; then took about twenty-five
drops; then abstained; and so on.
Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks
of the experiment were these enormous irritability and excitement of
the whole system--the stomach, in particular, restored to a full
feeling of vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain;
unceasing restlessness night and day; sleep--I scarcely knew what it
was--three hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that
so agitated and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me;
lower jaw constantly swelling; mouth ulcerated; and many other
distressing symptoms that would be tedious to repeat, among which,
however, I must mention one because it had never failed to accompany
any attempt to renounce opium, viz., violent sternutation. This now
became exceedingly troublesome; sometimes lasting for two hours at
once, and recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not
much surprised at this, on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or
read, that the membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of
that which lines the stomach, whence I believe are explained the
inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The
sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach
expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable, also, that
during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium I had
never once caught cold--as the phrase is--nor even the slightest
cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In
an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to ----, I
find these words: "You ask me to write the ---- ----. Do you know
Beaumont and Fletcher's play of 'Thierry and Theodoret?' There you
will see my case as to sleep; nor is it much of an exaggeration in
other features. I protest to you that I have a greater influx of
thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under the reign
of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been frozen up
for a decade of years by opium, had now, according to the old fable,
been thawed at once, such a multitude stream in upon me from all
quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability, that for
one which I detain and write down fifty escape me. In spite of my
weariness from suffering and want of sleep I can not stand still or
sit for two minutes together. _'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare
canoros.'"_
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighboring surgeon,
requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came,
and after briefly stating the case to him I asked this question:
Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus
to the digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in
the stomach--which manifestly was the cause of the inability to
sleep--might arise from indigestion? His answer was, No: on the
contrary, he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion
itself, which should naturally go on below the consciousness, but
which, from the unnatural state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a
use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This opinion was
plausible, and the unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me
to think that it was true; for if it had been any mere _irregular_
affection of the stomach it should naturally have intermitted
occasionally, and constantly fluctuated as to degree. The intention of
Nature, as manifested in the healthy state, obviously is to withdraw
from our notice all the vital motions--such as the circulation of the
blood, the expansion and contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic
action of the stomach, etc.--and opium, it seems, is able in this as
in other instances to counteract her purposes. By the advice of the
surgeon I tried _bitters_.
For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings under which I
labored, but about the forty-second day of the experiment the symptoms
already noticed began to retire and new ones to arise of a different
and far more tormenting class. Under these, but with a few intervals
of remission, I have since continued to suffer; but I dismiss them
undescribed tracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is
removed by too short or by no interval. To do this with minuteness
enough to make the review of any use would be indeed "_infandum
renovare dolorem_," and possibly without a sufficient motive; for,
secondly, I doubt whether this latter state be any way referable to
opium, positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it
is to be numbered among the last evils from the direct action of opium
or even among the earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of
opium in a system long deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the
symptoms might be accounted for from the time of year (August); for,
though the summer was not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all
the heat _funded_ (if one may say so) during the previous months,
added to the existing heat of that month, naturally renders August in
its better half the hottest part of the year; and it so happened that
the excessive perspiration which even at Christmas attends any great
reduction in the daily quantum of opium, and which in July was so
violent as to oblige me to use a bath five or six times a day, had
about the setting in of the hottest season wholly retired, on which
account any bad effect of the heat might be the more unmitigated.
Another symptom, viz., what in my ignorance I call internal rheumatism
(sometimes affecting the shoulders, etc., but more often appearing to
be seated in the stomach), seemed again less probably attributable
to the opium or the want of opium than to the dampness of the house
which I inhabit, which had about that time attained its maximum, July
having been as usual a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part
of England.
Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connection with
the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness--except indeed as an
occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and
thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever--I willingly spare my
reader all description of it. Let it perish to him; and would that I
could as easily say, let it perish to my own remembrances, that any
future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an
ideal of possible human misery!
So much for the sequel of my experiment As to the former stage, in
which properly lies the experiment and its application to other cases,
I must request my reader not to forget the reason for which I have
recorded it. This was a belief that I might add some trifle to the
history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware that I have
not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor
of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which
besieged me while writing that part of my paper; which part being
immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of
latitude), can not be corrected or improved. But from this account,
rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may
arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium--viz.,
to opium-eaters in general--that it establishes for their consolation
and encouragement the fact that opium may be renounced without greater
sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty
rapid course of descent.
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
Drops of Laud.
Monday, June 24....... 130
Tuesday, " 25....... 140
Wednesday, " 26....... 130
Thursday, " 27....... 80
Friday, " 28....... 80
Saturday, " 29....... 80
Sunday, " 30....... 80
SECOND WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 1........ 80
Tuesday, " 2........ 80
Wednesday, " 3........ 90
Thursday, " 4........ 100
Friday " 5........ 80
Saturday, " 6........ 80
Sunday, " 7........ 80
THIRD WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 8........ 300
Tuesday, " 9........ 50
Wednesday, " 10
Thursday, " 11 Hiatus in
Friday, " 12 MS
Saturday, " 13
Sunday, " 14....... 76
FOURTH WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 15....... 76
Tuesday, " 16....... 73-1/2
Wednesday, " 17....... 73-1/2
Thursday, " 18....... 70
Friday, " 19....... 240
Saturday, " 20....... 80
Sunday, " 21....... 350
FIFTH WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 22....... 60
Tuesday, " 23.......none.
Wednesday, " 24.......none.
Thursday, " 25.......none.
Saturday, " 27.......none.
Friday, " 26....... 200
What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to such
numbers as 300, 350, etc.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was
mere infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended
with the 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 awaking
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
any large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and
could then have borne any thing.
The narrative part of De Quincey's "Confessions" by no means exhausts
the story of his suffering as recorded by himself. Scattered through
his miscellaneous papers are to be found frequent references to the
opium habit and its protracted hold upon the system long after the
drug itself had been discarded. The succeeding extracts from his
"Literary Reminiscences" will throw light upon his bodily and mental
condition in the years immediately following his opium struggle:
"I was ill at that time and for years after--ill from the effects of
opium upon the liver, and one primary indication of any illness felt
in that organ is peculiar depression of spirits. Hence arose a
singular effect of reciprocal action in maintaining a state of
dejection. From the original physical depression caused by the
derangement of the liver arose a sympathetic depression of the mind,
disposing me to believe that I never _could_ extricate myself;
and from this belief arose, by reaction, a thousand-fold increase of
the physical depression. I began to view my unhappy London life--a
life of literary toils odious to my heart--as a permanent state of
exile from my Westmoreland home. My three eldest children, at that
time in the most interesting stages of childhood and infancy, were in
Westmoreland, and so powerful was my feeling (derived merely from a
deranged liver) of some long, never-ending separation from my family,
that at length, in pure weakness of mind, I was obliged to relinquish
my daily walks in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens from the misery of
seeing children in multitudes that too forcibly recalled my own.
"Meantime it is very true that the labors I had to face would not even
to myself, in a state of good bodily health, have appeared
alarming. _Myself_, I say, for in any state of health I do not
write with rapidity. Under the influence, however, of opium, when it
reaches its maximum in diseasing the liver and deranging the digestive
functions, all exertion whatever is revolting in excess. Intellectual
exertion above all is connected habitually, when performed under opium
influence, with a sense of disgust the most profound for the subject
(no matter what) which detains the thoughts; all that morning
freshness of animal spirits, which under ordinary circumstances
consumes, as it were, and swallows up the interval between one's self
and one's distant object, all that dewy freshness is exhaled and
burned off by the parching effects of opium on the animal economy.
"I was, besides, and had been for some time engaged in the task of
unthreading the labyrinth by which I had reached, unawares, my present
state of slavery to opium. I was descending the mighty ladder,
stretching to the clouds as it seemed, by which I had imperceptibly
attained my giddy altitude--that point from which it had seemed
equally impossible to go forward or backward. To wean myself from
opium I had resolved inexorably, and finally I accomplished my
vow. But the transition state was the worst state of all to
support. All the pains of martyrdom were there; all the ravages in the
economy of the great central organ, the stomach, which had been
wrought by opium; the sickening disgust which attended each separate
respiration; and the rooted depravation of the appetite and the
digestion--all these must be weathered for months upon months, and
without stimulus (however false and treacherous) which, for some part
of each day, the old doses of laudanum would have supplied. These
doses were to be continually diminished, and under this difficult
dilemma: If, as some people advised, the diminution were made by so
trifling a quantity as to be imperceptible, in that case the duration
of the process was interminable and hopeless--thirty years would not
have sufficed to carry it through. On the other hand, if twenty-five
to fifty drops were withdrawn on each day (that is, from one to two
grains of opium), inevitably within three, four, or five days the
deduction began to tell grievously, and the effect was to restore the
craving for opium more keenly than ever. There was the collision of
both evils--that from the laudanum and that from the want of
laudanum. The last was a state of distress perpetually increasing, the
other was one which did not sensibly diminish--no, not for a long
period of months. Irregular motions, impressed by a potent agent upon
the blood and other processes of life, are slow to subside; they
maintain themselves long after the exciting cause has been partially
or even wholly withdrawn; and, in my case, they did not perfectly
subside into the motion of tranquil health for several years. From all
this it will be easy to understand the _fact_--though after all
impossible, without a similar experience, to understand the
_amount_--of my suffering and despondency in the daily task upon
which circumstances had thrown me at this period--the task of writing
and producing something for the journals, _invita Minerva_. Over
and above the principal operation of my suffering state, as felt in
the enormous difficulty with which it loaded every act of exertion,
there was another secondary effect which always followed as a reaction
from the first. And that this was no accident or peculiarity attached
to my individual temperament, I may presume from the circumstance that
Mr. Coleridge experienced the very same sensations, in the same
situation, throughout his literary life, and has often noticed it to
me with surprise and vexation. The sensation was that of powerful
disgust with any subject upon which he had occupied his thoughts or
had exerted his powers of composition for any length of time, and an
equal disgust with the result of his exertions--powerful abhorrence, I
may call it, absolute loathing of all that he had produced.
"In after years Coleridge assured me that he never could read any
thing he had written without a sense of overpowering disgust. Reverting
to my own case, which was pretty nearly the same as this, there was,
however, this difference--that at times, when I had slept at more
regular hours for several nights consecutively, and had armed myself
by a sudden increase of the opium for a few days running, I recovered
at times a remarkable glow of jovial spirits. In some such artificial
respites, it was, from my usual state of distress, and purchased at a
heavy price of subsequent suffering, that I wrote the greater part of
the opium 'Confessions' in the autumn of 1821.
"These circumstances I mention to account for my having written any
thing in a happy or genial state of mind, when I was in a general
state so opposite, by my own description, to every thing like
enjoyment. That description, as a _general_ one, states most truly the
unhappy condition, and the somewhat extraordinary condition of feeling
to which opium had brought me. I, like Mr. Coleridge, could not endure
what I had written for some time after I had written it. I also shrunk
from treating any subject which I had much considered; but more, I
believe, as recoiling from the intricacy and the elaborateness which
had been made known to me in the course of considering it, and on
account of the difficulty or the toilsomeness which might be fairly
presumed from the mere fact that I _had_ long considered it, or could
have found it necessary to do so, than from any blind mechanical
feeling inevitably associated (as in Coleridge it was) with a second
survey of the same subject. One other effect there was from the opium,
and I believe it had some place in Coleridge's list of morbid
affections caused by opium, and of disturbances extended even to the
intellect, which was, that the judgment was for a time grievously
impaired, sometimes even totally abolished, as applied to any thing I
had recently written. Fresh from the labor of composition, I believe,
indeed, that almost every man, unless he has had a very long and close
experience in the practice of writing, finds himself a little dazzled
and bewildered in computing the effect, as it will appear to neutral
eyes, of what he has produced. But the incapacitation which I speak of
here as due to opium, is of another kind and another degree. It is
mere childish helplessness, or senile paralysis, of the judgment,
which distresses the man in attempting to grasp the upshot and the
total effect (the _tout ensemble_) of what he has himself so recently
produced. There is the same imbecility in attempting to hold things
steadily together, and to bring them under a comprehensive or unifying
act of the judging faculty, as there is in the efforts of a drunken
man to follow a chain of reasoning. Opium is said to have some
_specific_ effect of debilitation upon the memory: [Footnote: The
technical memory, or that which depends upon purely arbitrary links of
connection, and therefore more upon a _nisus_ or separate activity of
the mind--that memory, for instance, which recalls names--is
undoubtedly affected, and most powerfully, by opium. On the other
hand, the _logical_ memory, or that which recalls facts that are
connected by fixed relations, and where A being given, B must go
before or after--historical memory, for instance--is not much affected
by opium.] that is, not merely the general one which might be supposed
to accompany its morbid effects upon the bodily system, but some
other, more direct, subtle, and exclusive; and this, of whatever
nature, may possibly extend to the faculty of judging. Such, however,
over and above the more known and more obvious ill effects upon fhe
spirits and the health, were some of the stronger and more subtle
effects of opium in disturbing the intellectual system as well as the
animal, the functions of the will also no less than those of the
intellect, from which both Coleridge and myself were suffering at the
period to which I now refer (1821-25); evils which found their fullest
exemplification in the very act upon which circumstances had now
thrown me as the _sine qua non_ of my extrication from difficulties--
viz., the act of literary composition. This necessity--the fact of its
being my one sole resource for the present, and the established
experience which I now had of the peculiar embarrassments and
counteracting forces which I should find in opium, but still more in
the train of consequences left behind by past opium--strongly
co-operated with the mere physical despondency arising out of the
liver: and the state of partial unhappiness, among other outward
indications, expressed itself by one mark, which some people are apt
greatly to misapprehend--as if it were some result of a sentimental
turn of feeling--I mean perpetual sighs. But medical men must very
well know that a certain state of the liver, _mechanically_ and
without any co-operation of the will, expresses itself in sighs. I
was much too firm-minded and too reasonable to murmur or complain. I
certainly suffered deeply, as one who finds himself a banished man
from all that he loves, and who had not the consolations of hope, but
feared too profoundly that all my efforts--efforts poisoned so sadly
by opium--might be unavailing for the end.
"In 1824 I had come up to London upon an errand--in itself
sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments
by literary labors; but, as always happened hitherto, with very
imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through
the deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great and my application
was unintermitting, but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through
the direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ
deranged; and secondly, by a reflex effect of depression, through my
own thoughts in estimating my prospects, together with the aggravation
of my case by the inevitable exile from my own mountain home--all this
reduced the value of my exertion in a deplorable way. It was rare,
indeed, that I could satisfy my own judgment even tolerably with the
quality of any article I produced; and my power to make sustained
exertions drooped in a way I could not control, every other hour of
the day; insomuch that, what with parts to be cancelled, and what with
whole days of torpor and pure defect of power to produce any thing at
all, very often it turned out that all my labors were barely
sufficient (sometimes not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of
my residence in London. Gloomy indeed was my state of mind at that
period, for though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, yet
all availed me not, and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then
undertook. One canopy of murky clouds brooded forever upon my spirits,
which were in one uniformly low key of cheerless despondency."
De Quincey has given his views pretty freely as to the regimen to be
observed by reforming opium-eaters, in a paper on "The Temperance
Movement" which is specially worthy of attention.
"My own experience had never travelled in that course which could much
instruct me in the miseries from wine or in the resources for
struggling with it. I had repeatedly been obliged, indeed, to lay it
aside altogether; but in this I never found room for more than seven
or ten days' struggle: excesses I had never practiced in the use of
wine: simply the habit of using it, and the collateral habits formed
by excessive use of opium, had produced no difficulty at all in
resigning it even on an hour's notice. From opium I derive my right of
offering hints at all upon the subject of abstinence in other
forms. But the modes of suffering from the evil, and the separate
modes of suffering from the effort of self-conquest, together with
errors of judgment incident to such states of transitional torment,
are all nearly allied, practically analogous as regards the remedies,
even if characteristically distinguished to the inner consciousness. I
make no scruple, therefore, of speaking as from a station of high
experience and of most watchful attention, which never remitted even
under sufferings that were at times absolutely frantic. Once for all,
however, in cases deeply rooted no advances ought ever to be made but
by small stages; for the effect, which is insensible at first, by the
tenth, twelfth, or fifteenth day generally accumulates unendurably
under any bolder deduction. Certain it is, that by an error of this
nature at the outset, most natural to human impatience under exquisite
suffering, too generally the triai is abruptly brought to an end
through the crisis of a passionate relapse.
"Another object, and one to which the gladiator matched in single duel
with intemperance must direct a religious vigilance, is the
digestibility of his food. It must be digestible not only by its
original qualities, but also by its culinary preparation.
"The whole process and elaborate machinery of digestion are felt to be
mean and humiliating when viewed in relation to our mere animal
economy. But they rise into dignity and assert their own supreme
importance when they are studied from another station, viz., in
relation to the intellect and temper. No man dares _then_ to
despise them; it is then seen that these functions of the human system
form the essential basis upon which the strength and health of our
higher nature repose; and that upon these functions, chiefly, the
general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules of prudence or
gifts of experience that life can accumulate, will never do as much
for human comfort and welfare as would be done by a stricter
attention, and a wiser science, directed to the digestive system. In
this attention lies the key to any perfect restoration for the victim
of intemperance. The sheet-anchor for the storm-beaten sufferer who is
laboring to recover a haven of rest from the agonies of intemperance,
and who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison which ruined, but
which also for brief intervals offered him his only consolation, lies,
beyond all doubt, in a most anxious regard to every thing connected
with this supreme function of our animal economy. By how much the
organs of digestion are feebler, by so much is it the more
indispensable that solid and animal food should be adopted. A robust
stomach may be equal to the trying task of supporting a fluid such as
tea for breakfast; but for a feeble stomach, and still worse for a
stomach _enfeebled_ by bad habits, broiled beef or something
equally solid and animal, but not too much subjected to the action of
fire, is the only tolerable diet. This indeed is the capital rule for
a sufferer from habitual intoxication, who must inevitably labor under
an impaired digestion: that as little as possible he should use of any
liquid diet, and as little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef and a
little bread (at the least sixty hours old) compose the privileged
bill of fare for his breakfast. Errors of digestion, either from
impaired powers or from powers not so much enfeebled as deranged, is
the one immeasurable source both of disease and of secret wretchedness
to the human race. Next, after the most vigorous attention, and a
scientific attention, to the digestive system, in power of operation,
stands _exercise_. For myself, under the ravages of opium, I have
found walking the most beneficial exercise; besides that, it requires
no previous notice or preparation of any kind; and this is a capital
advantage in a state of drooping energies, or of impatient and
unresting agitation. I may mention, as possibly an accident of my
individual temperament, but possibly, also, no accident at all, that
the relief obtained by walking was always most sensibly brought home
to my consciousness, when some part of it (at least a mile and a half)
had been performed before breakfast. In this there soon ceased to be
any difficulty; for, while under the full oppression of opium it was
impossible for me to rise at any hour that could, by the most
indulgent courtesy, be described as within the pale of morning, no
sooner had there been established any considerable relief from this
oppression than the tendency was in the opposite direction--the
difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even to a reasonable
hour. Having once accomplished the feat of walking at 9 A.M., I backed
in a space of seven or eight months to eight o'clock, to seven, to
six, five, four, three; until at this point a metaphysical fear fell
upon me that I was actually backing into 'yesterday,' and should soon
have no sleep at all. Below three, however, I did not descend; and,
for a couple of years, three and a half hours' sleep was all that I
could obtain in the twenty-four hours. From this no particular
suffering arose, except the nervous impatience of lying in bed for one
moment after awaking. Consequently the habit of walking before
breakfast became at length troublesome no longer as a most odious
duty, but on the contrary, as a temptation that could hardly be
resisted on the wettest mornings. As to the quantity of the exercise,
I found that six miles a day formed the _minimum_ which would
support permanently a particular standard of animal spirits, evidenced
to myself by certain apparent symptoms. I averaged about nine and a
half miles a day, but ascended on particular days to fifteen or
sixteen, and more rarely to twenty-three or twenty-four; a quantity
which did not produce fatigue: on the contrary it spread a sense of
improvement through almost the whole week that followed; but usually,
in the night immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost much
of my sleep--a privation that under the circumstances explained,
deterred me from trying the experiment too often. For one or two years
I accomplished more than I have here claimed, viz., from six to seven
thousand miles in the twelve months.
"A necessity more painful to me by far than that of taking continued
exercise arose out of a cause which applies perhaps with the same
intensity only to opium cases, but must also apply in some degree to
all cases of debilitation from morbid stimulation of the nerves,
whether by means of wine, or opium, or distilled liquors. In
travelling on the outside of mails during my youthful days, I made the
discovery that opium, after an hour or so, diffuses a warmth deeper
and far more permanent than could be had from any other known
source. I mention this to explain in some measure the awful passion of
cold which for some years haunted the inverse process of laying aside
the opium. It was a perfect frenzy of misery; cold was a sensation
which then first, as a mode of torment, seemed to have been
revealed. In the months of July and August, and not at all the less
during the very middle watch of the day, I sat in the closest
proximity to a blazing fire: cloaks, blankets, counterpanes,
hearth-rugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders, but with
hardly a glimmering of relief.
"At night, and after taking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could
sometimes afford to smile at the resemblance of my own case to that of
Harry Gile. Meantime, the external phenomenon by which the cold
expressed itself was a sense (but with little reality) of eternal
freezing perspiration. From this I was never free; and at length,
from finding one general ablution sufficient for one day, I was thrown
upon the irritating necessity of repeating it more frequently than
would seem credible if stated. At this time I used always hot water,
and a thought occurred to me very seriously that it would be best to
live constantly, and perhaps to sleep, in a bath. What caused me to
renounce this plan was an accident that compelled me for one day to
use cold water. This, first of all, communicated any lasting warmth;
so that ever afterward I used none _but_ cold water. Now to live
in a cold bath in our climate, and in my own state of preternatural
sensibility to cold, was not an idea to dally with. I wish to mention,
however, for the information of other sufferers in the same way, one
change in the mode of applying the water which led to a considerable
and a sudden improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had
endeavored in vain to procure a child's battledore, as an easy means
(when clothed with sponge) of reaching the interspace between the
shoulders. In default of a battledore, therefore, my necessity threw
my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this, eventually, proved of
much greater service than any sponge or any battledore, for the
friction of the brush caused an irritation on the surface of the skin,
which, more than any thing else, has gradually diminished the once
continual misery of unrelenting frost, although even yet it renews
itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals.
"I counsel the patient not to make the mistake of supposing that his
amendment will necessarily proceed continuously or by equal
increments, because this, which is a common notion, will certainly
lead to dangerous disappointments. How frequently I have heard people
encouraging a self-reformer by such language as this: 'When you have
got over the fourth day of abstinence, which suppose to be Sunday,
then Monday will find you a trifle better; Tuesday better
still--though still it should be only a trifle--and so on. You may at
least rely on never going back, you may assure yourself of having seen
the worst, and the positive improvements, if trifles separately, must
soon gather into a sensible magnitude.' This may be true in a case of
short standing, but as a general rule it is perilously delusive. On
the contrary, the line of progress, if exhibited in a geometrical
construction, would describe an ascending path upon the whole, but
with frequent retrocessions into descending curves, which, compared
with the point of ascent that had been previously gained and so
vexatiously interrupted, would sometimes seem deeper than the original
point of starting. This mortifying tendency I can report from
experience, many times repeated, with regard to opium, and so
unaccountably, as regarded all the previous grounds of expectation,
that I am compelled to suppose it a tendency inherent in the very
nature of all self-restorations for animal systems.
"I counsel the patient frequently to call back before his
thoughts--when suffering sorrowful collapses that seem unmerited by
any thing done or neglected--that such, and far worse perhaps, must
have been his experience, and with no reversion of hope behind, had he
persisted in his intemperate indulgences; _these_ also suffer
their own collapses, and (so far as things not co-present can be
compared) by many degrees more shocking to the genial instincts. I
exhort him to believe that no movement on his own part, not the
smallest conceivable, toward the restoration of his healthy state, can
by possibility perish. Nothing in this direction is finally lost; but
often it disappears and hides itself; suddenly, however, to re-appear,
and in unexpected strength, and much more hopefully, because such
minute elements of improvement, by re-appearing at a remoter stage,
show themselves to have combined with other elements of the same kind,
so that equally by their gathering tendency and their duration through
intervals of apparent darkness, and below the current of what seemed
absolute interruption, they argue themselves to be settled in the
system. There is no good gift that does not come from God. Almost his
greatest is health, with the peace which it inherits, and man must
reap _this_ on the same terms as he was told to reap God's
earliest gift, the fruits of the earth, viz., 'in the sweat of his
brow,' through labor, often through sorrow, through disappointment,
but still through imperishable perseverance, and hoping under clouds
when all hope seemed darkened.
"But it seems to me important not to omit this particular caution: The
patient will be naturally anxious, as he goes on, frequently to test
the amount of his advance, and its rate, if that were possible; but
this he will see no mode of doing except through tentative balancings
of his feelings, and generally of the moral atmosphere around him, as
to pleasure and hope, against the corresponding states so far as he
can recall them from his periods of intemperance. But these
comparisons I warn him are fallacious when made in this way. The two
states are incommensurable on any plan of _direct_ comparison. Some
common measure must be found, and _out of himself_; some positive fact
that will not bend to his own delusive feeling at the moment; as, for
instance, in what degree he finds tolerable what heretofore was _not_
so--the effort of writing letters, or transacting business, or
undertaking a journey, or overtaking the arrears of labor, that had
been once thrown off to a distance. If in these things he finds
himself improved, by tests that can not be disputed, he may safely
disregard any sceptical whispers from a wayward sensibility which can
not yet, perhaps, have recovered its normal health, however much
improved. His inner feelings may not yet point steadily to the truth,
though they may vibrate in that direction. Besides, it is certain that
sometimes very manifest advances, such as any medical man would
perceive at a glance, carry a man through stages of agitation and
discomfort. A far worse condition might happen to be less agitated,
and so far more bearable. Now when a man is positively suffering
discomfort, when he is below the line of pleasurable feeling, he is no
proper judge of his own condition, which he neither will nor can
appreciate. Toothache extorts more groans than dropsy."
Little is definitely known to the public of De Quincey's opium habits
subsequent to the publication in the year 1822 of the Appendix to the
"Confessions." In the "Life of Professor Wilson," by his daughter,
Mrs. Gordon, a letter from De Quincey, under date of February, 1824,
is given, which says: "As to myself--though I have written not as one
who labors under much depression of mind--the fact is, I _do_
so. At this time calamity presses upon me with a heavy hand. I am
quite free of opium, but it has left the liver, which is the Achilles
heel of almost every human fabric, subject to affections which are
tremendous for the weight of wretchedness attached to them. To fence
with these with the one hand, and with the other to maintain the war
with the wretched business of hack author, with all its horrible
degradations, is more than I am able to bear. At this moment I have
not a place to hide my head in. Something I meditate--I know not
what--_'Itaque e conspectu omnium abiit_.' With a good publisher
and leisure to premeditate what I write, I might yet liberate myself;
after which, having paid everybody, I would slink into some dark
comer, educate my children, and show my face in the world no more." To
the statement of De Quincey that he was then free of opium,
Mrs. Gordon adds in a note: "To the very last he asserted this, but
the habit, although modified, was never abandoned." Referring to a
protracted visit made by him in the year 1829-30 to Professor Wilson,
Mrs. Gordon says:
"His tastes were very simple, though a little troublesome, at least to
the servant who prepared his repast. Coffee, boiled rice and milk, and
a piece of mutton from the loin were the materials that invariably
formed his diet. The cook, who had an audience with him daily,
received her instructions in silent awe, quite overpowered by his
manner, for had he been addressing a duchess he could scarcely have
spoken with more deference. He would couch his request in such terms
as these: 'Owing to dyspepsia affecting my system, and the possibility
of any additional disarrangement of the stomach taking place,
consequences incalculably distressing would arise, so much so indeed
as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from attending to
matters of overwhelming importance, if you do not remember to cut the
mutton in a diagonal rather than in a longitudinal form.' But these
little meals were not the only indulgences that, when not properly
attended to, brought trouble to Mr. De Quincey. Regularity in doses of
opium was even of greater consequence. An ounce of laudanum per diem
prostrated animal life in the early part of the day. It was no
unfrequent sight to find him in his room, lying upon the rug in front
of the fire, his head resting upon a book, his arms crossed over his
breast, plunged in profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in
this state, until the effects of the torpor had passed away. The time
when he was most brilliant was generally toward the early morning
hours; and then, more than once, in order to show him off, my father
arranged his supper-parties so that, sitting till three or four in the
morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey to that point at which in charm and
power of conversation he was so truly wonderful."
* * * * *
In the "Suspiris de Profundis" of De Quincey, written in the year
1845, we have his own final record of the last chapter of his opium
history. He says:
"In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822, as a
separate volume--appeared the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.'
At the close of this little work the reader was instructed to believe,
and _truly_ instructed, that I had mastered the tyranny of
opium. The fact is, that _twice_ I mastered it, and by efforts
even more prodigious in the second of these cases than in the
first. But one error I committed in both. I did not connect with the
abstinence from opium, so trying to the fortitude under _any_
circumstances, that enormity of exercise which (as I have since
learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I
overlooked, in those days, the one _sine qua non_ for making the
triumph permanent. Twice I sank, twice I rose again. A third time I
sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the oversight as to exercise),
partly from other causes, on which it avails not now to trouble the
reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will
moralize whether I choose it or not. But in the mean time neither of
us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I, from
natural bias of judgment, not altogether acquainted; and he (with his
permission) not at all.
"During this third prostration before the dark idol, and after some
years, new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time
these were neglected as accidents, or palliated by such remedies as I
knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself that these
dreadful symptoms were moving forward forever, by a pace steadily,
solemnly, and equably increasing, I endeavored, with some feeling of
panic, for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my
motions for many weeks before I became profoundly aware that this was
impossible. Or, in the imagery of my dreams, which translated every
thing into their own language, I saw through vast avenues of gloom
those towering gates of ingress, which hitherto had always seemed to
stand open, now at last barred against my retreat, and hung with
funeral crape.
"The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that _all is
lost!_ silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for
gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were
the ruin conditional, or were it in any point doubtful, it would be
natural to utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where the
ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy can not be
consolation, and counsel can not be hope, this is otherwise. The voice
perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back
upon its own centre. I, at least, upon seeing those awful gates closed
and hung with draperies of woe, as for a death already past, spoke
not, nor started, nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my
heart, and I was silent for days." [Footnote: Mr. De Quincey died at
Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1859.]
OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE.
Soon after the death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a retired book-seller
of Bristol by the name of Joseph Cottle felt called upon to make
public what he knew or could gather respecting the opium habits of the
philosopher and poet. His first publication was made in the year 1837,
and was entitled "Recollections of Coleridge." Ten years later he
elaborated this publication into "The Reminiscences of Coleridge and
Southey." From the pages of the latter, from Gilman's "Life of
Coleridge," from the poet's own correspondence, and from the
miscellaneous writings of De Quincey, the following record has been
chiefly compiled. From these sources the reader can obtain a pretty
accurate knowledge of the circumstances under which Coleridge became
an opium-eater; of the struggles he made to emancipate himself from
the habit, and of the intellectual ruin which opium entailed upon one
of the most marvellous-minded men the world has produced.
It seems certain that Coleridge became familiar with opium as early at
least as the year 1796, though it is probable that its use did not
become habitual till about 1802 or 1803. From this period to the year
1814, his consumption of laudanum appears to have been enormous. The
efforts he made at self-reformation immediately previous to his
admission in 1816 into the family of Dr. Gilman, were unsuccessful;
and while the quantity of laudanum to which he had been so long
accustomed, was subsequently reduced to a small daily allowance, the
opium _habit_ ceased only with his life.
In justice to his memory, and in part mitigation of the censures of
many of his personal friends, as well as to enable the reader to judge
of the circumstances under which this distinguished man fell into his
ruinous habit, the following extracts from his own letters and from
other sources are given, nearly in chronological order, that it may be
seen how far, from his childhood to his grave, Coleridge's
constitutional infirmities furnish a partial apology for his
excesses. Under date of Nov. 5, 1796, he writes to a friend:
"I wanted such a letter as yours, for I am very unwell. On Wednesday
night I was seized with an intolerable pain from my temple to the tip
of my right shoulder, including my right eye, cheek, jaw, and that
side of the throat. I was nearly frantic, and ran about the house
almost naked, endeavoring by every means to excite sensation in
different parts of my body, and so to weaken the enemy by creating a
diversion. It continued from one in the morning till half-past five,
and left me pale and faint. It came on fitfully, but not so violently,
several times on Thursday, and began severer threats toward night; but
I took between sixty and seventy drops of laudanum, and sopped the
Cerberus just as his mouth began to open. On Friday it only niggled,
as if the chief had departed, as from a conquered place, and merely
left a small garrison behind, or as if he had evacuated the Corsica,
and a few straggling pains only remained. But this morning he returned
in full force, and his name is Legion. Giant-fiend of a hundred hands,
with a shower of arrowy death-pangs he transpierced me; and then he
became a Wolf, and lay gnawing my bones! I am not mad, most noble
Festus! but in sober sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain
than I had before a conception of. My right cheek has certainly been
placed with admirable exactness under the focus of some invisible
burning-glass, which concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My
medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it
originates either in severe application or excessive anxiety. My
beloved Poole, in excessive anxiety I believe it might originate. I
have a blister under my right ear, and I take twenty-five drops of
laudanum every five hours, the ease and spirits gained by which have
enabled me to write to you this flighty but not exaggerating account."
About the same time he writes to another friend, "A devil, a very
devil, has got possession of my left temple, eye, cheek, jaw, throat,
and shoulder. I can not see you this evening. I write in agony."
Frequent reference is made in Coleridge's correspondence to his
sufferings, from rheumatic or neuralgic affections, and the following
letter, written in 1797, may possibly explain their origin:
"I had asked my mother one evening to cut my cheese entire, so that I
might toast it. This was no easy matter, it being a _crumbly_
cheese. My mother, however, did it. I went into the garden for
something or other, and in the mean time my brother Frank minced my
cheese, to 'disappoint the favorite.' I returned, saw the exploit,
and in an agony of passion flew at Frank. He pretended to have been
seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself on the ground, and there lay
with outstretched limbs. I hung over him mourning and in a great
fright; he leaped up, and with a horse-laugh gave me a severe blow in
the face. I seized a knife and was running at him, when my mother came
in and took me by the arm. I expected a flogging, and struggling from
her I ran away to a little hill or slope, at the bottom of which the
Otter flows, about a mile from Ottery. There I stayed. My rage died
away, but my obstinancy vanquished my fears, and taking out a shilling
book, which had at the end morning and evening prayers, I very
devoutly repeated them--thinking at the same time, with a gloomy
inward satisfaction, how miserable my mother must be!.... It grew dark
and I fell asleep. It was toward the end of October, and it proved a
stormy night. I felt the cold in my sleep, and dreamed that I was
pulling the blanket over me, and actually pulled over me a dry
thorn-bush which lay on the ground near me. In my sleep I had rolled
from the top of the hill till within three yards of the river, which
flowed by the unfenced edge of the bottom. I awoke several times, and
finding myself wet, and cold, and stiff, closed my eyes again that I
might forget it.
"In the mean time my mother waited about half an hour, expecting my
return when the _sulks_ had evaporated. I not returning, she sent
into the church-yard and round the town. Not found! Several men and
all the boys were sent out to ramble about and seek me. In vain! My
mother was almost distracted, and at ten o'clock at night I was
_cried_ by the crier in Ottery and in two villages near it, with
a reward offered for me. No one went to bed; indeed I believe half the
town were up all the night. To return to myself. About five in the
morning, or a little after, I was broad awake and attempted to get up
and walk, but I could not move. I saw the shepherds and workmen at a
distance and cried, but so faintly that it was impossible to hear me
thirty yards off, and there I might have lain and died--for I was now
almost given over, the pond and even the river near which I was lying
having been dragged--but providentially Sir Stafford Northcote, who
had been out all night, resolved to make one other trial, and came so
near that he heard me crying. He carried me in his arms for nearly a
quarter of a mile, when we met my father and Sir Stafford Northcote's
servants. I remember and never shall forget my father's face as he
looked upon me while I lay in the servant's arms--so calm, and the
tears stealing down his face, for I was the child of his old age. My
mother, as you may suppose, was outrageous with joy. Meantime in
rushed a young lady, crying out, 'I hope you'll whip him,
Mr. Coleridge.' This woman still lives at Ottery, and neither
philosophy nor religion has been able to conquer the antipathy which I
feel toward her whenever I see her. I was put to bed and recovered in
a day or so; but I was certainly injured, for I was weakly and subject
to ague for many years after."
The next year he writes to two other friends: "I have been confined to
my bed for some days through a fever occasioned by the stump of a
tooth which baffled chirurgical efforts to eject, and which by
affecting my eye affected my stomach, and through that my whole
frame. I am better, but still weak in consequence of such long
sleeplessness and wearying pains; weak, very weak.
"I have even now returned from a little excursion that I have taken
for the confirmation of my health, which has suffered a rude assault
from the anguish of the stump of a tooth which had baffled the
attempts of our surgeon here, and which confined' me to my bed. I
suffered much from the disease, and more from the doctor. Rather than
again put my mouth into his hands, I would put my hands into a lion's
mouth."
His nephew says of him: "He was naturally of a joyous temperament, and
in one amusement, swimming, he excelled and took singular
delight. Indeed he believed, and probably with truth, that his health
was singularly injured by his excess in bathing, coupled with such
tricks as swimming across the New River in his clothes, and drying
them on his back, and the like."
In the biography of the poet by his friend Dr. Gilman, in whose family
he resided for the last twenty years of his life, the subjoined
statements are found:
"From his own account, as well as from Lamb and others who knew him
when at school, he must have been a delicate and suffering boy. His
principal ailments he owed much to the state of his stomach, which was
at that time so delicate that when compelled to go to a large closet
containing shoes, to pick out a pair easy to his feet, which were
always tender, the smell from the number in this place used to make
him so sick that I have often seen him shudder, even in late life,
when he gave an account of it.
"'Conceive,' says Coleridge, 'what I must have been at fourteen. I was
in a continual low fever. My whole being was, with eyes closed to
every object of present sense, to crumple myself up in a sunny corner
and read, read, read; fancy myself on Robinson Crusoe's Island,
finding a mountain of plum-cake, and eating a room for myself, and
then eating it into the shapes of tables and chairs--hunger and
fancy!'
"Full half the time from seventeen to eighteen was passed in the
sick-ward of Christ's Hospital, afflicted with jaundice and rheumatic
fever. From these indiscretions and their consequences may be dated
all his bodily sufferings in future life--in short, rheumatism sadly
afflicting him, while the remedies only slightly alleviated his
sufferings, without hope of a permanent cure. Medical men are too
often called upon to witness the effects of acute rheumatism in the
young subject. In some the attack is on the heart, and its
consequences are immediate; in others it leaves behind bodily
suffering, which may indeed be palliated, but terminates only in a
lingering dissolution.
"In early life he was remarkably joyous. Nature had blessed him with a
buoyancy of spirits, and even when suffering he deceived the partial
observer.
"At this time (while a soldier) he frequently complained of a pain at
the pit of his stomach, accompanied with sickness, which totally
prevented his stooping, and in consequence he could never arrive at
the power of bending his body to rub the heels of his horse. During
the latter part of his life he became nearly crippled by the
rheumatism."
Under date of July 24, 1800, Coleridge writes: "I have been more
unwell than I have ever been since I left school. For many days was
forced to keep my bed, and when released from that incarceration I
suffered most grievously from a brace of swollen eyelids and a head
into which, on the least agitation, the blood was felt as rushing in
and flowing back again, like the raking of the tide on a coast of
loose stones."
In January, 1803, he says: "I write with difficulty, with all the
fingers but one of my right hand very much swollen. Before I was half
up the _Kirkstone mountain_, the storm had wetted me through and
through. In spite of the wet and the cold I should have had some
pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an almost intolerable
pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning pain; and
secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under my seat,
extremely uneasy and burdensome feelings attacked my groin, so that,
what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I had
no enjoyment at all!
"I went on to Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there,
though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter
with it, either to the sight of others or to my own feelings, but I
had a bad night with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and
waking often in the dark, I thought it was the effect of mere
recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was
bloodshot and the lid swollen. That morning, however, I walked home,
and before I reached Keswick my eye was quite well, but _I felt
unwell all over_. Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over
me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no _laudanum or
opium_, but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness
and aching of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of ether in a
wine-glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third tea-spoon full at ten
o'clock, and I received complete relief, my body calmed, my sleep
placid; but when I awoke in the morning my right hand, with three of
the fingers, were swollen and inflamed. The swelling in the hand is
gone down, and of two of the fingers somewhat abated, but the middle
finger is still twice its natural size, so that I write with
difficulty."
A few days later, he writes to the same friend: "On Monday night I had
an attack in my stomach and right side, which in pain, and the length
of its continuance, appeared to me by far the severest I ever
had. About one o'clock the pain passed out of my stomach, like
lightning from a cloud, into the extremities of my right foot. My toe
swelled and throbbed, and I was in a state of delicious ease which the
pain in my toe did not seem at all to interfere with. On Wednesday I
was well, and after dinner wrapped myself up warm and walked to
Lodore.
"The walk appears to have done me good, but I had a wretched night:
shocking pains in my head, occiput, and teeth, and found in the
morning that I had two bloodshot eyes. But almost immediately after
the receipt and perusal of your letter the pains left me, and I am
bettered to this hour; and am now indeed as well as usual saving that
my left eye is very much bloodshot. It is a sort of duty with me to be
particular respecting parts that relate to my health. I have retained
a good sound appetite through the whole of it, without any craving
after exhilarants or narcotics, and I have got well as in a
moment. Rapid recovery is constitutional with me; but the former
circumstances I can with certainty refer to the system of diet,
abstinence of vegetables, wine, spirits, and beer, which I have
adopted by your advice."
The same year he writes to a friend suffering from a chronic disorder,
and records the trial of Bang--"the powder of the leaves of a kind of
hemp that grows in the hot climates. It is prepared, and I believe
used, in all parts of the east, from Morocco to China. In Europe it is
found to act very differently on different constitutions. Some it
elevates in the extreme; others it renders torpid, and scarcely
observant of any evil that may befall them. In Barbary it is always
taken, if it can be procured, by criminals condemned to suffer
amputation, and it is said to enable those miserables to bear the
rough operations of an unfeeling executioner more than we Europeans
can the keen knife of our most skillful chirurgeons:
"We will have a fair trial of Bang. Do bring down some of the
Hyoscyamine pills, and I will give a fair trial to Opium, Henbane, and
Nepenthe. By the bye, I always considered Homer's account of the
Nepenthe as a _Banging_ lie."
In September, 1803, he gives a gloomy account of his condition. It
seems probable that at this time his use of opium must have become
habitual:
"For five months past my mind has been strangely shut up. I have
taken the paper with the intention to write to you many times, but it
has been one blank feeling--one blank idealess feeling. I had nothing
to say--could say nothing. How dearly I love you, my very dreams make
known to me. I will not trouble you with the gloomy tale of my
health. When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and
walking, I can keep the fiend at arm's-length, but the night is my
Hell! sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four I fall
asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have
almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no
shadows, but the very calamities of my life.
"In the hope of drawing the gout, if gout it should be, into my feet,
I walked, previously to my getting into the coach at Perth, 263 miles
in eight days, with no unpleasant fatigue. My head is equally strong;
but acid or not acid, gout or not gout, something there is in my
stomach.
"To diversify this dusky letter, I will write an _Epitaph_, which
I composed in my sleep for myself while dreaming that I was dying. To
the best of my recollection I have not altered a word:
"'Here sleeps at length poor Col. and without screaming,
Who died as he had always lived, a dreaming;
Shot dead, while sleeping, by the gout within,
Alone, and all unknown, at E'nbro' in an Inn'"
In the beginning of the next year, 1804, the state of his health is
thus indicated: "I stayed at Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a
month--three-fourths of the time bedridden--and deeply do I feel the
enthusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's wife and sister, who sat up by
me, one or the other, in order to awaken me at the first symptoms of
distressful feeling; and even when they went to rest, continued often
and often to weep and watch for me even in their dreams.
"Though my right hand is so much swollen that I can scarcely keep my
pen steady between my thumb and finger, yet my stomach is easy and my
breathing comfortable, and I am eager to hope all good things of my
health. That gained, I have a cheering and I trust prideless
confidence that I shall make an active and perseverant use of the
faculties and requirements that have been entrusted to my keeping, and
a fair trial of their height, depth, and width."
A few days later he writes to a friend who was suffering like himself:
"Have you ever thought of trying large doses of opium, a hot climate,
keeping your body open by grapes, and the fruits of the climate? Is it
possible that by drinking freely you might at last produce the gout,
and that a violent pain and inflammation in the extremities might
produce new trains of motion and feeling in your stomach, and the
organs connected with the stomach, known and unknown? I know by a
little what your sufferings are, and that to shut the eyes and stop up
the ears is to give one's self up to storm and darkness, and the lurid
forms and horrors of a dream."
In reference to these statements regarding Coleridge's physical
condition, Cottle remarks: "I can testify that, during the four or
five years in which Mr. C. resided in or near Bristol, no young man
could enjoy more robust health. Dr. Carlyon also verbally stated that
Mr. C., both at Cambridge and at Gottingen, 'possessed sound health.'
From these premises the conclusion is fair that Mr. Coleridge's
unhappy use of narcotics, which commenced thus early, was the true
cause of all his maladies, his languor, his acute and chronic pains,
his indigestion, his swellings, the disturbances of his general
corporeal system, his sleepless nights, and his terrific dreams."
Scattered through Dr. Gilman's "Life of Coleridge" are indications of
this kind:
"In 1804, his rheumatic sufferings increasing, he determined on a
change of climate, and went in May to Malta. He seemed at this time,
in addition to his rheumatism, to have been oppressed in his
breathing, which oppression crept on him, imperceptibly to himself,
without suspicion of its cause. Yet so obvious was it that it was
noticed by others 'as laborious;' and continuing to increase, though
with little apparent advancement, at length terminated in death.
"At first he remarked that he was relieved by the climate of Malta,
but afterward speaks of his limbs 'as lifeless tools,' and of the
violent pain in his bowels, which neither opium, ether, nor
peppermint, separately or combined, could relieve.
"Coleridge _began_ the use of opium from bodily pain
(rheumatism), and for the same reason _continued_ it, till he had
acquired a habit too difficult uder his own management to control. To
him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following
note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own
sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the
means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a
serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was
_not_ to be in pain.'"
Little is known of Coleridge's opium habits during his residence at
Malta. On his return to England in 1807, he wrote to Mr. Cottle: "On
my return to Bristol, whenever that may be, I will certainly give you
the right hand of old fellowship; but, alas! you will find me the
wretched wreck of what you knew me, rolling, rudderless. My health is
extremely bad. Pain I have enough of, but that is indeed to me a mere
trifle, but the almost unceasing, overpowering sensations of
wretchedness--achings in my limbs, with an indescribable restlessness
that makes action to any available purpose almost impossible--and
worst of all the sense of blighted utility, regrets, not
remorseless. But enough; yea, more than enough, if these things
produce or deepen the conviction of the utter powerlessness of
ourselves, and that we either perish or find aid from something that
passes understanding."
A period of seven years here intervenes, during which no light is
thrown upon the opium life of Coleridge. The following extract from a
letter written by him during this period, sufficiently indicates,
however, both his consciousness of his great powers and his remorse
for their imperfect use:
"As to the letter you propose to write to a man who is unworthy even
of a rebuke from you, I might most unfeignedly object to some parts of
it from a pang of conscience forbidding me to allow, even from a dear
friend, words of admiration which are inapplicable in exact proportion
to the power given to me of having deserved them if I had done my
duty.
"It is not of comparative utility I speak; for as to what has been
actually done, and in relation to useful effects produced--whether on
the minds of individuals or of the public--I dare boldly stand
forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine
which but for and through me would not have existed) will challenge
the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me
of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of
original or forgotten yet necessary and important truths and
knowledge; and this is not the less true because I have suffered
others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this
consciousness, raised by insult of enemies and alienated friends,
stands me in little stead to my own soul--in how little, then, before
the all-righteous Judge! who, requiring back the talents he had
entrusted, will, if the mercies of Christ do not intervene, not demand
of me what I have done, but why I did not do more; why, with powers
above so many, I had sunk in many things below most!"
In 1814 he returned to Bristol, and here the painful narrative of
Mr. Cottle comes in: "Is it expedient, is it lawful, to give publicity
to Mr. Coleridge's practice of inordinately taking opium; which to a
certain extent, at one part of his life, inflicted on a heart
naturally cheerful the stings of conscience, and sometimes almost the
horrors of despair?
"In the year 1814, all this, I am afflicted to say, applied to
Mr. Coleridge. Once Mr. Coleridge expressed to me, with indescribable
emotion, the joy he should feel if he could collect around him all who
were 'beginning to tamper with the lulling but fatal draught,' so that
he might proclaim as with a trumpet, 'the worse than death that opium
entailed.'
"When it is considered, also, how many men of high mental endowments
have shrouded their lustre by a passion for this stimulus, would it not
be a criminal concession to unauthorized feelings to allow so
impressive an exhibition of this subtle species of intemperance to
escape from public notice? In the exhibition here made, the
inexperienced in future may learn a memorable lesson, and be taught to
shrink from opium as they would from a scorpion, which, before it
destroys, invariably expels peace from the mind, and excites the worst
species of conflict--that of setting a man at war with himself.
"I had often spoken to Hannah More of S. T. Coleridge, and proceeded
with him one morning to Barley Wood, her residence, eleven miles from
Bristol. The interview was mutually agreeable, nor was there any lack
of conversation; but I was struck with something singular in
Mr. Coleridge's eye. I expressed to a friend, the next day, my concern
at having beheld him during his visit to Hannah More so extremely
paralytic, his hands shaking to an alarming degree, so that he could
not take a glass of wine without spilling it, though one hand
supported the other! 'That,' said he, 'arises from the immoderate
quantity of OPIUM he takes.'
"It is remarkable that this was the first time the melancholy fact of
Mr. Coleridge's excessive indulgence in opium had come to my
knowledge. It astonished and afflicted me. Now the cause of his
ailments became manifest. On this subject Mr. C. may have been
communicative to others, but to me he was silent.
"I ruminated long upon this subject with indescribable sorrow; and
having ascertained from others not only the existence of the evil but
its extent, I determined to write to Mr. Coleridge. I addressed him
the following letter, under the full impression that it was a case of
'life and death,' and that if some strong effort were not made to
arouse him from his insensibility, speedy destruction must inevitably
follow.
"'BRISTOL, April 25,1814.
"'DEAR COLERIDGE:--I am conscious of being influenced by the purest
motives in addressing to you the following letter. Permit me to
remind you that I am the oldest friend you have in Bristol, that I was
such when my friendship was of more consequence to you than it is at
present, and that at that time you were neither insensible of my
kindnesses nor backward to acknowledge them. I bring these things to
your remembrance to impress on your mind that it is still a
_friend_ who is writing to you; one who ever has been such, and
who is now going to give you the most decisive evidence of his
sincerity.
"'When I think of Coleridge I wish to recall the image of him such as
he appeared in past years; now, how has the baneful use of opium
thrown a dark cloud over you and your prospects! I would not say any
thing needlessly harsh or unkind, but I must be _faithful_. It is
the irresistible voice of conscience. Others may still flatter you,
and hang upon your words, but I have another, though a less gracious
duty to perform. I see a brother sinning a sin unto death, and shall I
not warn him? I see him perhaps on the borders of eternity; in
effect, despising his Maker's law, and yet indifferent to his perilous
state!
"'In recalling what the expectations concerning you once were, and the
excellency with which seven years ago you wrote and spoke on religious
truth, my heart bleeds to see how you are now fallen, and thus to
notice how many exhilarating hopes are almost blasted by your present
habits. This is said, not to wound, but to arouse you to reflection.
"'I know full well the evidences of the pernicious drug! You can not
be unconscious of the effects, though you may wish to forget the
cause. All around you behold the wild eye, the sallow countenance, the
tottering step, the trembling hand, the disordered frame! and yet will
you not be awakened to a sense of your danger, and I must add, your
guilt? Is it a small thing, that one of the finest of human
understandings should be lost? That your talents should be buried?
That most of the influences to be derived from your present example
should be in direct opposition to right and virtue? It is true you
still talk of religion, and profess the warmest admiration of the
Church and her doctrines, in which it would not be lawful to doubt
your sincerity; but can you be unaware that by your unguarded and
inconsistent conduct you are furnishing arguments to the infidel;
giving occasion for the enemy to blaspheme; and (among those who
imperfectly know you) throwing suspicion over your religious
profession? Is not the great test in some measure against you, "By
their fruits ye shall know them?" Are there never any calm moments,
when you impartially judge of your own actions by their consequences?
"'Not to reflect on you-not to give you a moment's _needless_
pain, but in the spirit of friendship, suffer me to bring to your
recollection some of the sad effects of your undeniable intemperance.
"'I know you have a correct love of honest independence, without which
there can be no true nobility of mind; and yet for opium you will sell
this treasure, and expose yourself to the liability of arrest by some
"dirty fellow" to whom you choose to be indebted for "ten pounds!" You
had, and still have, an acute sense of moral right and wrong, but is
not the feeling sometimes overpowered by self-indulgence? Permit me
to remind you that you are not more suffering in your mind than you
are in your body, while you are squandering largely your money in the
purchase of opium, which, in the strictest equity, should receive a
_different direction_.
"I will not again refer to the mournful effects produced on your own
health from this indulgence in opium, by which you have undermined
your strong constitution; but I must notice the injurious consequences
which this passion for the narcotic drug has on your literary
efforts. What you have already done, excellent as it is, is considered
by your friends and the world as the bloom, the mere promise of the
harvest. Will you suffer the fatal draught, which is ever accompanied
by sloth, to rob you of your fame, and, what to you is a higher
motive, of your power of doing good; of giving fragrance to your
memory, among the worthies of future years, when you are numbered with
the dead?
"'And now let me conjure you, alike by the voice of friendship and the
duty you owe yourself and family; above all, by the reverence you feel
for the cause of Christianity; by the fear of God and the awfulness of
eternity, to renounce from this moment opium and spirits as your bane!
Frustrate not the great end of your existence. Exert the ample
abilities which God has given you, as a faithful steward. So will you
secure your rightful pre-eminence among the sons of genius; recover
your cheerfulness, your health--I trust it is not too late--become
reconciled to yourself; and, through the merits of that Saviour in
whom you profess to trust, obtain at last the approbation of your
Maker, My dear Coleridge, be wise before it be too late. I do hope to
see you a renovated man; and that you will still burst your inglorious
fetters and justify the best hopes of your friends.
"'Excuse the freedom with which I write. If at the first moment it
should offend, on reflection you will approve at least of the motive,
and perhaps, in a better state of mind, thank and bless me. If all the
good which I have prayed for should not be effected by this letter, I
have at least dis charged an imperious sense of duty. I wish my
manner were less exceptionable, as I do that the advice through the
blessing of the Almighty might prove effectual. The tear which bedims
my eye is an evidence of the sincerity with which I subscribe myself
your affectionate friend,
"'JOSEPH CUTTLE.'
"The following is Mr. Coleridge's reply:
"'April 26,1814.
"'You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound of an old
friend's conscience Cottle, but it is _oil of vitriol!_ I but
barely glanced at the middle of the first page of your letter, and
have seen no more of it-not from resentment, God forbid! but from the
state of my bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted
human fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction.
"'The object of my present reply is to state the case just as it
is--first, that for ten years the anguish of my spirit has been
indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness
of my GUILT worse--far worse than all! I have prayed, with drops of
agony on my brow; trembling not only before the justice of my Maker,
but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. "I gave thee so many
talents, what hast thou done with them?" Secondly, overwhelmed as I am
with a sense of my direful infirmity, I have never attempted to
disguise or conceal the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends
have I stated the whole case with tears and the very bitterness of
shame, but in two instances I have warned young men--mere
acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken laudanum--of the direful
consequences, by an awful exposition of its tremendous effects on
myself.
"'Thirdly, though before God I can not lift up my eyelids, and only do
not despair of his mercy because to despair would be adding crime to
crime, yet to my fellow-men I may say that I was seduced into the
ACCURSED habit ignorantly. I had been almost bedridden for many
months with swellings in my knees. In a medical journal I unhappily
met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case, or what
appeared to me so, by rubbing in of laudanum, at the same time taking
a given dose internally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle! I
recovered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my spirits, and this
continued for near a fortnight. At length the unusual stimulus
subsided, the complaint returned--the supposed remedy was recurred
to--but I can not go through the dreary history.
"'Suffice it to say that effects were produced which acted on me by
terror and cowardice of pain and sudden death, not (so help me God!)
by any temptation of pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting
pleasurable senstations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her
sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained
the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment,
the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart
to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame,
such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the
last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in
agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor
to hazard this!" Had I but a few hundred pounds--but £200--half to
send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a private
mad-house, where I could procure nothing but what a physician thought
proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for
two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be
determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none!! O God! how
willingly would I place myself under Dr. Fox in his establishment; for
my case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement, an
utter impotence of the volition and not of the intellectual
faculties. You bid me rouse myself. Go bid a man paralytic in both
arms to rub them briskly together and that will cure him. "Alas!" he
would reply, "that I can not move my arms is my complaint and my
mysery." May God bless you, and your affectionate but most afflicted
S. T. COLERIDGE.'
"On receiving this full and mournful disclosure I felt the deepest
compassion for Mr. C.'s state, and sent him a letter to which I
received the following reply:
"'O, dear friend! I have too much to be forgiven to feel any
difficulty in forgiving the cruellest enemy that ever trampled on me:
and you I have only to _thank!_ You have no conception of the
dreadful hell of my mind, and conscience, and body. You bid me
pray. Oh, I do pray inwardly to be able to pray; but indeed to pray,
to pray with a faith to which a blessing is promised, this is the
reward of faith, this is the gift of God to the elect. Oh! if to feel
how infinitely worthless I am, how poor a wretch, with just free-will
enough to be deserving of wrath and of my own contempt, and of none to
merit a moment's peace, can make a part of a Christian's creed--so far
I am a Christian,
S. T. C.'
"'April 26, 1814.
"At this time Mr. Coleridge was indeed in a pitiable condition. His
passion for opium had so completely subdued his _will_ that he
seemed carried away, without resistance, by an overwhelming flood. The
impression was fixed on his mind that he should inevitably die unless
he were placed under _constraint_, and that constraint he thought
could be alone effected in an asylum. Dr. Fox, who presided over an
establishment of this description in the neighborhood of Bristol,
appeared to Mr. C. the individual to whose subjection he would most
like to submit. This idea still impressing his imagination, he
addressed to me the following letter:
"'DEAR COTTLE:--I have resolved to place myself in any situation in
which I can remain for a month or two as a child, wholly in the power
of others. But, alas! I have no money. Will you invite Mr. Hood, a
most dear and affectionate friend to worthless me, and Mr. Le Breton,
my old school-fellow and likewise a most affectionate friend, and
Mr. Wade, who will return in a few days; desire them to call on you,
any evening after seven o'clock that they can make convenient, and
consult with them whether any thing of this kind can be done. Do you
know Dr. Fox? Affectionately,
"'S. T. C.'
"I _did_ know the late Dr. Fox, who was an opulent and
liberal-minded man, and if I had applied to him, or any friend had so
done, I can not doubt but that he would instantly have received
Mr. Coleridge gratuitously; but nothing could have induced me to make
the application but that extreme case which did not then appear fully
to exist.
"The years 1814 and 1815 were the darkest periods in Mr. Coleridge's
life. However painful the detail, it is presumed that the reader would
desire a knowledge of the undisguised truth. This can not be obtained
without introducing the following letters of Mr. Southey, received
from him after having sent him copies of the letters which passed
between Mr. Coleridge and myself.
"'KESWICK, April, 1814.
"'MY DEAR COTTLE:--You may imagine with what feelings I have read your
correspondence with Coleridge. Shocking as his letters are, perhaps
the most mournful thing they discover is, that while acknowledging the
guilt of the habit he imputes it still to morbid bodily causes,
whereas after every possible allowance is made for these, every person
who has witnessed his habits knows that for the greater, infinitely
the greater part, inclination and indulgence are its motives.
"'It seems dreadful to say this, with his expressions before me, but
it is so, and I know it to be so from my own observation, and that of
all with whom he has lived. The Morgans, with great difficulty and
perseverance, _did_ break him of the habit at a time when his
ordinary consumption of laudanum was from _two quarts a week to a
pint a day!_ He suffered dreadfully during the first abstinence, so
much so as to say it was better for him to die than to endure his
present feelings. Mrs. Morgan resolutely replied, it was indeed better
that he should die than that he should continue to live as he had been
living. It angered him at the time, but the effort was persevered in.
"'To what, then, was the relapse owing? I believe to this cause--that
no use was made of renewed health and spirits; that time passed on in
idleness, till the lapse of time brought with it a sense of neglected
duties, and then relief was again sought for _a self-accusing
mind_ in bodily feelings, which, when the stimulus ceased to act,
added only to the load of self-accusation. This, Cottle, is an
insanity which none but the soul's Physician can cure. Unquestionably,
restraint would do as much for him as it did when the Morgans tried
it, but I do not see the slightest reason for believing it would be
more permanent. This, too, I ought to say, that all the medical men to
whom Coleridge has made his confession have uniformly ascribed the
evil not to bodily disease but indulgence. The restraint which alone
could effectually cure is that which no person can impose upon
him. Could he be compelled to a certain quantity of labor every day
for his family, the pleasure of having done it would make his heart
glad, and the sane mind would make the body whole.
"'His great object should be to get out a play, and appropriate the
whole produce to the support of his son Hartley at college. Three
months' pleasurable exertion would effect this. Of some such fit of
industry I by no means despair; of any thing more than fits I am
afraid I do. But this of course I shall never say to him. From me he
shall never hear aught but cheerful encouragement and the language of
hope.'
"After anxious consideration I thought the only effectual way of
benefiting Mr. Coleridge would be to renew the project of an annuity,
by raising for him among his friends one hundred, or, if possible, one
hundred and fifty pounds a year, purposing through a committee of
three to pay for his comfortable board and all necessaries, but not of
giving him the disposition of any part till it was hoped the
correction of his bad habits and the establishment of his better
principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own
distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to
_opium_ could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience
and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary
destitution to which his _opium habits_ had reduced him. The
proposed object was named to Mr. C., who reluctantly gave his consent.
"I now drew up a letter, intending to send a copy to all
Mr. Coleridge's old and steady friends (several of whom approved of
the design), but before any commencement was made I transmitted a copy
of my proposed letter to Mr. Southey to obtain his sanction. The
following is his reply:
"'April 17th, 1814.
"'DEAR COTTLE:--I have seldom in the course of my life felt it so
difficult to answer a letter as on the present occasion. There is,
however, no alternative. I must sincerely express what I think, and be
thankful I am writing to one who knows me thoroughly.
"'Of sorrow and humiliation I will say nothing. No part of Coleridge's
embarrassment arises from his wife and children, except that he has
insured his life for a thousand pounds, and pays the annual
premium. He never writes to them, and never opens a letter from them.
"'In truth, Cottle, his embarrassments and his miseries of body and
mind all arise from one accursed cause--excess in _opium_, of
which he habitually takes more than was ever known to be taken by any
person before him. The Morgans, with great effort, succeeded in making
him leave it off for a time, and he recovered in consequence
_health_ and _spirits_. He has now taken to it again. Of
this indeed I was too sure before I heard from you--that his looks
bore testimony to it. Perhaps you are not aware of the costliness of
this drug. In the quantity which C. takes, it would consume
_more_ than the whole which you propose to raise. A frightful
consumption of _spirits_ is added. In this way bodily ailments
are produced, and the wonder is that he is still alive.
"'Nothing is wanting to make him easy in circumstances and happy in
himself but to leave off opium, and to direct a certain portion of his
time to the discharge of _his duties.'_
"During my illness at this time, Mr. Coleridge sent my sister the
following letter, and the succeeding one to myself:
"'13th May, 1814.
"'DEAR MADAM:--I am uneasy to know how my friend, J. Cottle, goes
on. The walk I took last Monday to inquire in person proved too much
for my strength, and shortly after my return I was in such a swooning
way that I was directed to go to bed, and orders were given that no
one should interrupt me. Indeed I can not be sufficiently grateful for
the skill with which _the surgeon treats me._ But it must be a
slow, and occasionally an interrupted progress, after a sad retrogress
of nearly twelve years.'
"'Friday, 27th May, 1814.
"'MY DEAR COTTLE:--I feel, with an intensity unfathomable by words, my
utter nothingness, impotence, and worthlessness, in and for myself. I
have learned what a sin is against an infinite, imperishable being,
such as is the soul of man.
"'I have had more than a glimpse of what is meant by death and outer
darkness, and the worm that dieth not--and that all the _hell_ of the
reprobate, is no more inconsistent with the love of God, than the
blindness of one who has occasioned loathsome and guilty diseases to
eat out his eyes is inconsistent with the light of the sun. But the
consolations, at least the sensible sweetness of hope, I do not
possess. On the contrary, the temptation which I have constantly to
fight up against, is a fear that if _annihilation_ and the
_possibility_ of _heaven_ were offered to my choice, I should choose
the former. "'Mr. Eden gave you a too flattering account of me. It is
true I am restored, as much beyond my expectations almost as my
deserts; but I am exceedingly weak. I need for myself solace and
refocillation of animal spirits, instead of being in a condition of
offering it to others.'
"The serious expenditure of money resulting from Mr. C.'s consumption
of opium was the least evil, though very great, and must have absorbed
all the produce of Mr. C.'s lectures and all the liberalities of his
friends. It is painful to record such circumstances as the following,
but the picture would be incomplete without it.
"Mr. Coleridge, in a late letter, with something it is feared, if not
of duplicity, of self-deception, extols the skill of his surgeon in
having gradually lessened his consumption of laudanum, it was
understood, to twenty drops a day. With this diminution the habit was
considered as subdued, at which result no one appeared to rejoice more
than Mr. Coleridge himself. The reader will be surprised to learn
that, notwithstanding this flattering exterior, Mr. C., while
apparently submitting to the directions of his medical adviser, was
secretly indulging in his usual overwhelming quanties of opium!
Heedless of his health and every honorable consideration, he contrived
to obtain surreptitiously the fatal drug, and thus to baffle the hopes
of his warmest friends.
"Mr. Coleridge had resided at this time for several months with his
kind friend Mr. Josiah Wade, of Bristol, who in his solicitude for his
benefit had procured for him, so long as it was deemed necessary, the
professional assistance stated above. The surgeon on taking leave,
after the cure had been _effected_, well knowing the expedients
to which opium patients would often recur to obtain their proscribed
draughts--at least till the habit of temperance was fully
established--cautioned Mr. W. to prevent Mr. Coleridge by all possible
means from obtaining that by stealth from which he was openly
debarred. It reflects great credit on Mr. Wade's humanity that, to
prevent all access to opium, and thus if possible to rescue his friend
from destruction, he engaged a respectable old decayed tradesman
constantly to attend Mr. C, and, to make that which was sure, doubly
certain, placed him even in his bedroom; and this man always
accompanied him whenever he went out. To such surveillance
Mr. Coleridge cheerfully acceded, in order to show the promptitude
with which he seconded the efforts of his friends. It has been stated
that every precaution was unavailing. By some unknown means and
dexterous contrivances Mr. C. afterward confessed that he still
obtained his usual lulling potions.
"As an example, among others of a similar nature, one ingenious
expedient to which he resorted to cheat the doctor he thus disclosed
to Mr. Wade, from whom I received it. He said, in passing along the
quay where the ships were moored, he noticed by a side glance a
druggist's shop, probably an old resort, and standing near the door he
looked toward the ships, and pointing to one at some distance he said
to his attendant, 'I think that's an American.' 'Oh, no, that I am
sure it is not,' said the man. 'I think it is,' replied Mr. C.' I
wish you would step over and ask, and bring me the particulars.' The
man accordingly went; when as soon as his back was turned
Mr. C. stepped into the shop, had his portly bottle filled with
laudanum, which he always carried in his pocket, and then
expeditiously placed himself in the spot where he was left. The man
now returned with the particulars, beginning, 'I told you, Sir, it was
not an American, but I have learned all about her.' 'As I am mistaken,
never mind the rest,' said Mr. C, and walked on.
"A common impression prevailed on the minds of his friends that it was
a desperate case that paralyzed all their efforts; that to assist
Mr. C. with money, which under favorable circumstances would have been
most promptly advanced, would now only enlarge his capacity to obtain
the opium which was consuming him. We at length learned that Mr.
Coleridge was gone to reside with his friend Mr. John Morgan, in a
small house, at Calne, in Wiltshire. So gloomy were our apprehensions,
that even the death of Mr. C. was mournfully expected at no distant
period, for his actions at this time were, we feared, all indirectly
of a suicidal description.
"In a letter dated October 27, 1814, Mr. Southey thus writes:
"'Can you tell me any thing of Coleridge? We know that he is with the
Morgans at Calne. What is to become of him? He may find men who will
give him board and lodging for the sake of his conversation, but who
will pay his other expenses? He leaves his family to chance and
charity. With good feelings, good principles, as far as the
understanding is concerned, and an intellect as clear and as powerful
as was ever vouchsafed to man, he is the slave of degrading
sensuality, and sacrifices every thing to it. The case is equally
deplorable and monstrous.'"
The intimacy between Coleridge and Cottle seems about this period to
have entirely ceased. After the death of Coleridge, Mr. Cottle
prepared his "Recollections" of his friend, but was restrained from
its publication by considerations of propriety, until the following
letter was placed in his hands by the gentleman to whom it was
addressed, with permission to use it:
"BRISTOL, June 26, 1814.
"DEAR SIR:--For I am unworthy to call any good man friend--much less
you, whose hospitality and love I have abused; accept, however, my
entreaties for your forgiveness and your prayers.
"Conceive a poor miserable wretch, who for many years has been
attempting to beat off pain by a constant recurrence to the vice that
reproduces it. Conceive a spirit in hell employed in tracing out for
others the road to that heaven from which his crimes exclude him! In
short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and
you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for
a good man to have.
"I used to think the text in St. James, that 'he who offended in one
point, offends in all,' very harsh, but I now feel the awful, the
tremendous truth of it. In the one crime of OPIUM, what crime have I
not made myself guilty of? Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my
benefactors, injustice! _and unnatural cruelty to my poor
children!_--self-contempt for my repeated promise--breach, nay, too
often, actual falsehood.
"After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified
narration of my wretchedness and of its guilty cause may be made
public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful
example.
"May God Almighty bless you, and have mercy on your still
affectionate, and in his heart grateful,
"S. T. COLERIDGE.
"JOSIAH WADE, ESQ."
"It appears that in the spring of 1816 Mr. Coleridge left Mr. Morgan's
house at Calne, and in a desolate state of mind repaired to London;
when the belief remaining strong on his mind that his opium habits
would never be effectually subdued till he had subjected himself to
medical restraint, he called on Dr. Adams, an eminent physician, and
disclosed to him the whole of his painful circumstances, stating what
he conceived to be his only remedy. The doctor, being a humane man,
sympathized with his patient, and knowing a medical gentleman who
resided three or four miles from town, who would be likely to
undertake the charge, he addressed the following letter to Mr. Gilman:
"'HATTON GARDEN, April 9,1816.
"'DEAR SIR:--A very learned, but in one respect an unfortunate
gentleman, has applied to me on a singular occasion. He has for
several years been in the habit of taking large quantities of
opium. For some time past he has been in vain endeavoring to break
himself off it. It is apprehended his friends are not firm enough,
from a dread lest he should suffer by suddenly leaving it off, though
he is conscious of the contrary, and has proposed to me to submit
himself to any regimen, however severe. With this view he wishes to
fix himself in the house of some medical gentleman, who will have
courage to refuse him any laudanum, and under whose assistance, should
he be the worse for it, he may be relieved. As he is desirous of
retirement and a garden, I could think of none so readily as
yourself. Be so good as to inform me whether such a proposal is
absolutely inconsistent with your family arrangements. I should not
have proposed it, but on account of the great importance of the
character as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his
society very interesting as well as useful. Have the goodness to favor
me with an immediate answer; and believe me, dear Sir, your faithful
humble servant,
"'JOSEPH ADAMS.'"
Mr. Gilman, in his "Life of Coleridge," says: "I had seen the writer
of this letter but twice in my life, and had no intention of receiving
an inmate into my house. I however determined on seeing Dr. Adams, for
whether the person referred to had taken opium from choice or
necessity, to me Dr. Adams informed me that the patient had been
warned of the danger of discontinuing opium by several eminent medical
men, who at the same time represented the frightful consequences that
would most probably ensue. I had heard of the failure of
Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent physician at Bath, in addition
to which the doctor gave me an account of several others within his
own knowledge. After some further conversation it was agreed that Dr.
Adams should drive Coleridge to Highgate the following evening. On the
following evening came Coleridge _himself_, and alone. Coleridge
proposed to come the following evening, but he first informed me of
the painful opinion which he had received concerning his case,
especially from one medical man of celebrity. The tale was sad, and
the opinion given unprofessional and cruel, sufficient to have
deterred most men so afflicted from making the attempt Coleridge was
contemplating, and in which his whole soul was so deeply and so
earnestly engaged. My situation was new, and there was something
affecting in the thought that one of such amiable manners, and at the
same time so highly gifted, should seek comfort and medical aid in our
quiet home. Deeply interested, I began to reflect seriously on the
duties imposed upon me, and with anxiety to expect the approaching
day. It brought me the following letter:
"'MY DEAR SIR:.... And now of myself. My ever-wakeful reason and the
keenness of my moral feelings will secure you from all unpleasant
circumstances Connected with me save only one, viz., the evasion of a
specific madness. You will never _hear_ any thing but truth from
me. Prior habits render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but
unless carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, with
regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting one. No sixty
hours have yet passed without my having taken laudanum, though for the
last week comparatively trifling doses. I have full belief that your
anxiety need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the first
week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave your house unless
with you. Delicately or indelicately, this must be done, and both the
servants and the assistant must receive absolute commands from
you. The stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my
mind; but when I am alone the horrors I have suffered from laudanum,
the degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If (as I
feel for the _first time_ a soothing confidence it will prove) I
should leave you restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not
myself only that will love and honor you; every friend I have (and,
thank God! in spite of this wretched vice I have many and warm ones,
who were friends of my youth and have never deserted me) will thank
you with reverence.'"
Dr. Gilman's admiration of Coleridge's talents and respect for his
character soon became so enthusiastic that the remainder of the poet's
life was made comfortable by his care and under his roof. After the
death of Coleridge the first volume of a biography was published by
Dr. G., but has never been completed. We are therefore left in
ignorance of the process by which his addiction to opium was reduced
to the small daily allowance which he used during the later years of
his life. It seems from the following letter addressed to Dr. Gilman
more than six years after he was received as a member of his
household, that the conflict with the habit was still going on. "I am
still too much under the cloud of past misgivings--too much of the
stun and stupor from the recent peals and thunder-crash still
remain--to permit me to anticipate others than by wishes and prayers."
Coleridge wrote but little respecting his own infirmity. Ten years
after his domestication in the family of Dr. Gilman he made the
following memorandum:
"I wrote a few stanzas twenty years ago--soon after my eyes had been
opened to the true nature of the habit into which I had been
ignorantly deluded by the seeming magic effects of opium in the sudden
removal of a supposed rheumatic affection, attended with swellings in
my knees and palpitations of the heart, and pains all over me, by
which I had been bedridden for nearly six months. Unhappily, among my
neighbor's and landlord's books was a large parcel of medical reviews
and magazines. I had always a fondness (a common case, but most
mischievous turn with reading men who are at all dyspeptic) for
dabbling in medical writings; and in one of these reviews I met a case
which I fancied very like my own, in which a cure had been affected by
the Kendal Black Drop. In an evil hour I procured it. It worked
miracles. The swellings disappeared, the pains vanished; I was all
alive; and all around me being as ignorant as myself, nothing could
exceed my triumph. I talked of nothing else, prescribed the
newly-discovered panacea for all complaints, and carried a bottle
about with me, not to lose any opportunity of administering 'instant
relief and speedy cure' to all complainers, stranger or friend, gentle
or simple. Need I say that my own apparent convalescence was of no
long continuance? But what then? the remedy was at hand and
infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and
bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and
how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool to
which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my
strength to stem. God knows that from that moment I was the victim of
pain and terror, nor had I at any time taken the flattering poison as
a stimulus, or for any craving after pleasurable sensation. I needed
none--and oh! with what unutterable sorrow did I read the 'Confessions
of an Opium-eater,' in which the writer with morbid vanity makes a
boast of what was my misfortune, for he had been faithfully and with
an agony of zeal warned of the gulf, and yet willfully struck into the
current! Heaven be merciful to him!
"Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by
narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it
was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from
pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and
(alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from
terror and utter perplexity and infirmity--sinful infirmity, indeed,
but yet not a willful sinfulness--that I brought my neck under it. Oh,
may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the
author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too
strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing
others into this withering vice through wantonness. From this
aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free as far as acts of my
freewill and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work
I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He
utterly denied it, but I fear that I had even then to _deter_,
perhaps not to forewarn."
Referring to the character of Coleridge's disorder, Dr. Gilman says:
"He had much bodily suffering. The _cause_ of this was the
organic change slowly and gradually taking place in the structure of
the heart itself. But it was so masked by other sufferings, though at
times creating despondency, and was so generally overpowered by the
excitement of animated conversation, as to leave its real cause
undiscovered." [Footnote: "_My heart, or some part_ about it,
seems breaking, as if a weight were suspended from it that stretches
it. Such is the _bodily feeling_ as far as I can express it by
words."--_Coleridge's letter to Morgan_.]
In a volume entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of
S. T. C.," written by an intimate friend, we find the following
declaration from Coleridge himself:
"My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted
Cambridge no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the
table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and
that, by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for
near six months with swollen knees, and other distressing symptoms of
disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form
of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the
use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and
exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never weary of
recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my
_body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to
the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and defect of
fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or
pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror,
and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who
knows only what has been yielded, not what has been resisted; before
God I have but one voice--Mercy! mercy! woe is me.
"Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may not pass such another night
as the last. While I am awake and retain my reasoning powers the pang
is gnawing, but I am, except for a fitful moment or two, tranquil; it
is the howling wilderness of sleep that I dread." (July 31, 1820.)
From this _bodily_ slavery (for it was _bodily_) to a
baneful drug he was never _entirely_ free, though the quantity
was so greatly reduced as not materially to affect his health or
spirits.
A good deal that is known respecting Coleridge's opium habits is
derived from the published papers of De Quincey, whose opportunities
for becoming fully informed on the subject are beyond question:
"I now gathered that procrastination in excess was, or had become, a
marked feature in Coleridge's daily life. Nobody who knew him ever
thought of depending on any appointment he might make. Spite of his
uniformly honorable intentions, nobody attached any weight to his
assurances _in re futura_. Those who asked him to dinner, or any
other party, as a matter of course sent a carriage for him, and went
personally or by proxy to fetch him; and as to letters, unless the
address was in some female hand that commanded his affectionate
esteem, he tossed them all into one general _dead-letter bureau_,
and rarely, I believe, opened them at all. But all this, which I heard
now for the first time and with much concern, was fully explained, for
already he was under the full dominion of opium, as he himself
revealed to me--with a deep expression of horror at the hideous
bondage--in a private walk of some length which I took with him about
sunset.
"At night he entered into a spontaneous explanation of this unhappy
overclouding of his life, on occasion of my saying accidentally that a
toothache had obliged me to take a few drops of laudanum. At what time
or on what motive he had commenced the use of opium he did not say,
but the peculiar emphasis of horror with which he warned me against
forming a habit of the same kind, impressed upon my mind a feeling
that he never hoped to liberate himself from the bondage.
"For some succeeding years he did certainly appear to me released from
that load of despondency which oppressed him on my first
introduction. Grave, indeed, he continued to be, and at times absorbed
in gloom; nor did I ever see him in a state of perfectly natural
cheerfulness. But as he strove in vain for many years to wean himself
from his captivity to opium, a healthy state of spirits could not be
much expected. Perhaps, indeed, where the liver and other organs had
for so long a period in life been subject to a continual morbid
stimulation, it may be impossible for the system ever to recover a
natural action. Torpor, I suppose, must result from continued
artificial excitement, and perhaps upon a scale of corresponding
duration. Life, in such a case, may not offer a field of sufficient
extent for unthreading the fatal links that have been wound about the
machinery of health and have crippled its natural play.
"One or two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater. We have not often
read a sentence falling from a wise man with astonishment so profound
as that particular one in a letter of Coleridge to Mr. Gilman, which
speaks of the effort to wean one's self from opium as a trivial
task. There are, we believe, several such passages, but we refer to
that one in particular which assumes that a single 'week' will suffice
for the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is indeed Leviathan
so tamed? In that case the quarantine of the opium-eater might be
finished within Coleridge's time and with Coleridge's romantic
ease. But mark the contradictions of this extraordinary man. He speaks
of opium excess, his own excess, we mean--the excess of twenty-five
years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and forever within seven
days; and yet, on the other hand, he describes it pathetically,
sometimes with a frantic pathos, as the scourge, the curse, the one
almighty blight which had desolated his life.
"This shocking contradiction we need not press. All will see
_that_. But some will ask, was Mr. Coleridge right in either
view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion (viz., that the
opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn), when a
child could know that he was wrong, was he even altogether right,
secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been
withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to
happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that
therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have
been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes
away. It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion, but it creates
spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but
it develops preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power.
"Let us ask any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world
as interested in Coleridge's usefulness has suffered by his addiction
to opium, whether he is aware of the way in which opium affected
Coleridge; and secondly, whether he is aware of the actual
contributions to literature--how large they were--which Coleridge made
_in spite_ of opium. All who are intimate with Coleridge must
remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually
in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or an
_extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady, who knew nothing
experimentally of opium, once told us that she 'could tell when
Mr. Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance.'
She was right. We know that mark of opium excesses well, and the cause
of it, or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of
the insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the
face. Be that as it may, a criterion it was that could not deceive us
as to the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he
made his most effective intellectual displays. It is true that he
might not be happy under this fiery animation, and we believe that he
was not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except for a very short term
of years. But in what way did that operate upon his exertions as a
writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet, but
proportionably it roused and stung by misery his metaphysical
instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish only in the
atmosphere of happiness, but subtle and perplexed investigation of
difficult problems are among the commonest resources for beguiling the
sense of misery. It is urged, however, that even on his philosophic
speculations opium operated unfavorably in one respect, by often
causing him to leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge
(being highly charged or saturated with opium) had written with
distempered vigor upon any question, there occurred, soon after, a
recoil of intense disgust, not from his own paper only but even from
the subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of
leaving works unfinished and suffering reactions of disgust. But
Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could
at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides, it is too much assumed by
Coleridge and by his biographer that to leave off opium was of course
to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of
supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product
of opium; whereas a wise man will say, 'Suppose you do leave off
opium, that will not deliver you from the load of years (say
sixty-three) which you carry on your back.'
"It is singular, as respects Coleridge, that Mr. Gilman never says one
word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off
laudanum, though Coleridge came to Mr. Gilman for no other purpose;
and in a week this vast creation of new earth, sea, and all that in
them is, was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think, as
Bayley junior observes, 'that the explosion must have hung fire.'
"He [Mr. Gilman] has very improperly published some intemperate
passages from Coleridge's letters, which ought to have been considered
confidential unless Coleridge had left them for publication, charging
upon the author of the 'Opium Confessions' a reckless disregard of the
temptations which in that work he was scattering abroad among men. We
complain, also, that Coleridge raises a distinction, perfectly
perplexing to us, between himself and the author of the 'Opium
Confessions' upon the question--why they severally began the practice
of opium-eating. In himself it seems this motive was to relieve pain,
whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay,
indeed! where did he learn _that_? We have no copy of the
'Confessions' here, so we can not quote chapter and verse, but we
distinctly remember that toothache is recorded in that book as the
particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge
of opium. Whether afterward, having been thus initiated by the demon
of pain, the opium Confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to
purposes of mere pleasure, is a question for himself, and the same
question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began
in rheumatic pains. What then? This is no proof that he did not end in
voluptuousness. For our part, we are slow to believe that ever any man
did or could learn the somewhat awful truth, that in a certain
ruby-colored elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the
genius of ennui, without subsequently abusing this power. True it is
that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance,
hospital patients) who have not afterward courted its powers as a
voluptuous stimulant; but that, be sure, has arisen from no abstinence
in _them._ There are in fact two classes of temperaments as to
this terrific drug--those which are and those which are not
preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its
temptations, and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the
energies of the will, but in the qualities of the nervous
organization, lies the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed
thou art to yield, or strengthened constitutionally to resist. Most of
those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium
have practically no sense at all; for the initial fascination is for
_these_ effectually defeated by the sickness which Nature has
associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other
class whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths
under the first touch of the angelic poison, opium is the Amreeta cup
of beatitude. Now in the original higher sensibility is found some
palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater
temptation is a greater excuse.
"Originally his sufferings, and the death within him of all hope--the
palsy, as it were, of that which is the life of life and the heart
within the heart--came from opium. But two things I must add--one to
explain Coleridge's case, and the other to bring it within the
indulgent allowance of equitable judges. _First_, the sufferings
from morbid derangement, originally produced by opium, had very
possibly lost that simple character, and had themselves reacted in
producing secondary states of disease and irritation, not any longer
dependent upon the opium, so as to disappear with its disuse; hence a
more than mortal discouragement to accomplish this disuse when the
pains of self-sacrifice were balanced by no gleams of restorative
feeling. Yet, _secondly_, Coleridge did make prodigious efforts
to deliver himself from this thraldom; and he went so far at one time
In Bristol, to my knowledge, as to hire a man for the express purpose,
and armed with a power of resolutely interposing between himself and
the door of any druggist's shop. It is true that an authority derived
only from Coleridge's will could not be valid against Coleridge's own
counter-determination: he could resume as easily as he could delegate
the power. But the scheme did not entirely fail. A man shrinks from
exposing to another that infirmity of will which he might else have
but a feeble motive for disguising to himself; and the delegated man,
the external conscience as it were of Coleridge, though destined in
the final resort, if matters came to absolute rupture--and to an
obstinate duel, as it were, between himself and his principal--in that
extremity to give way, yet might have long protracted the struggle
before coming to that sort of _dignus vindice nodus;_ and, in
fact, I know upon absolute proof that before reaching that crisis the
man showed fight; and faithful to his trust, and comprehending the
reasons for it, he declared that if he must yield he would 'know the
reason why.'
"His inducement to such a step [his visit to Malta] must have been
merely a desire to see the most interesting regions of the
Mediterranean, under the shelter and advantageous introduction of an
official station. It was, however, an unfortunate chapter of his life;
for being necessarily thrown a good deal upon his own resources in the
narrow society of a garrison, he there confirmed and cherished, if he
did not there form, his habit of taking opium in large quantities. I
am the last person in the world to press conclusions harshly or
uncandidly against Coleridge, but I believe it to be notorious that he
first began the use of opium not as a relief from any bodily pains or
nervous irritations--for his constitution was strong and
excellent--but as a source of luxurious sensation. It is a great
misfortune, at least it is a great peril, to have tasted the enchanted
cup of youthful rapture incident to the poetic temperament. That
standard of high-wrought sensibility once made known experimentally,
it is rare to see a submission afterward to the sobrieties of daily
life. Coleridge, to speak in the words of Cervantes, wanted better
bread than was made of wheat; and when youthful blood no longer
sustained the riot of his animal spirits, he endeavored to excite them
by artificial stimulants.
"Coleridge was at one time living uncomfortably enough at the
_Courier_ office in the Strand. In such a situation, annoyed by
the sound of feet passing his chamber-door continually to the
printing-room of this great establishment, and with no gentle
ministrations of female hands to sustain his cheerfulness, naturally
enough his spirits flagged, and he took more than ordinary doses of
opium. Thus unhappily situated, he sank more than ever under the
dominion of opium, so that at two o'clock, when he should have been in
attendance at the Royal Institute, he was too often unable to rise
from bed. His appearance was generally that of a person struggling
with pain and overmastering illness. His lips were baked with feverish
heat and often black in color, and in spite of the water which he
continued drinking through the whole course of his lecture, he often
seemed to labor under an almost paralytic inability to raise the upper
jaw from the lower.
"But apparently he was not happy himself. The accursed drug poisoned
all natural pleasure at its sources; he burrowed continually deeper
into scholastic subtleties and metaphysical abstraction; and, like
that class described by Seneca in the luxurious Rome of his days, he
lived chiefly by candle-light. At two or three o'clock in the
afternoon he would make his first appearance. Through the silence of
the night, when all other lights had long disappeared, in the quiet
cottage of Grassmere _his_ lamp might be seen invariably by the
belated traveller as he descended the long steep from Dun-mail-raise,
and at five or six o'clock in the morning, when man was going forth to
his labor, this insulated son of reveries was retiring to bed."
Those who were nearest and dearest to Coleridge by affection and biood
have left on record their sentiments respecting him in the following
language. His nephew says: "Coleridge was a student all his life. He
was very rarely indeed idle in the common sense of the term, but he
was consitutionally indolent, averse from continuous exertion
externally directed, and consequently the victim of a procrastinating
habit, the occasion of innumerable distresses to himself and of
endless solicitude to his friends, and which materially impaired
though it could not destroy the operation and influence of his
wonderful abilities. Hence also the fits of deep melancholy which from
time to time seized his whole soul, during which he seemed an
imprisoned man without hope of liberty."
His daughter remarks: "Mr. De Quincey mistook a constitution that had
vigor in it for a vigorous constitution. His body was originally full
of life, but it was full of death also from the first. There was in
him a slow poison which gradually leavened the whole lump, and by
which his muscular frame was prematurely slackened and stupefied.
Mr. Stuart says that his letters are 'one continued flow of complaint
of ill health and incapacity from ill health.' This is true of all his
letters (all the _sets_ of them) which have come under my eye,
even those written before he went to Malta, where his opium habits
were confirmed. If my father sought more from opium than the mere
absence of pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations
or the glowing phantasmagoria of passive dreams, but that the power of
the medicine might keep down the agitations of his nervous system,
released for a time at least from the tyranny of ailments which by a
spell of wretchedness fix the thoughts upon themselves, perpetually
throwing them inward as into a stifling gulf."
Miss Coleridge thus expresses the views of her father's family in
respect to Mr. Cottle's publications: "I take this opportunity of
expressing my sense of many kind acts and much friendly conduct of
Mr. Cottle toward my father, by whom he was ever remembered with
respect and affection. If I still regard with any disapproval his
publication of letters exposing his friend's unhappy bondage to opium,
and consequent embarrassments and deep distress of mind, it is not
that I would have wished a broad influencive fact, in the history of
one whose peculiar gifts had made him in some degree an object of
public interest, to be finally concealed, supposing it to be attested,
as this has been, by clear, unambiguous documents. I agree with
Mr. Cottle in thinking that he himself would have desired, even to the
last, that whatever benefit the world might obtain by the knowledge of
his sufferings from opium--the calamity which the unregulated use of
this drug had been to him and into which he first fell ignorantly and
innocently (not, as Mr. De Quincey has said, to restore the 'riot of
his animal spirits' when 'youthful blood no longer sustained it,' but
as a relief from bodily pain and nervous irritation) that others might
avoid the rack on which so great a part of his happiness for so long a
time was wrecked. Such a wish indeed he once strongly expressed, but I
believe myself to be speaking equally in his spirit when I say that
all such considerations of advantage to the public should be
subordinated to the prior claims of private and natural interests. I
should never think the public good a sufficient apology for publishing
the secret history of any man or woman whatever, who had connections
remaining upon earth; but if I were possessed of private notices
respecting one in whom the world takes an interest, I should think it
right to place them in the hands of his nearest relations, leaving it
to them to deal with such documents as a sense of what is due to the
public and what belongs to openness and honesty may demand."
The nephew of Coleridge, in the Preface to the "Table Talk," says: "A
time will come when Coleridge's life may be written without wounding
the feeling or gratifying the malice of any one; and then, among other
misrepresentations, that as to the origin of his recourse to opium
will be made manifest; and the tale of his long and passionate
struggle with and final victory over the habit will form one of the
brightest as well as most interesting traits of the moral and
religious being of this humble, this exalted Christian.
"Coleridge--blessings on his gentle memory!--Coleridge was a frail
mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique
powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack; a heart which
would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank
from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of
his death-attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more
than sinning, he himself suffered an almost lifelong punishment for
his errors, while the world at large has the unwithering fruits of his
labors, his genius, and his sacrifice."
WILLIAM BLAIR.
The following narrative of a case of confirmed opium-eating was
communicated to the editor of the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, in
the year 1842, by Dr. B. W. M'Cready of New York, accompanied by the
following statement:
Poor Blair, whose account of himself I send you, was brought to the
City Hospital by a Baptist clergyman in 1835, at which time I was
Resident Physician of the establishment. His wretched habit had at
that time reduced him to a state of deplorable destitution, and he
came to the hospital as much for the sake of a temporary asylum as to
endeavor to wean himself from the vice which had brought him to such a
condition. When he entered it was with the proviso that he should be
allowed a certain quantity of opium per day, the amount of which was
slowly but steadily decreased. The dose he commenced with was eighty
grains; and this quantity he would roll into a large bolus, of a size
apparently too great for an ordinary person to swallow, and take
without any appearance of effort. Until he had swallowed his ordinary
stimulus he appeared languid, nervous, and dejected. He at all times
had a very pale and unhealthy look, and his spirits were irregular;
although it would be difficult to separate the effects produced by the
enormous quantity of opium to which he had been accustomed from the
feelings caused in a proud and intellectual man by the utter and
irretrievable ruin which he had brought upon himself. Finding him
possessed of great information and uncommon ability, I furnished him
with books and writing materials, and extended to him many privileges
not enjoyed by the ordinary patients in the wards. Observing that
he--as is common with most men of a proud disposition who have not met
with the success in the world which they deem due to their merits--had
paid great attention to his own feelings, I was desirous of having an
account written by himself of the effects which opium had produced
upon his system. On my making the request he furnished me with the
memoir of himself now in your possession. His health at this time was
very much impaired. I had been in the habit of giving him orders upon
the apothecary for his daily quantum of opium, but when the dose had
been reduced to sixteen grains I found that he had counterfeited the
little tickets I gave him and thus often obtained treble and quadruple
the quantity allowed. After this, of course, although I felt
profoundly sorry for the man, the intercourse between us was only that
presented by my duty. Shortly afterward he disappeared from the
hospital late at night. I have since met him several times in the
streets; but for the last three or four years I have neither seen nor
heard of him. With his habits it is scarcely probable that he still
survives. Poor fellow! He furnishes another melancholy instance of the
utter inefficiency of mere learning or intelligence in preserving a
man from the most vicious and degrading abuses. He had neither
religion nor moral principle; and that kind of gentlemanly feeling
which from association he did possess, only made him feel more
sensibly the degradation from which it could not preserve him.
BLAIR'S NARRATIVE.
Before I state the result of my experience as an opium-eater, it will
perhaps not be uninteresting, and it certainly will conduce to the
clearer understanding of such statement, if I give a slight and brief
sketch of my habits and history previous to my first indulgence in the
infernal drug which has embittered my existence for seven most weary
years. The death of my father when I was little more than twelve
months old made it necessary that I should receive only such an
education as would qualify me to pursue some business in my native
town of Birmingham; and in all probability I shoule at this moment be
entering orders or making out invoices in that great emporium had I
not at a very early age evinced an absorbing passion for reading,
which the free access to a tolerably large library enabled me to
indulge, until it had grown to be a confirmed habit of mind, which,
when the attention of my friends was called to the subject, had become
too strong to be broken through; and with the usual foolish family
vanity they determined to indulge a taste so early and decidedly
developed, in the expectation, I verily believe, of some day catching
a reflected beam from the fame and glory which I was to win by my
genius; for by that mystical name was the mere musty talent of a
_nelluo librorum_ called. The consequence was that I was sent
when eight years of age to a public school. I had however before this
tormented my elder brother with ceaseless importunity until he had
consented to teach me Latin, and by secretly poring over my sister's
books I had contrived to gain a tolerable book-knowledge of French.
From that hour my fate was decided. I applied with unwearied devotion
to the study of the classics--the only branch of education attended to
in the school--and I even considered it a favor to be allowed to
translate, write exercises and themes, and to compose Latin verses for
the more idle of my school-fellows. At the same time I devoured all
books of whatever description which came in my way--poems, novels,
history, metaphysics, or works of science--with an indiscriminating
appetite, which has proved very injurious to me through life. I drank
as eagerly of the muddy and stagnant pool of literature as of the pure
and sparkling fountain glowing in the many-hued sunlight of
genius. After two years had been spent in this manner I was removed to
another school, the principal of which, although a fair mathematician,
was a wretched classical scholar. In fact I frequently construed
passages of Virgil, which I had not previously looked at, when he
himself was forced to refer to Davidson for assistance. I stayed with
him, however, two years, during which time I spent all the money I
could get in purchasing Greek and Hebrew books, of which languages I
learned the rudiments and obtained considerable knowledge without any
instruction. After a year's residence at the house of my
brother-in-law, which I passed in studying Italian and Persian, the
Bishop of Litchfield's examining chaplain, to whom I had been
introduced in terms of the most hyperbolical praise, prevailed on his
Diocesan and the Earl of Calthorpe to share the expense of my further
education.
In consequence of this unexpected good fortune I was now placed under
the care of the Rev. Thomas Fry, rector of the village of Emberton in
Buckinghamshire, a clergyman of great piety and profound learning,
with whom I remained about fifteen months, pursuing the study of
languages with increased ardor. During the whole of that period I
never allowed myself more than four hours' sleep; and still
unsatisfied, I very generally spent the whole night, twice a week, in
the insane pursuit of those avenues to distinction to which alone my
ambition was confined. I took no exercise, and the income allowed me
was so small that I could not afford a meat dinner more than once a
week, and at the same time set apart the half of that allowance for
the purchase of books, which I had determined to do. I smoked
incessantly; for I now required some stimulus, as my health was much
injured by my unrelaxing industry. My digestion was greatly impaired,
and the constitution of iron which Nature had given me threatened to
break down ere long under the effects of the systematic neglect with
which I treated its repeated warnings. I suffered from constant
headache; my total inactivity caused the digestive organs to become
torpid; and the unnutritious nature of the food which I allowed myself
would not supply me with the strength which my assiduous labor
required. My nerves were dreadfully shaken, and at the age of fourteen
I exhibited the external symptoms of old age. I was feeble and
emaciated; and had this mode of life continued twelve months longer, I
must have sank under it.
I had during these fifteen months thought and read much on the subject
of revealed religion, and had devoted a considerable portion of my
time to an examination of the evidences advanced by the advocates of
Christianity, which resulted in a reluctant conviction of their utter
weakness and inability. No sooner was I aware that so complete a
change of opinion had taken place, than I wrote to my patron, stating
the fact and explaining the process by which I had arrived at such a
conclusion. The reply I received was a peremptory order to return to
my mother's house immediately; and on arriving there, the first time I
had entered it for some years, I was met by the information that I had
nothing more to expect from the countenance of those who had supplied
me with the means of prosecuting my studies to "so bad a purpose." I
was so irritated by what I considered the unjustifiable harshness of
this decision, that at the moment I wrote a haughty and angry letter
to one of the parties, which of course widened the breach and made the
separation between us eternal.
What was I now to do? I was unfit for any business, both by habit,
inclination, and constitution. My health was ruined, and hopeless
poverty stared me in the face; when a distinguished solicitor in my
native town, who by the way has since become celebrated in the
political world, offered to receive me as a clerk. I at once accepted
the offer; but knowing that in my then condition it was impossible for
me to perform the duties required of me, I decided on TAKING OPIUM!
The strange confessions of De Quincey had long been a favorite with
me. The first part of it had in fact been given me both as a model in
English composition and also as an exercise to be rendered into
Patavinian Latin. The latter part, the "Miseries of Opium," I had most
unaccountably always neglected to read. Again and again, when my
increasing debility had threatened to bring my studies to an abrupt
conclusion, I had meditated this experiment, but an undefinable and
shadowy fear had as often stayed my hand. But now that I knew that
unless I could by artificial stimuli obtain a sudden increase of
strength I must STARVE, I no longer hesitated. I was desperate; I
believed that something horrible would result from it; though my
imagination, most vivid, could not conjure up visions of horror half
so terrific as the fearful reality. I knew that for every hour of
comparative ease and comfort its treacherous alliance might confer
upon me _now_, I must endure days of bodily suffering; but I did
not, could not conceive the mental hell into whose fierce, corroding
fires I was about to plunge.
All that occurred during the first day is imperishably engraved upon
my memory. It was about a week previous to the day appointed for my
debut in my new character as an attorney's clerk; and when I arose, I
was depressed in mind, and a racking pain to which I had lately been
subject, was maddening me. I could scarcely manage to crawl into the
breakfast-room. I had previously procured a drachm of opium, and I
took two grains with my coffee. It did not produce any change in my
feelings. I took two more--still without effect; and by six o'clock in
the evening I had taken ten grains. While I was sitting at tea I felt
a strange sensation, totally unlike any thing I had ever felt before;
a gradual _creeping thrill_, which in a few minutes occupied
every part of my body, lulling to sleep the before-mentioned racking
pain, producing a pleasing glow from head to foot, and inducing a
sensation of dreamy exhilaration (if the phrase be intelligible to
others as it is to me), similar in nature but not in degree to the
drowsiness caused by wine, though not inclining me to sleep; in fact
so far from it that I longed to engage in some active exercise--to
sing or leap. I then resolved to go to the theatre--the last place I
should the day before have dreamed of visiting; for the sight of
cheerfulness in others made me doubly gloomy. I went, and so vividly
did I feel my vitality--for in this state of delicious exhilaration
even mere excitement seemed absolute Elysium--that I could not resist
the temptation to break out in the strangest vagaries, until my
companions thought me deranged. As I ran up the stairs I rushed after
and flung back every one who was above me. I escaped numberless
beatings solely through the interference of my friends. After I had
become seated a few minutes, the nature of the excitement was changed,
and a "waking sleep" succeeded. The actors on the stage vanished; the
stage itself lost its ideality; and before my entranced sight
magnificent halls stretched out in endless succession, with gallery
above gallery, while the roof was blazing with gems like stars whose
rays alone illumined the whole building, which was thronged with
strange, gigantic figures--like the wild possessors of a lost globe,
such as Lord Byron has described in "Cain" as beheld by the
fratricide, when, guided by Lucifer, he wandered among the shadowy
existences of those worlds which had been destroyed to make way for
our pigmy earth. I will not attempt further to describe the
magnificent vision which a little pill of "brown gum" had conjured up
from the realm of ideal being. No words that I can command would do
justice to its Titanian splendor and immensity.
At midnight I was roused from my dreamy abstraction; and on my return
home the blood in my veins seemed to "run lightning," and I knocked
down (for I had the strength of a giant at that moment) the first
watchman I met. Of course there was a row, and for some minutes a
battle-royal raged in New Street, the principal thoroughfare of the
town, between my party and the "Charlies," who, although greatly
superior in numbers, were sadly "milled," for we were all somewhat
scientific bruisers--that sublime art or science having been
cultivated with great assiduity at the public school through which I
had, as was customary, fought my way. I reached home at two in the
morning with a pair of "Oxford spectacles" which confined me to the
house for a week. I slept disturbedly, haunted by terrific dreams, and
oppressed by the nightmare and her nine-fold, and awoke with a
dreadful headache; stiff in every joint, and with deadly sickness of
the stomach which lasted for two or three days; my throat contracted
and parched, my tongue furred, my eyes bloodshot, and the whole
surface of my body burning hot. I did not have recourse to opium again
for three days; for the strength it had excited did not till then fail
me. When partially recovered from the nausea the first dose had
caused, my spirits were good, though not exuberant, but I could eat
nothing and was annoyed by an insatiable thirst. I went to the office,
and for six months performed the services required of me without
lassitude or depression of spirits, though never again did I
experience the same delicious sensations as on that memorable night
which is an "oasis in the desert" of my subsequent existence; life I
can not call it, for the "_vivida vis animi et corporis_" was
extinct.
In the seventh month my misery commenced. Burning heat, attended with
constant thirst, then began to torment me from morning till night; my
skin became scurfy; the skin of my feet and hands peeled off; my
tongue was always furred; a feeling of contraction in the bowels was
continual; my eyes were strained and discolored, and I had unceasing
headache. But internal and external heat was the pervading feeling
and appearance. My digestion became still weaker, and my incessant
costiveness was painful in the extreme. The reader must not however
imagine that all these symptoms appeared suddenly and at once; they
came on gradually, though with frightful rapidity, until I became a
"_morborum moles_," as a Roman physician whose lucubrations I met
with and perused with great amusement some years since in a little
country ale-house poetically expresses it. I could not sleep for hours
after I had lain down, and consequently was unable to rise in time to
attend the office in the morning, though as yet no visions of horror
haunted my slumbers. Mr. P., my employer, bore with this for some
months; but at length his patience was wearied, and I was informed
that I must attend at nine in the morning. I could not; for even if I
rose at seven, after two or three hours unhealthy and fitful sleep, I
was unable to walk or exert myself in any way for at least two
hours. I was at this time taking laudanum, and had no appetite for any
thing but coffee and acid fruits. I could and did drink great
quantities of ale, though it would not, as nothing would, quench my
thirst.
Matters continued in this state for fifteen months, during which time
the only comfortable hours I spent were in the evening, when freed
from the duties of the office I sat down to study, which it is rather
singular I was able to do with as strong zest and as unwearied
application as ever; as will appear when I mention that in those
fifteen months I read through in the evenings the whole of Cicero,
Tacitus, the Corpus Ptarurn (Latinorum), Boëthius, Scriptores
Historiæ Augustinæ, Homer, Corpus Græcarum Tragediarum, a great part
of Plato, and a large mass of philological works. In fact, in the
evening I generally felt comparatively well, not being troubled with
many of the above symptoms. These evenings were the very happiest of
my life. I had ample means for the purchase of books, for I lived very
cheap on bread, ale, and coffee, and I had access to a library
containing all the Latin classics--Valpy's edition in one hundred and
fifty volumes, octavo, a magnificent publication--and about fifteen
thousand other books. Toward the end of the year 1829 I established at
my own expense, and edited myself, a magazine (there was not one in a
town as large and populous as New York!) by which I lost a
considerable sum; though the pleasure I derived from my monthly labors
amply compensated me. In December of that year my previous sufferings
became light in comparison with those which now seized upon me, never
completely to leave me again. One night, after taking about fifty
grains of opium, I sat down in my arm-chair to read the confession of
a Russian who had murdered his brother because he was the chosen of
her whom both loved. It was recorded by a French priest who visited
him in his last moments, and was powerfully and eloquently written. I
dozed while reading it; and immediately I was present in the
prison-cell of the fratricide. I saw his ghastly and death-dewed
features; his despairing yet defying look; the gloomy and impenetrable
dungeon; the dying lamp, which seemed but to render darkness visible;
and the horror-struck yet pitying expression of the priest's
countenance; but there I lost my identity. Though I was the recipient
of these impressions, yet I was not myself separately and
distinctively existent and sentient; but my entity was confounded with
that of not only the two figures before me, but of the inanimate
objects surrounding them. This state of compound existence I can no
further describe. While in this state I composed the "Fratricide's
Death," or rather it composed itself and forced itself upon my memory
without any activity or volition on my part.
And here again another phenomenon presented itself. The images
reflected (if the expression be allowable) in the verses rose bodily
and with perfect distinctness before me, simultaneously with their
verbal representations; and when I roused myself (I had not been
_sleeping_, but was only _abstracted_) all remained clear
and distinct in my memory. From that night for six months, darkness
always brought the most horrible fancies, and opticular and auricular
or acoustical delusions of a frightful nature, so vivid and real that
instead of a blessing, sleep became a curse, and the hours of darkness
became hours which seemed days of misery. For many consecutive nights
I dared not undress myself nor put out the light, lest the moment I
lay down some _"monstrum horrendum, informfe, ingens"_ should
blast my sight with his hellish aspect! I had a double sense of sight
and sound; one real, the other visionary; both equally strong and
apparently real; so that while I distinctly heard imaginary footsteps
ascending the stairs, the door opening and my curtains drawn, I at the
same time as plainly heard any actual sound in or outside the house,
and could not remark the slightest difference between them; and while
I _saw_ an imaginary assassin standing by my bed, bending over me
with a lamp in one hand and a dagger in the other, I could see any
real tangible object which the degree of light which might be then in
the room made visible. Though these visionary fears and imaginary
objects had presented themselves to me every night for months, yet I
never could convince myself of their non-existence; and every fresh
appearance caused suffering of as intense and as deadly horror as on
the first night! So great was the confusion of the real with the
unreal that I nearly became a convert to Bishop Berkeley's non-reality
doctrines. My health was also rapidly becoming worse; and before I
had taken my opium in the morning I had become unable to move hand or
foot, and of course could not rise from my bed until I had received
strength from the "damnable dirt." I could not attend the office at
all in the morning, and was forced to throw up my articles, and, as
the only chance left me of gaining a livelihood, turn to writing for
magazines for support.
I left B. and proceeded to London, where I engaged with Charles Knight
to supply the chapters on the use of elephants in the wars of the
ancients for the "History of Elephants," then preparing for
publication in the series of the Library of Entertaining
Knowledge. For this purpose I obtained permission to use the library
of the British Museum for six months, and again devoted myself with
renewed ardor to my favorite studies.
"But what a falling off was there!" My memory was impaired, and in
reading I was conscious of a confusion of mind which prevented my
clearly comprehending the full meaning of what I read. Some organ
appeared to be defective. My judgment too was weakened, and I was
frequently guilty of the most absurd actions, which at the time I
considered wise and prudent. THe strong common sense which I had at
one time boasted of, deserted me. I lived in a dreamy, imaginative
state which completely disqualified me for managing my own affairs. I
spent large sums of money in a day, and then starved for a month; and
all this while the "_chateux en Espagne_," which once only
afforded me an idle amusement, now usurped the place of the realities
of life and led me into many errors, and even unjustifiable acts of
immorality, which lowered me in the estimation of my acquaintances and
friends, who saw the effect but never dreamed the cause. Even those
who knew I was an opium-eater, not being aware of the effect which the
habitual use of it produced, attributed my mad conduct to either want
of principle or aberration of intellect, and I thus lost several of my
best friends and temporarily alienated many others. After a month or
two passed in this employment I regained a portion of strength
sufficient to enable me to obtain a livelihood by reporting, on my own
account, in the courts of law in Westminster, any cause which I judged
of importance enough to afford a reasonable chance of selling again;
and by supplying reviews and occasional original articles to the
periodicals, the _Monthly_, the _New Monthly, Metropolitan_,
etc. My health continued to improve, probably in consequence of my
indulging in higher living, and taking much more exercise than I had
done for two or three years; as I had no need of buying books, having
the use of at least five hundred thousand volumes in the Museum. I was
at last fortunate enough to obtain the office of Parliamentary
reporter to a morning paper, which produced about three hundred pounds
a year; but after working on an average fourteen or fifteen hours a
day for a few months, I was obliged to resign the situation and again
depend for support on the irregular employment I had before been
engaged in, and for which I was now alone fit. My constitution now
appeared to have completely sunk under the destroying influence of the
immense quantity of opium I had for some months taken--two hundred,
two hundred and fifty, and three hundred grains a day. I was
frequently obliged to repeat the dose several times a day, as my
stomach had become so weak that the opium would not remain upon it;
and I was besides afflicted with continual vomiting after having eaten
any thing. I really believed that I could not last much
longer. Tic-douloureux was also added to my other suffering; constant
headache, occasional spasms, heart-burn, pains in the legs and back,
and a general irritability of the nerves, which would not allow me to
remain above a few minutes in the same position. My temper became
soured and morose. I was careless of every thing, and drank to excess
in the hope of thus supplying the place of the stimulus which had lost
its power.
At length I was compelled to keep my bed by a violent attack of
pleurisy, which has since seized me about the same time every year. My
digestion was so thoroughly ruined that I was frequently almost
maddened by the sufferings which indigestion occasioned. I could not
sleep, though I was no longer troubled with visions, which had left me
about three months. At last I became so ill that I was forced to leave
London and visit my mother in Kenilworth, where I stayed; writing
occasionally, and instructing a few pupils in Greek and Hebrew. I was
also now compelled to sell my library, which contained several Arabic
and Persian MSS., a complete collection of Latin authors, nearly a
complete one of Greek, and a large collection of Hebrew and Rabbinic
works, which I had obtained at a great expense and with great
trouble. All went. The only relics of it I was able to retain were the
"Corpus Poetarum, Graecarum et Latinorum," and I have never since been
able to collect another library. Idleness, good living, and constant
exercise revived me; but with returning strength my nocturnal visitors
returned, and again my nights were made dreadful. I was terrified
through visions similar to those which had so alarmed me at first, and
I was obliged to drink deeply at night to enable me to sleep at
all. In this state I continued till June, 1833, when I determined once
more to return to London, and I left Kenilworth without informing any
one of my intention the night before. The curate of the parish called
at my lodging to inform me that he had obtained the gift of six
hundred pounds to enable me to reside at Oxford until I could
graduate. Had I stayed twenty-four hours longer I should not now be
living in hopeless poverty in a foreign country; but pursuing, under
more favorable auspices than ever brightened my path before, those
studies which supported and cheered me in poverty and illness, and
with a fair prospect of obtaining that learned fame for which I had
longed so ardently from my boyhood, and in the vain endeavor to obtain
which I had sacrificed my health and denied myself not only the
pleasures and luxuries but even the necessaries of life. I had while
at the office in B. entered my name on the books of Brazen-nose
College, Oxford, and resided there one term, not being able to afford
the expense attendant on a longer residence. Thus it has been with me
through life. Fortune has again and again thrown the means of success
in my way, but they have always been like the waters of
Tantalus--alluring but to escape from my grasp the moment I approached
to seize them.
I remained in London only a few days, and then proceeded to Amsterdam,
where I stayed a week, and then went to Paris. After completely
exhausting my stock of money I was compelled to walk back to Calais,
which I did with little inconvenience, as I found that money was
unnecessary; the only difficulty I met with being how to escape from
the overflowing hospitality I everywhere experienced from rich and
poor. My health was much improved when I arrived in town, and I
immediately proceeded on foot to Birmingham, where I engaged with
Dr. Palmer, a celebrated physician, to supply the Greek and Latin
synonyms and correct the press for a dictionary of the terms used by
the French in medicine, which he was preparing. The pay I received was
so very small that I was again reduced to the poorest and most meagre
diet, and an attack of pleurisy produced such a state of debility that
I was compelled to leave Birmingham and return to my mother's house in
Kenilworth.
I had now firmly resolved to free myself from my fatal habit; and the
very day I reached home I began to diminish the quantity I was then
taking by one grain per day. I received the most careful attention,
and every thing was done that could add to my comfort and alleviate
the sufferings I must inevitably undergo. Until I had arrived at
seventeen and a half grains a day I experienced but little uneasiness,
and my digestive organs acquired or regained strength very
rapidly. All constipation had vanished. My skin became moist and more
healthy, and my spirits instead of being depressed became equable and
cheerful. No visions haunted my sleep. I could not sleep, however,
more than two or three hours at a time, and from about 3 A.M. until
8--when I took my opium--I was restless and troubled with a gnawing,
twitching sensation in the stomach. From seventeen grains downward my
torment (for by that word alone can I characterize the pangs I
endured) commenced. I could not rest, either lying, sitting, or
standing. I was compelled to change my position every moment, and the
only thing that relieved me was walking about the country. My sight
became weak and dim; the gnawing at my stomach was perpetual,
resembling the sensation caused by ravenous hunger; but food, though I
ate voraciously, would not relieve me. I also felt a sinking in the
stomach, and such a pain in the back that I could not straighten
myself up. A dull, constant, aching pain took possession of the calves
of my legs, and there was a continual jerking motion of the nerves
from head to foot. My head ached, my intellect was terribly weakened
and confused, and I could not think, talk, read, nor write. To sleep
was impossible, until by walking from morning till night I had so
thoroughly tired myself that pain could not keep me awake, although I
was so weak that walking was misery to me. And yet under all these
_dèsagrèmens_ I did not feel dejected in spirit; although I
became unable to walk, and used to lie on the floor and roll about in
agony for hours together. I should certainly have taken opium again if
the chemist had not, by my mother's instructions, refused to sell
it. I became worse every day, and it was not till I had entirely left
off the drug--two months nearly--that any alleviation of my suffering
was perceptible. I gradually but very slowly recovered my strength
both of mind and body, though it was long before I could read or
write, or even converse. My appetite was too good; for though while an
opium-eater I could not endure to taste the smallest morsel of fat, I
now could eat at dinner a pound of bacon which had not a
hair's-breadth of lean in it. Previously to my arrival in Kenilworth
an intimate friend of mine had been ruined--reduced at once from
affluence to utter penury by the villainy of his partner, to whom he
had entrusted the whole of his business, and who had committed two
forgeries for which he was sentenced to transportation for life. In
consequence of this event, my friend, who was a little older than
myself and had been about twelve months married, determined to leave
his young wife and child and seek to rebuild his broken fortunes in
Canada. When he informed me that such was his plan I resolved to
accompany him, and immediately commenced preparations for my voyage. I
was not however ready, not having been able so soon to collect the sum
necessary, when he was obliged to leave, and as I could not have him
for my companion, I altered my course and took my passage for New
York, in the vain expectation of obtaining a better income here, where
the ground was comparatively unoccupied, than in London, where there
were hundreds of men as well qualified as myself, dependent on
literature for their support. I need not add how lamentably I was
disappointed. The first inquiries I made were met by advice to
endeavor to obtain a livelihood by some other profession than
authorship. I could get no employment as a reporter, and the
applications I addressed to the editors of several of the daily
newspapers received no answer. My prospects appeared as gloomy as they
could well be, and my spirits sunk beneath the pressure of the anxious
cares which now weighed so heavily upon me. I was alone in a strange
country, without an acquaintance into whose ear I might pour the
gathering bitterness of my blighted hopes. I was also much distressed
by the intense heat of July, which kept me from morning till night in
a state much like that occasioned by a vapor bath. I was so melancholy
and hopeless that I really found it necessary to have recourse to
brandy or opium. I preferred the latter, although to ascertain the
difference, merely as a philosophical experiment, I took rather
copious draughts of the former also. But observe; I did not intend
ever again to become the slave of opium. I merely proposed to take
three or four grains a day until I should procure some literary
engagement, and until the weather became more cool. All my efforts to
obtain such engagement were in vain; and I should undoubtedly have
sunk into hopeless despondency had not a gentleman (to whom I had
brought an order for a small sum of money, twice the amount of which
he had insisted on my taking), perceiving how injuriously I was
affected by my repeated disappointments, offered me two hundred
dollars to write "Passages from the Life of an Opium-eater," in two
volumes. I gladly accepted this disinterested offer, but before I had
written more than two or three sheets I became disgusted with the
subject. I attempted to proceed, but found that my former facility in
composition had deserted me; that, in fact, I could not write. I now
discovered that the attempt to leave off opium again would be one of
doubtful result. I had increased my quantum to forty grains. I again
became careless and inert, and I believe that the short time that had
elapsed since I had broken the habit in England had not been
sufficient to allow my system to free itself from the poison which had
been so long undermining its powers. I could not at once leave it off;
and in truth I was not very anxious to do so, as it enabled me to
forget the difficulties of the situation in which I had placed myself;
while I knew that with regained freedom the cares and troubles which
had caused me again to flee to my destroyer for relief, would press
upon my mind with redoubled weight. I remained in Brooklyn until
November. Since then, I have resided in the city, in great poverty,
frequently unable to procure a dinner, as the few dollars I received
from time to time scarcely sufficed to supply me with opium. Whether
I shall now be able to leave off opium, God only knows!
OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED.
The manuscript of the narrative which follows was placed in the hands
of the compiler by a physician of Philadelphia who for many years had
shown great kindness to its writer, in the endeavor to cure him of his
pernicious habits. The writer seems from childhood to have been cursed
with an excessive sensibility, and an unusual constitutional craving
for excitement, coupled with an infirm and unreliable will. The habit
of daily dependence upon alcohol appears to have been established for
years before the use of opium was commenced; and the latter was begun
chiefly for the purpose of substituting the excitement of the drug in
place of the excitement furnished by brandy and wine. That any human
being can permanently substitute the daily use of the one in place of
the daily use of the other is more than doubtful. Attempts of this
kind are not unfrequently made, but the result is uniformly the
same--a double tyranny is established which no amount of resolution is
sufficient to conquer. This fact is so forcibly illustrated in this
autobiography, that although it is chiefly a story of suffering from
the use of alcoholic stimulants, its insertion here may serve as a
caution to that class of persons, not inconsiderable in number, who
are tempted to substitute one ruinous habit in place of another.
I am inclined to think I must have been born, if not literally with a
propensity to _stimulus_, at least with a susceptibility to fall
readily into the use of it; for my ancestors, so far as I know, all
used alcohol, though none of them, I believe, died drunkards. One of
my earliest recollections is that of seeing the tumbler of sling
occasionally partaken of by the elders of the family, even before
breakfast, and of myself with the other children being sometimes
gratified with a spoonful of the beverage or the sugar at the
bottom. Paregoric, too--combining two of the most dangerous of all
substances, alcohol and opium--was a favorite medicine of my excellent
mother, and in all the little ailments of childhood was freely
administered. So highly thought she of it that on my leaving home at
fifteen for Cambridge University she put a large vial of it in my
trunk, with the injunction to take of it, if ever sick.
In my young days I saw alcohol used everywhere. How in those days any
body failed of the drunkard's grave seems hardly less than
miraculous. How I myself escaped becoming inebriate for more than
twenty-five years, is with my organization, a deep mystery.
I can remember, when quite young, occasionally drinking--as I saw
every body else do, boys as well as men, and even women--and I
recollect also being two or three times overcome with liquor, to my
infinite horror and shame not less than bodily suffering. At fifteen,
as I said, I entered Harvard University, perfectly free from the
_habit_ of drinking as from all other bad habits. Here too, as
everywhere before, I saw alcohol flowing copiously, the most prevalent
kind being wine.
On Exhibition and Commencement Days, every student honored with a
"part" was accustomed at his room to make his friends and
acquaintances free of the cake-basket and especially of the
wine-cup. A good deal of wine and punch too was drank at the private
"Blows" (so called) of the students, at the meetings of their various
clubs, at their military musterings, and other like occasions. At all
such times there was more or less intoxication. I can remember being a
good deal disordered with wine two or three times during my four
college years, and I have no doubt I was considerably affected by it
more times than these; still scholastic ambition, somewhat diligent
habits of study, straitened means, and the want of any special
inclination for artificial stimulus carried me through college without
my having contracted any habit of drinking or having grown to depend
at all upon stimulants.
But deteriorating causes had been at work, and though the volcano had
not burst forth as yet, the material had been silently gathering
through these four seemingly peaceful years. In the winter of my
sixteenth or seventeenth year, after suffering several days from
severe toothache, I was induced by my landlady, a pipe-smoker, to try
tobacco as a remedy. The result of this trial, which proved effectual,
was that partly from the old notion that tobacco was a teeth-
preservative, and partly, I suppose, because the taste was hereditary,
I fell at once into the habit of tobacco-chewing, which I continued
without intermission for eleven years. In this abominable practice I
exercised no moderation: indeed in any practice of this kind it has
seemed constitutional with me to go to excess, and unnatural to pursue
a middle course. None at all or too much was the alternative exacted
by my organization. By consequence, the perpetual, unmeasured waste of
saliva induced by using such immoderate quantities of this weed must
speedily have exhausted a constitution not endowed with unusual vital
energies. As it was I must have received deep injury. I often felt
faintness and languor, though I did not or would not admit what now I
have no doubt of--that this vegetable was in fault.
At nineteen, graduating at Cambridge, I took and kept for the three
following years an academy in a near neighboring town. Here I soon
began to suffer (what I now suppose) the ill effects of the false
education and false living (the tobacco-chewing, physical inertness,
mental partialness, and the rest) of long foregoing years. I began to
suffer greatly from gloom and depression of spirits. Short fits of
morbid gayety and long stretches of dullness and darkness made up the
present, while the future looked almost wholly black. I had indeed
been afflicted so long as I could remember with seasons of low
spirits, but _these_ glooms, for depth and long continuance,
transcended any thing I had ever experienced before. On festive
occasions, at which I was often present, I was accustomed to take a
glass or half-glass of wine with and like the rest; but other than
this, I used no stimulus and never had thought of keeping any at my
lodgings. In fact, so little was I _seasoned_ in this way that
half a glass of ordinary wine was enough to elevate my spirits many
degrees above their usual pitch. I know not why it never occurred to
me to use habitually what I found occasionally to be such a relief. A
few months after commencing school I attended with a party of friends
the celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The orator
was exceedingly eloquent; the occasion one of great enthusiasm; and
what with my intense previous excitement of mind, what with my
unseasoned brain, and what with the universal example of the wise and
good about me, I took so much wine at the public dinner as to be
completely intoxicated, and was only able after three or four hours of
sleep to attend the Pilgrim Ball. My shame, remorse, and horror on
this occasion was so far salutary that without any special resolution
I was for a long time after, a total abstinent. In fact this monitory
influence lasted with more or less force for six or seven years. But
the gloom and depression before spoken of came to a crisis. About a
year after my leaving college I broke down with a severe attack of
dyspepsia. A weight pressing continually on my chest, palpitation of
the heart, sleeplessness by night, or dreams that robbed sleep of all
repose, debility, languor, and increased gloom--such are some of the
symptoms that hung oppressively upon me for more than a year.
Under these circumstances I took a physician's advice. By his orders
I swallowed I know not how many bottles of bitters. Whether from their
effect or from Nature's curative power in despite of them, my ailments
at last mostly disappeared; but to this very hour I have been more or
less subject to the same physical inertness and unexcitability, low
spirits, and many like symptoms. No unexperienced person can imagine
what a life it is to be thus physically but half alive. The temptation
is incessant to raise by artificial helps the physical tone, in order
thus to attain activity and energy of mind. My only wonder is that I
did not sooner resort to what would at least give temporary relief to
the depression and torpor from which I suffered so much and so long.
After keeping school three years, being the last of the three a member
of the Cambridge Divinity School, I passed two years at that school
and was licensed to preach. My life there was the same false,
unnatural one it had been in college--much study and no bodily
exercise, a few faculties active and the greater number exercised
scarce at all. All this while, with the exception of tobacco, I used
no stimulants except on rare occasions, and then always in moderation.
In August, 1829, I was licensed as a preacher by the Boston
Ministerial Association. In the December following I was ordained a
minister at Lynn, Mass. In May, 1830, I was married, and in the
succeeding autumn became a housekeeper. Immediately on becoming an
ordained clergyman I procured one or two demijohns of wine as a
preparative for hospitality to my clerical brethren and to visitants
generally. Such was the custom universally, and in various ways I was
given to understand that I too must adopt it. Keeping wine at home now
for the first time, I tasted it doubtless oftener than ever before,
though still not habitually or with any approach to excess.
Furthermore, a member of my family, in debilitated health and a
dyspeptic, was ordered by the family physician, one of the most
distinguished of the Boston Faculty, to take brandy and water with
dinner as a tonic. A demijohn of brandy therefore took its place in
the closet beside the demijohn of wine already there, and on the daily
dinner-table was set a decanter of this liquid fire. For myself I had
as already intimated never perfectly recovered from my ancient
dyspeptic attack, nor was my present way of life very favorable to
health. To replenish this waste, a good deal of bodily exercise was
needed, but of such exercise I took scarce any at all.
It was then no uncommon thing for a minister to sit down on Saturday
evenings with a pot of green tea as strong as lye, or of coffee black
as ink, and a box of cigars beside him--drinking at the one and
puffing at the other all or most of the night through--and under the
excitement of these nerve-rasping substances trace rapidly on paper
the words which next day were to thrill or melt his listeners. A
final cup of tea or coffee, extra strong, and a last cigar before
entering the pulpit, gave him that fervor and unction of manner so
indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and
with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will
drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most
vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not
believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical;
he was merely self-ignorant--blind to the fact that in condemning the
alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as
well. This ignorance, however, could not obviate the effects of such
hideous outrage on the physical laws. I have dwelt on these points
partly for their intrinsic truth and importance, and partly as hearing
upon and explaining my own case. In ill health, languid and restless
from the causes pertaining to my then condition, I found in brandy or
wine a temporary relief for that languor and sedative for that
restlessness. When necessitated to write, and the mind was dull
because the body was sluggish, instead of seeking the needed life in
tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking, I found it more readily in brandy
or wine. In short, I began somewhat to depend on these stimulants for
the excitement I required for my work. I hardly need say I dreamed of
neither wrong nor danger in so doing, and it was yet a good while
before a case of intoxication awoke me from this false security. Thus
three years passed, at the close of which I removed to Brookline for
the health of a friend apparently declining in consumption. Just
before leaving I cast away the tobacco which I had used largely for
ten or eleven years. The struggle was a hard one, and the faintness
and uneasy cravings which long tormented me operated, I think, as a
temptation to replace the lost stimulus by increased quantities of
alcoholic stimulus. Under these circumstances I went to Brookline in
the beginning of February, 1833, and for three or four months I shut
myself up as sole attendant and nurse of a sick friend, apparently
dying. I had no external employment compelling my attention; there
were no outward objects to call me off from my infirmities and uneasy
sensations. I was alone with all these--alone with sickness and
coining death--alone with a gloomy present and a clouded future--and
the bottle stood near, promising relief. It is not very strange that I
resorted oftener than before to its treacherous comfort, and became
more than ever accustomed to depend upon it. I believe, however, that
only once during these months was I positively overcome by it, and I
was very ready to cheat myself into the belief that other causes were
in fault besides, and as much as alcohol. The ensuing summer I spent
partly in Cambridge and partly in travelling with the invalid who
still survived; and with health considerably improved I continued
stimulus, though I think in rather less quantities than in the winter
preceding. Once, however, I was badly intoxicated with port wine, and
so ill as greatly to alarm my friends and induce them to call in a
physician, who administered a powerful emetic. Whether or not he
understood the nature of my ailment I never knew. My friends I think
did not, and I was very willing to cheat myself into the belief that
the wine thus affected me because I was ill from other causes.
At the close of August of this year I went to Brooklyn, New York, to
preach for a few Sundays to a handful of persons who had just united
to attempt forming a new religious society. I remained through the
winter following. A society was gathered; I was installed over it, and
there continued till the summer of 1837. These four years were to me
tremendous years. They seem to me, in looking back, like a long, sick,
feverish dream. Even now I can hardly but shudder at the remembrance
of glooms of midnight blackness and sufferings that mock all endeavors
at description: for it absolutely appears to me on the review that not
for one week of these four years was I a free, healthful, sober, man;
not one week but I was rent by a fierce conflict between "the law of
the members and the law of the mind." How it was I executed the
amount I did, of intellectual labor--how it was I accomplished the
results I did, Is to me an impenetrable mystery. I began to address in
a hired school-house a handful of persons, having most of them but a
slight mutual acquaintance, and in my farewell discourse I addressed a
fair-sized, closely-united congregation assembled in their own
conveniently-spacious church, with the organization and all the
customary belongings of the oldest worshiping societies. Not one
Sunday of that time was I disenabled by my fatal habits to perform the
customary offices; but I did not understand my condition in any thing
like its reality as now I look back upon it. My actual state was known
to but very few in its entireness--I may say to absolutely none of
those I daily companied with--and I did at the close of that period
receive an honorable dismissal at my own request, a request made for
reasons distinct from this; nor between myself and people, or any of
them, was there ever a word exchanged on this subject from first to
last. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction."
I shall not attempt going through these years in detail. I went to
Brooklyn with the habit of depending on alcohol to a considerable
extent for physical tone and mental excitement, though not with the
_habit_ of losing my balance thereby.
It was some time after establishing myself in New York before I became
at all awake to my condition. At considerable intervals I had two or
three attacks of convulsionary fits. My physician gave them some
name--I hardly remember what--but he did not specify the cause. I now
understand them to have been intoxication fits. I suspected then that
alcohol had some connection with them, and I was so far aroused to
this and other evils of my way of life that I attempted total
abstinence. But besides a host of uneasy sensations, I at once
experienced such a lack of bodily strength and of mental life and
activity that to think or write, or apply myself to my tasks
generally, I found impossible.
After making several abortive attempts of this kind, I tried at last
the substitution of laudanum for alcohol. It was a most fatal move!
for the final result was a bondage of which previously I had not even
a conception. At first, however, I seemed as though lifted out of the
pit into Paradise. Instead of the feverish, tumultuous excitement of
alcohol, I experienced a calm, equable, thrilling enjoyment. My whole
being was exalted from its previous turmoil and perturbation and heat,
to dwell in a region of serenity and peace and quiet bliss. But alas
for the reverse side of the picture! The total prostration, the depth
of depression, the more than infantile feebleness following the
reaction of this excitement--the multitude of uneasy, uncomfortable,
often bewildering sensations pertaining to the habit, are such as can
not be conveyed to one inexperienced in the matter. But any one may
decide that the presence and incorporation with the system, in large
quantities, of a poison which is so deadly a foe to life and all
life's movements can not be without very marked and baneful
results. The fact is that there is not one out of the thousand various
functions of the body which is not deranged and turned away by this
cause, and the movements of the mind and heart are from sympathy
hardly less morbid. Whether such a state must not be one of sufferings
many, and often frightful, every one may judge.
But worse even than this followed. It was not very long before the
opium nearly lost its power to excite and enliven, though it still
kept an inexorable clutch on every fibre of my frame, and I was
compelled to take it daily to keep the very current of life flowing.
To make my condition worse still, while obliged to use opium daily to
prolong even this existence--gloomy and apathetic as it was--I found
that in order to think or work with any thing of vigor I absolutely
required, every now and then, some excitement which opium now would
not give. I tried, therefore, strong tea and coffee and
tobacco-smoking. But all these were not enough, and I found there was
nothing for me but to try alcohol again; so that the upshot of my
experiment of substituting opium for alcohol was, that I got opium,
alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco-smoking fastened upon me all at once
and all in excessive quantities; and the consequence of using alcohol
was that no caution I could employ would secure me from occasional
intoxication. Such was my physical derangement that I never could be
certain beforehand of the degree of effect which alcoholic stimulus
would exert upon me, and the same quantity which at one time would
produce only the excitement I sought, would under other physical
conditions completely overcome me.
During my last two years in Brooklyn I made several attempts to break
away from opium and other stimulus, and each time made considerable
progress. But the same circumstances yet existed that originally led
to the evil, and in fact others of the same class had been superadded,
while the whole operated with aggravated force, so that I found or
thought it impossible to achieve my freedom without disclosing my
state, and thus, as I supposed, setting the seal to my own temporal
ruin. Once and again, therefore, I went back to my dungeon.
It may here be remarked that the sedentary man has extraordinary
difficulties to contend with in such a case. His occupation being
lonely, and demanding no bodily exertion, he has little or nothing to
draw off, _perforce_, his attention from the innumerable aches
and tormenting sensations which beset him, sometimes for months
without cessation, in going through the extricating process. To sit
still and endure long-protracted torment demands a resolution compared
with which the courage that carries one into a battle-field is a
paltry thing.
But this bondage so galling, this position so false in all ways, and
so severely condemned alike by conscience and honor, determined me at
last to attempt my freedom at the cost even of life, if need be. I
broke up housekeeping, sent my family away, and commenced the
struggle. I had a bad cold at the time, besides a complication of
various cares and distresses which probably increased the severity of
the trial. Violent brain-fever came on, accompanied with universal
inflammation and a host of sensations for which I never could find any
name. It seemed as if my arteries and veins ran with boiling water
instead of blood, and as the current circulated through the brain I
felt as if it actually boiled up against and tossed the skull at the
top of my head, as you have seen the water in a tea-kettle rattling
the lid. My hearing was affected in a thousand strange ways: I heard a
swimming noise which went monotonously on for weeks without
cessation. The ocean, with all its varieties of sound, was forever in
my hearing. Sometimes I heard the long billowy swell of the sea after
a hard blow; again I could hear the sharp, fuming collision of waves
in a storm; and then for hours I would listen to the solemn,
continuous roar, intermitted with the booming, splashing wash of the
tempest-roused surge upon the beach. Almost incessantly, too, I heard
whisper ing, sharp and hissing, on every side--outside and inside of
my room--and the whisperers I imagined were all saying hard things of
myself.
Meantime my mind was under tremendous excitement, and all its
faculties, especially the imagination, were preternaturally active,
vivid, and rapid-working. Such was my mental excitement and bodily
irritation that for ten days and nights I slept hardly at all, nor
enjoyed one moment's release from pain. That I was thoroughly in
earnest in what I had undertaken will appear from the fact that all
this time I had in a drawer within reach a bottle of laudanum, which I
knew would in a few moments give me ease and sleep. Yet thus agonized
and half delirious, I notwithstanding left it untouched. I was mostly
confined to the house about four weeks. The inflammation gradually
subsiding left me as weak as a child--so morbidly sensitive that
tears flowed on the slightest occasion, and with my whole frame
pervaded by a dull, incessant ache. To these symptoms were added
coldness of the extremities, an obstinate determination of blood to
the head, which swelled the vessels of the face and brain almost to
bursting, susceptibility to fatigue on the least exertion, physical or
mental, and so great a confusion and wandering of thought that it was
only by a violent effort that my mind could be brought to act
continuously or with the least vigor.
As soon as I was able to go abroad I joined my family in the
neighborhood of Boston, in the hope of benefiting by change of
scene. Remaining here for several months without much improvement of
health, I felt called on for various reasons to resign my charge in
New York. Thus left with a family and very slender resources, I was
compelled, feeble as I was, to bestir myself for their and my own
support. No employment offered itself but that of my profession, and
unfit, therefore, as I felt myself, body and mind, for this, I saw no
alternative but to preach as occasion presented. It was a most cruel
necessity, for without some artificial aid I was unable even to stand
through the pulpit services. As a choice of evils I used wine and
brandy; for the terrors of opium were still too recent.
In the closing part of December, 1837, I went to the city of
Washington to preach for six or seven Sundays. The same necessity,
real or supposed, of stimulating, followed me through the six weeks of
my stay there. One day at the close of this period, feeling unusually
ill and languid, I sent a servant out for a bottle of brandy. I
remember pouring out and drinking a single glass of it, and this is
the last and whole of my recollection for two days. I awoke and was
told I had been exceedingly ill. I must have been very badly
intoxicated, though how or why I was so, I know not to this day. So
soon as I could hold up my head I went by invitation to Baltimore, and
stayed there some three weeks with a college friend. While there I
learned from various sources that I was at last palpably and generally
exposed and disgraced. I relinquished my profession at once both in
reality and name, deeming this the least I could do in the
circumstances. About the middle of March, 1838, with shattered,
miserable health, overwhelmed with regret and shame and remorse, and
the future palled with funereal black, I set out for the residence of
relatives in Vermont. Here I remained two and a quarter years,
studying law with my sister's husband, who was an attorney and
counsellor. For several months I used no stimulus except tobacco,
which in the desperate restlessness of the previous summer I had again
began to chew after four years' interruption. I of course was weak and
languid from this great abstraction of stimulus, coupled with the
effects of the severe illness I had undergone. This debility rendered
more severe the endurance of other evils of my condition. No wonder
that under such wear and tear my nervous system should have become
shattered. I was attacked with tic-douloureux. Though suffering
severely, old recollections gave me such dread of anodyne and tonic
medicines--which I thought it most likely would be administered--that
I delayed for some time seeking medical advice. Pain, however, at last
drove me to it, and from two physicians I received a prescription of
morphlne and quinine. I knew that morphine was a preparation of opium,
but supposing it a preparation leaving out the stimulating and
retaining only the sedative properties of the drug, I imagined it less
dangerous than crude opium. With this opinion--with excruciating pain
on one side and on the other relief in the physicians' prescription--
it is not very strange I chose relief. I used the morphine until
apparently the neuralgic affection was cured. On attempting then to
lay it aside I found the habit of stimulating again fastened upon
me. Once more I found myself neither more nor less than a bond slave
to opium to all intents and purposes. With my existing physical
debility, with a pressing host of perplexities and tribulations, and
with my appalling remembrances of the former struggle, I could not
summon resolution and perseverance enough to achieve a second
emancipation. So regulating the quantity as well as I could, I waited
in hope of some more auspicious season for the attempt.
In the latter part of June, 1840, I went to New York city to complete
my third year of legal study. I was at the time weak in body and
low-spirited, and my debility was increased by the extraordinary heat
of the weather. I was disappointed too in several arrangements on
which I had reckoned. The result of all this was a want of physical
and moral energy which precluded the attempt at emancipation from
opium which I had purposed to make on my arrival; and worse than this,
I found myself rapidly getting into the way of adding brandy to opium
to procure the desired amount of excitement, as had formerly been the
case. I came to the conclusion that I could not achieve my freedom
alone, but must have help. I had no home, and after casting about I
could devise no better scheme than to enter the Insane Hospital at
Bloomingdale. I accordingly went there and stayed thirteen weeks. I
found on arriving, that neither myself nor the friends I had advised
with had understood the conditions of a residence in that Institution;
for to their disappointment and mine I was locked into the lunatic
ward and at total abandonment of stimulus, in a state of intense
nervous excitement, I was for several days, especially during nights,
kept on the very verge of frenzy by the mutterings and gibberings, the
howlings and horrid execrations of the mad creatures, my
neighbors. Without occupation for mind or body--with all things
disturbing about me--with deeply depressing remembrances, and the
future showing black as midnight--I remained here three months, and
it is marvellous that these causes alone did not utterly destroy
me. But to fill up the measure, I was attacked with fever and ague,
which kept me burning and freezing, shaking and aching, for several
weeks, and reduced me to such a degree of feebleness that I kept my
bed most of the time. Thus I left the Institution more shattered
physically than when I entered--so shattered that it was full two
years before I regained my customary measure of bodily strength.
It being now the first of December, 1840, I entered a law office in
Wall Street, where I remained till the following July. For some
months I enjoyed a glimpse of sunshine and had the hope of being
established in business by my employer. But in the spring of 1841 his
business fell off so largely that he dismissed three clerks who were
there on my entering, and counselled me to seek some more promising
sphere. Thus I was again afloat, knowing not whither to turn, and so
discouraged as to care little what became of me. One thing only seemed
stable and permanent, and that was the temptation to seek a temporary
exhilaration in my depression, and a brief oblivion of my troubles, in
alcohol.
By another change, in the fore part of July, 1841, I entered Judge
Allen's office in Worcester, Mass., and continuing there until March,
1842, was formally admitted to the Bar and commissioned as Justice of
the Peace for Essex County. My life in Worcester was pretty regular,
though I was not perfectly abstinent, nor did I escape being once or
twice overcome. In March, 1842, I went to Lynn, Mass., as editor of
the _Essex County Washingtonian_. Here was the spot where,
technically speaking, I had first entered life, and it was teeming
with a thousand memories, now most painful and sad. Much as I had
known before of mental suffering, I can remember none more intense
than I experienced the first few months of my return to Lynn. At times
I felt as if any thing were preferable to what I endured, and that to
procure relief by any means whatever was perfectly justifiable, on the
ground of that necessity which is above all laws. I therefore used
morphine, first occasionally and at last habitually, and sometimes,
though rarely, brandy. Some six months after settling in Lynn, being
one day in Boston on, business, I was oppressed with deadly nausea,
for which after trying two or three glasses of plain soda-water as a
remedy, I tried a glass of brandy with the soda. I was made
intoxicated by the means and badly so. I was perplexed as to what I
ought to do under the circumstances, but by the advice of two
Washingtonians, one of them the general agent of my paper, I still
continued at my post of editor.
In the following winter I was up as one of three candidates for
Congress from Essex County. In addition to the usual butting a
candidate gets on such occasions--being the third, whose votes
prevented a choice of either the other two candidates--I was exposed
to a raking fire from the two great political parties. Out of old
truths twisted and exaggerated out of all identity, and new lies
coined for the occasion, a world of falsity as to my character and
habits was bandied about; and although a caucus sitting in examination
two long successive evenings pronounced the charges against me
slanderous and wicked, and published a hand-bill to that effect, yet
the proprietor of my paper, moved by a power behind the throne, chose
that my connection with the paper should terminate. For some time
previous, I had been getting interested in the Association doctrines
of Fourier. I now became one of the editors of a monthly magazine
devoted in part to the advocacy of these doctrines, which after
issuing three numbers was compelled to stop for want of support. I
then in September, 1843, went forth on a tour through Massachusetts to
lecture on the subject. I thus spent five months, visiting twenty
towns and delivering some ninety gratuitous lectures. During this time
I used morphine habitually, and occasionally, though rarely, took
brandy. I took enough, however, of the latter to partly intoxicate me
three or four times, and sufficiently often to prevent the reputation
of being intemperate from ever dying away.
Sick and tired out with an existence so false and wretched, I
determined again to achieve emancipation at whatever cost, and by the
help of Providence, and the kind co-operation of inestimable friends,
I succeeded. I suffered severely, but far less than might have been
supposed. Cold water, under God, was the great instrument of my
cure. Drinking copiously of it, and lying some hours per day swathed
in a sheet dipped in it, for about one month, I found the painful
symptoms mostly gone; and three or four months of rest completed the
restoration of my strength.
And thus, after years of pain and sufferings in every kind, and errors
many and great, I find myself, by God's blessing, free and healthy,
and with a youthful life and feeling of which the very memory was
almost extinct.
Within a few months from the time this autobiography closes, the
writer again relapsed into the use of opium, and was received as a
patient into the New York Hospital. While there he furnished the
editor of the _Medical Times_, then on duty at the Hospital, with
a brief history of his case, substantially agreeing with what has
already been given. A portion of the paper is occupied with a
comparison of the effects of opium and alcohol on the system, and is
valuable as being the experience of one who was eminently familiar
with both:
The difference between opium and alcohol in their effects on body and
mind, is (judging from my own experience) very great. Alcohol, pushed
to a certain extent, overthrows the balance of the faculties, and
brings out some one or more into undue prominence and activity; and
(sad indeed) these are most commonly our inferior and perhaps lowest
faculties. A man who, sober, is a demi-god, is, when drunk, below
even a beast. With opium (_me judice_) it is the reverse. Opium
takes a man's mind where it finds it, and lifts it _en masse_ on
to a far higher platform of existence, the faculties all retaining
their former relative positions--that is, taking the mind as it is, it
intensifies and exalts all its capacities of thought and
susceptibilities of emotion. Not even this, however, extravagant as it
may sound, conveys the whole truth. Opium weakens or utterly paralyzes
the lower propensities, while it invigorates and elevates the superior
faculties, both intellectual and affectional. The opium-eater is
without sexual appetite; anger, envy, malice, and the entire
hell-brood claiming kin to these, seem dead within him, or at least
asleep; while gentleness, kindness, benevolence, together with a sort
of sentimental religionism, constitute his habitual frame of mind. If
a man has a poetical gift, opium almost irresistibly stirs it into
utterance. If his vocation be to write, it matters not how profound,
how difficult, how knotty the theme to be handled, opium imparts a
before unknown power of dealing with such a theme; and after
completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter
amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of
expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts that stand on the
page before him. If called to speak in public, opium gives him a
copiousness of thought, a fluency of utterance, a fruitfulness of
illustration, and a penetrating, thrilling eloquence, which often
astounds and overmasters himself, not less than it kindles, melts, and
sways the audience he addresses. I might dilate largely on this topic,
but space and strength are alike lacking.
Taking up his personal story where his "Autobiography" leaves it, and
where, as he imagined, hydropathic treatment had effected a cure, the
writer explains how he became for the third time an opium-eater:
The time came at last when I must work, be the consequences what they
would, and work, too, with my brain, my only implement; and that time
found my brain impotent from a yet uninvigorated nervous system. If I
would work, I must stimulate; and morphine, bad as it was, was better
than alcohol. I took morphine once more, and lectured on literary
topics for some months with triumphant success. While so lecturing in
a country town, I was solicited to take a parish in the
neighborhood. I did so, and there continued two years and a quarter,
performing in that time as much literary labor as ever in three times
the interval in any prior period of my life. In short, I had three
happy, intellectually-vigorous, outpouring years, with bodily health
uniformly sound and complete with the exceptions hereafter to be
mentioned. And yet, through those years I never used less than a
quarter of an ounce of morphine per week, and sometimes more. I
attribute my retaining so much health, in spite of the morphine, to
the rigorous salubrity of my habits, bodily and mental, in other
respects. Once, and often twice a day, the year round, I laved the
whole person in cold water with soap; I slept with open window the
year through excepting stormy winter nights; I laid upon a hard bed,
guiltless of feathers; I used a simple diet; and finally, I cherished
all gentle and kindly, while rigidly excluding from my mind all bitter
and perturbing, feelings. But not to dilate further on mere narrative,
let me say that I have continued to use opium, for the most part
habitually, from my last assumption of it up to the period of my
admission into this Hospital. A year since, however, I dropped
morphine, and have since used the opium pill in its stead, sometimes
taking an ounce per week, but generally not overpassing a half ounce
per week. And here I may make the general remark, proved true from my
own experience, that for all the desirable effects opium is about the
same as an ounce or any larger quantity of said gum, and nearly the
same as a quarter-ounce of morphine or more--that is, half an ounce of
opium stimulates and braces me at least nearly if not entirely as much
as I can be stimulated and braced by this drug. All that is taken over
this tends rather to clog, to stupefy, to nauseate, than to stimulate.
Another point in my own experience is, that in a few weeks only, after
commencing or recommencing the use of opium, I always reached the full
amount which, as a habit, I ever used--that is, either a half-ounce of
opium or a quarter-ounce of morphine. I never went on increasing the
dose in order to get the required amount of stimulation, but at one or
the other of these two points I would remain for years successively. A
third remark I would make is, that it is only for the first few weeks
after commencing the use of opium that one feels palpably and
distinctly the thrilling of the nerves, the sensation of being
stimulated and raised above the previously existing physical tone, for
which the drug was first taken. All the effects produced after that by
the opium, are to keep the body at that level of sensation in which
one feels positively alive and capable to act, without being impeded
or weighed down by physical languor and impotence. Such languor and
impotence one feels from abstaining merely a few hours beyond the
wonted time of taking the dose. It is not pleasure, then, that drives
onward the confirmed opium-eater, but a necessity scarce less
resistible than that Fate to which the pagan mythology subjected gods
not less than men.
Let me now, before closing, attempt briefly to describe the effects of
opium upon the body and mind of the user, as also the principal
sensations accompanying the breaking of the habit.
The opium-eater is prevailingly disinclined to, and in some sort
incapacitated for, bodily exertion or locomotion. A considerable part
of the time he feels something like a sense, not very distinctly
defined, of bodily fatigue; and to sit continuously in a rocking or an
easy chair, or to recline on a sofa or bed, is his preference above
all modes of disposing of himself. To walk up a flight of stairs often
palpably tires the legs, and makes him pant almost as much as a well
person does after pretty rapid motion. His lungs manifestly are
somehow obstructed, and do not play with perfect freedom. His liver
too is torpid, or else but partially active; for if using laudanum or
the opium pill, he is constantly more or less costive, the faeces
being hard and painful to expel; and if using morphone, though he may
have a daily movement, yet the faeces are dry and harder than in
health. One other morbid physical symptom I remember to have
experienced for a considerable time while using a quarter of an ounce
of morphine per week, and this was an annoying palpitation of the
heart. I was once told, too, by a keen observer, who knew my habit,
that my color was apt to change frequently from red to pale.
These are substantially all the physical peculiarities I experienced
during my opium-using years. It is still true, however, that the years
of my using opium (or, in perfect strictness, morphine) were as
healthy as any, if not the very healthiest, of the years of my life.
But what of the effects of opium-eating on the mind? The one great
injury it works, is (I think) to the will, that force whereby a man
executes the work he was sent here to do, and breasts and overcomes
the obstacles and difficulties he is appointed to encounter, and bears
himself unflinchingly amid the tempests of calamity and sorrow which
pertain to the mortal lot. Hardihood, manliness, resolution,
enterprise, ambition, whatever the original degree of these qualities,
become grievously debilitated if not wholly extinct. Reverie, the
perusal of poetry and fiction, becomes the darling occupation, of the
opium-user, and he hates every call that summons him from it. Give him
an intellectual task to accomplish; place him in a position where a
mental, effort is to be made; and, most probably, he will acquit him
with unusual brilliancy and power, supposing his native ability to be
good. But he can not or will not seek and find for himself such work
and such position. He feels helpless, and incompetent to stir about
and hold himself upright amid the jostling, competitive throngs that
crowd the world's paths, and there seek life's prizes by performing
life's duties and executing its requisitions. Solitude, with his
books, his dreams and imaginings, and the excited sensibilities that
lead to no external action, constitute his chosen world and favorite
life. In one word, he is a species of maniac; since, I believe, his
views, his feelings, and his desires in relation to most things are
peculiar, eccentric, and unlike those of other men, or of himself in a
state of soundness. There is, however, as complete a "method in his
madness" as in the sanity of other men. He is in a different sphere
from other men, and in that sphere he is sane.
The first symptoms attendant on breaking off the habit, coming on some
hours after omitting the wonted dose, are a constant propensity to
yawn, gape, and stretch, together with somewhat of languor, and a
general uneasiness. Time passes, and there follows a sensation as if
the stomach was drawn together or compressed, as if with a slight
degree of cramp, coupled with a total extinction of appetite; the
mouth and throat become dry and irritated; there is an incessant
disposition to clear the throat by "hemming" and swallowing, and there
is a tickling in the nose which necessitates frequent sneezing,
sometimes a dozen or even twenty times in succession. As the hours go
on, shudders run through the frame, with alternate fever heats and icy
chills, hot sweats and cold clammy sweats, while a dull, incessant
ache pervades the bones, especially at the joints, alternated by an
occasional sharp, intolerable pang, like tic-douloureux. Then follow a
host of indescribable sensations, as of burning, tinglings, and
twitchings, seeming to run along just beneath the surface of the skin
over the whole body, and so strange are these sensations that one is
prompted to scream, and strike the wall, the bed, or himself, to vary
them. By this time the liver commences a most energetic action, and a
violent diarrhea sets in. The discharges are not watery or mucous,
but, save in thinness, not very unlike healthy stools for the most
part. Not long, however, after the commencement of the diarrhea, so
copious is the effusion of bile from the liver, that one will
sometimes pass, for a dozen stools in succession, what seems to be
merely a blackish bile, without a particle of fæces mingled with
it. But this lasts not many days, and is followed by the thin, not
altogether unhealthy-looking discharges above mentioned, repeated
often an incredible number of times per day. Whether from the quality
of these discharges, or from whatever cause, the interior surface of
the bowels feels intolerably hot, as though excoriated, and it seems
as if boiling water or aqua fortis running through the intestines
would scarce torture one more than these stools. In fact, all the
internal surfaces of the body are in this same burning, raw-feeling
state. The brain, too, is in a highly excited, irritable condition;
the head sometimes aching and throbbing, as though it must burst into
fragments, and a humming, washing, simmering noise going on
incessantly for days together. Of course there can be no sleep, and
one will go on for ten days and nights consecutively without one
moment's loss of intensest consciousness, so far as he can judge!
Strange to say, notwithstanding this excessive irritation of the
entire system, one feels so feeble and strengthless that he can scarce
drag one foot after the other, and to walk a few rods, or up a flight
of stairs, is so terribly fatiguing that one must needs sit down and
pant. (Let it be noted, that these symptoms belong to the case where
one is simply deprived at once and wholly of opium without any medical
help, unless the use of cold water be considered such.) These symptoms
(unaided by medicine) last, with gradual abatements of virulence, from
twenty to thirty days, and then mostly die away. Not well and right,
however, does one feel, even then. Though for the most part free from
pain, he is yet physically weak, and all corporeal exertion is a
distressing effort. He must needs sleep, too, enormously, going to bed
often at sunset in a July day, and sleeping log-like until six or
seven next morning, and then sleeping with like soundness two or three
hours after dinner. How long it would be before the recovery of his
complete original strength and natural physical tone, personal
experience does not enable me to say. His condition, both in itself
and as relates to others, is meanwhile most strange and anomalous. He
looks, probably, better than ever in his life before. In sufficiently
full flesh, with ruddy cheeks and skin clear as a healthy child's, the
beholder would pronounce him in the height of health and vigor, and
would glow with indignation at seeing him loitering about day after
day, doing little save sleep, in a world where so much work needs to
be done. And yet he feels all but impotent for enterprise, or any
active physical efforts; for there is scarce enough nervous force in
him to move his frame to a lingering walk, and sometimes it seems as
if the nervous fibres were actually pulled out, and he must move, if
at all, by pure force of volition.
Most singular too, the while, is the state of his mind. His power of
thought is keen, bright, and fertile beyond example, and his
imagination swarms with pictures of beauty, while his sensitiveness to
impressions and emotions of every kind is so excessively keen that the
tears spring to his eyes on the slightest occasion. He is a child in
sensibility, while a youth in the vividness, and a man in the grasp,
the piercingness and the copiousness of his thoughts. He can not write
down his thoughts, for his arm and hand are unnerved; but in
conversation or before an audience he can utter himself as if filled
with the breath of inspiration itself.
INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE.
The account which follows is abridged from advance proof-sheets of a
narrative, written for separate publication, by Dr. L. Barnes, of
Delaware, Ohio, by whose courtesy a portion of his article appears in
these pages.
In the afternoon of Saturday, January 25th, 1868, Rev. G. W. Brush,
of Delaware, a clergyman of estimable character and more than
respectable talents, was found to have committed suicide. Sixteen or
seventeen years previous to this fatal act, morphine had been
prescribed to Mr. Brush for occasional disorder in the bowels and for
a dormant cancer of the tongue. But something else which had not been
prescribed--an unrelenting necessity to go on as he had begun--was
also developed in his nature, which in time bore its matured and
inevitable fruit. Mr. Brush made his case known for the first time to
Dr. Barnes in November, 1866, when his habitual consumption of
morphine varied from twelve to fifteen grains daily, with an
occasional use of double this quantity.
At this time, in the language of Dr. Barnes, he appeared greatly
depressed, mourned over his life as a failure, and said he had been
tempted to end it. He had once made a serious effort to abandon the
habit, but the effect was so prostrating, and diarrhea, pouring like a
flood, had borne him so near the gates of death, that he was compelled
to resume the drug in order to save his life. But he was determined to
make another attempt, and wished my professional services against the
consequences which he well knew must follow.
He entered upon the trial, reducing rapidly the amount of his
morphine. I called on him in the course of two or three days,
according to appointment, and found him wan and haggard, weak and
almost wild with suffering. His hands, lips, and voice trembled. He
tottered on his legs; and, though sweating profusely, he hovered about
the fire to keep warm. Day followed day, while he still suffered and
endured. On one occasion, as I entered, he had been writing, and read
me his production. It was an account of the effects produced by
morphine, the giving way of nerves, softening of the muscles, the
depression, nightmare in the day-time, visions, horrid shapes; how the
victim is sometimes engulfed in a flood of waters, while faces in all
imaginary varieties of distortion, grin from the waves, and terrible
eyes gleam forth from their depths.
About this time, business which he thought could not be transacted in
his suffering condition unexpectedly demanded his attention, and the
attempt was abandoned.
The year 1867 passed with him amid depression, shame, and remorse. He
called on me perhaps a hundred times at my office, and seldom left
without referring in some way to what he considered his
degradation. He repeatedly inquired if I thought it of any use for him
to try going on any longer in his ministerial work. Once he came with
a brighter face than usual, saying he had concluded to try it one year
more, and if he could not succeed----. Then what? I inquired as he
paused. A dark cloud spreading over his brow was his only answer, and
he lapsed into despondency. This despondency appears to be the
legitimate effect of opium. This fact was strikingly manifest in the
case of Mr. Brush, for his natural disposition, from childhood up, had
been usually kind, cheerful, and good; nor had he any dyspeptic or
bilious tendencies to worry and sour him. Few men have ever been
physically so well organized, or socially and religiously so well
situated for the enjoyment of a prosperous and happy life.
He came to me, finally, on the first day of January, 1868, saying his
people had kindly granted him leave of absence for a few weeks, which
he would devote to the work of overcoming his enemy, if such a thing
were possible. He could not live in his bondage. His wretched life,
with its terrible end, was forever staring him in the face. He asked
me if I would receive him at my house, and take care of him during the
struggle, as I had once consented to do. I said I would if he would
consent to let the people know why he was there. He looked very sad
as he answered that it would not do. He must undertake the battle at
home. He then took from his pocket some papers of morphine, which he
had caused to be weighed in doses diminishing at the rate of half a
grain each, beginning with six grains for the first day, five and a
half for the next, and so on, down. This was a sudden falling off of
nearly two-thirds from his ordinary allowance. He gave me all but the
two largest powders, which he reserved for an absence of two days at
Columbus. He proposed going away for the purpose of coming home sick,
in which condition he well knew he should be at that time. I was to
call at his house on the evening of his return, to render such
assistance as his condition might demand.
I went at the time appointed and found him again shattered, trembling,
sweating, and hovering about the fire. He said he had slept none, was
suffering much, and that his knees especially were aching badly. He
called pleadingly for the amount of morphine prepared for that day, as
he had not taken it. It was given, and then he conversed freely for an
hour or so.
The next evening he proposed to reduce his morphine by two grains
instead of half a grain, but was in a hurry for the quantity he was to
have. In the course of over two days more he came down to about two
grains for the whole day. But one evening, when I found him
apparently much relieved from suffering, and he saw my look of wonder
and doubt, he confessed having broken over the rules by taking an
additional dose of about three grains on his own responsibility. He
said his diarrhea had returned, the medicine left to check it was
gone, he hated to send for me, and so had done it. He was full of
remorse, declaring that if I should now abandon him, he would not
blame me. I told him I should stick to him as long as he would let me;
that he was doing a great work, such as few men ever succeeded in--a
work for two worlds, this one and the next--and that he must not give
it up.
I continued to spend the evenings with him for about two weeks. The
morphine was reduced to something like one grain a day, his appetite
returned, and he began to sleep pretty well at night. His nerves
became steady, and his diarrhea was controlled without serious
difficulty. Energy and strength returned so rapidly that in about two
weeks he was ready to resume his work. He said to his wife that the
awful weight was all gone--all gone. He expressed his gratitude to me
in the most glowing terms. He was triumphant at the idea of having
conquered with so much less suffering than he expected. Alas! I knew
his danger, and saw with sorrow that his returning confidence was
removing him from under my control while yet the enemy remained in the
field.
His last visit to me was on Friday, January 17th. He wanted diarrhea
medicine enough to last till the next Tuesday, when he would call
again and report. I felt uneasy about him, and went to hear him preach
on the intervening Sunday evening. I saw by his flushed and
embarrassed manner that he was falling back, and have since learned
that after service he confessed to his wife, who was watching his
condition with keen eyes, that he had taken about three grains to
strengthen him for the occasion. Poor man! He doubtless thought he
could stop there. Tuesday came, but he came not to my office.
Wednesday, and he came not. Then I was called away from home and did
not return until late Saturday night. The first news which greeted me
on arriving was, that he was no more. He had been buying morphine at
the drug-store during the week, and had reached nearly his former
quantity. He had wandered about, uncertain, forlorn, desolate. On
Friday he had tried to borrow a gun to shoot rats, had come across the
way to my office, which was found closed, and then tried again to
borrow the gun. He told his wife that dreadful load had come back.
Saturday his Quarterly Meeting commenced. He was to preach in the
afternoon. He was exceedingly kind and helpful to his family at
dinner-time, as he had been all day. The people were assembling at the
church, not far off. He went to the barn, suspended a rope from a beam
overhead, as he stood upon the manger. It was not quite long
enough. He lengthened it with his pocket-handkerchief, looped it
around his neck, put his hands in his pockets, and leaped off.
He was gone forever. He had failed in his last attempt to break away
from the benumbing power of opium, and in his desperation had sought
freedom in death. Let no man judge him, and least of all those who are
strangers to the fascinating and infernal strength of his enemy. You
may call it a grave mistake, a dreadful blunder, a doleful insanity,
but do not assume to put him beyond the reach of mercy, or to decide
that his lamentable end was not the iron door through which he may
have passed to the city of the golden streets.
A newspaper account of the death of Mr. Brush having fallen under the
notice of a morphine sufferer in Wisconsin, the latter addressed a
letter to Dr. Barnes, in which he gives his own remarkable experience
in the immediate and absolute abandonment of the habit.
The writer is represented as being about fifty years of age, temperate
in his general habits, and though not possessed of great vigor of
constitution, as having been through life a hard-working man. His use
of morphine began in the year 1861, under a medical prescription for
the relief of general debility; but without any knowledge on his part
of the character of the remedy he was using. After six months
habituation, the attempt to relinquish it proved a failure. For the
first two years, morphine appeared to benefit him. At the expiration
of this time his daily allowance had become three grains, which
quantity was rarely exceeded during the four subsequent years of his
bondage. After narrating the mental and physical suffering he
underwent in these years, he says:
April 17, 1867, found me a poor, wasted, miserable, six years'
morphine-eater; health all gone; unable to do any sort of business;
desiring nothing but death to close my sufferings. Then I made up my
mind to stop the use of morphine all at once. I had previously
attempted to break off by degrees, but I was beaten at that game every
time. It is utterly impossible to taper off by less and less, unless
some one is over the patient watching every motion. I say it
understandingly--the will of no man is strong enough to handle the
poison for himself. He will make a virtue out of necessity, and for
this time will over-take.
So I resolved to quit at once and forever. I arranged my business as
far as I could, under the idea that I should die in the attempt. The
first forty-eight hours I slept most of the time, waking somewhat
often, however, and then dropping asleep, while a sort of nervous
twitching would come and go. But the next day found me wide
awake. And--shall I tell you?--there was no more sleep for me until
sixty-five days had passed. No, not one single moment for sixty-five
days and nights. I was fully awake--never slept one moment! The second
day my suffering was intense. Every nerve seemed to be on a
rampage. Every faculty, mental and physical, appeared to be striving
to see how much suffering I could stand. The third day my bowels began
to empty, and a river of old ftid matter ran away. It seemed that I
was passing off in corruption. This continued for nearly four long,
suffering weeks. I never checked it, but let Nature take her course.
During the first four weeks of the fight there was extreme pain in
every part of my body. It seemed to me that I should burn up. This
worse than death sensation never left me a single hour for the first
thirty-five days. It seemed at times as though my bones would burst
open: a sort of nerve fire seemed to be shut up in them which must be
let out. I was able to walk out, and if necessary could walk a mile or
more.
The fifty-sixth day of suffering without sleep found me at a Water
Cure. Warm baths, sometimes with battery, then packs, then sitz baths,
for ten more long, suffering days and nights--but sleep never came to
me and pain never left me. On the sixty-fifth day of the fight I felt
perfectly easy. All my pains were gone. I went to my room and slept
nearly four hours. For ten minutes after waking I never stirred a limb
or muscle, fearing it would bring back the pains. But a happier man
never woke from sleep. I saw that I was delivered from the
prison-house of death. I telegraphed to my family that sleep had
come. To niy dying-hour I shall ever remember that eventful day. But
it was only the glimmering of light. Gradually and slowly sleep came
to be my companion again. And even yet it has not fully come. Until
within the last twenty days when I awoke, every nerve, every emotion
was awake all at once.
It is now the tenth month since I quit morphine. Then my weight was
only one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Now it is one hundred and
ninety. I am the happiest man on the earth, I am redeemed from one of
the lowest hells in all worlds.
In a subsequent letter to Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still
improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so
vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that it
will come back."
The following declaration, which Dr. Barnes embodies in his article,
is deserving the careful consideration both of physicians and
philanthropists. He says: "Calling to mind what has come to my
knowledge during a long and extensive medical practice, the conclusion
is, that I have known of more deaths from the use of opium, in some of
its forms, than from all the forms of alcoholic drinks."
A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME.
The following record of a successful endeavor to overcome a morphine
habit of several years' growth is abbreviated, by permission of the
publishers, from _Lippincott's Magazine_ for April, 1868. The
absence of the writer in Europe precludes any more definite statement
than can be inferred from the narrative itself as to the length of
time during which the habit remained uninterrupted. This is a matter
of regret, as the _time-element_, in the view of the compiler,
enters so largely into the question of the probable recovery of an
opium sufferer. Morphine appears certainly to have been taken daily in
very large quantities for at least five years after the writer's habit
became established.
* * * * *
Since De Quincey gave to the world his famous "Confessions," people
have been content to regard opium-eating as a strangely fascinating or
as a strangely horrible vice. England, and, as I have recently
learned, in this country also. It should be well understood that no
man _continues_ an opium-eater from choice; he sooner or later
becomes the veriest slave; and it is the object of this paper,
originally intended for a friend's hand only, to deter intending
neophytes--to warn them from submitting themselves to a yoke which
will bow them to the earth. In the hope that it may subserve the good
proposed, I venture to give a short account of the experiences of one
who still feels in his tissues the yet slowly-smouldering fire of the
furnace through which he has passed. I first took opium, in the form
of laudanum, nearly ten years ago, for insomnia, or sleeplessness,
brought on by overwork at a European university. It seemed as if my
tissues lapped up the drug and revelled in the new and strange delight
which had opened up to them. All that winter I took doses of from ten
to thirty drops every Friday night, there being but few classes on
Saturday of any consequence, so that I had the full, uninterrupted
effect of the drug. Then I could set to work with unparalleled
energy. Thought upon thought flowed to me in never-ending waves. I had
a mad striving after intellectual distinction, and felt I would pay
any price for it. I generally felt, on the Sunday, my lids slightly
heavy, but with a sense pervading me of one who had been taking
champagne. I never, however, during this whole winter, took more than
one dose a week, varying from thirty to sixty drops. Toward the close
of the session I one day deferred the dose till Sunday evening. On the
Monday following, in the afternoon, I was in one of the class-rooms
listening to the lecturer on Belles-lettres and Rhetoric. One hundred
and more young men sat, on that Monday afternoon, listening to his
silvery voice as he read extracts from Falconer's "Shipwreck," while
the splendid conceptions of the poem, and the opium to boot, taken on
the Sunday evening before, were all doing their work on an imaginative
young man of nineteen. My blood seemed to make music in my vessels as
it seemed to come more highly oxygenized singing to my brain, and
tingled fresher and warmer into the capillaries of the entire surface,
leaping and bubbling like a mountain-brook after a shower. I knew not
at first what it could be, but I felt as if I could have bounded to
the desk and taken the place of the professor. For a while, I say, I
could not realize the cause. At last, as with a lightning flash, it
came. Yes! It was the opium.
And at that moment, then and there was signed the bond which was
destined to go far to wither all my fairest hopes; to undermine, while
seeming to build up, my highest aspirations; to bring disunion between
me and those near and dear to me; to frustrate all my plans, and,
while "keeping the word of promise to the ear," ever breaking it to my
hope. As I trace these very characters, I am suffering from the remote
consequences, in a moral point of view, of having set my hand and seal
to that bond.
For two years longer that I remained at college I continued to take
laudanum three times a week, and I could, at the end of this period,
take two drachms (120 drops) at each dose. All this time my appetite,
though not actually destroyed, as it now is, was capricious in the
extreme, though I did not lose flesh, at least not markedly so. On the
other hand, my capability for mental exertion all through this period
was something incredible; and let me say here that one of the most
fascinating effects of the drug in the case of an intellectual and
educated man is the sense it imparts of what might be termed
intellectual daring: add to this the endowments of a strong frame,
high animal spirits, and on such an one, opium is the ladder that
seems to lead to the gates of heaven. But alas for him when at its
topmost rung! After obtaining my degree I gradually eased off the use
of the drug for about three months with but little trouble. I was
waiting for an appointment in India. At the end of the period named I
sailed for my destination, and had almost forgotten the taste of
opium; but I found that I was only respited, not redeemed. Two months
after I had entered upon my duties, and found myself quietly among my
books, the bond was renewed. After two months, in which I passed from
laudanum to crude opium, I finally settled on the alkaloid
_morphia_, as being the most powerful of all the preparations of
opium. I began with half a grain twice a day, and for the six months
ending the last day of September of the just expired year, my daily
quantum was sixty grains--half taken the instant I awoke, the other
half at six o'clock in the evening; and I could no more have avoided
putting into my body this daily supply than I could have walked over a
burning ploughshare without scorching my feet.
For the first year, five grains, or even two and a half, would suffice
for a couple of days; that is to say, there was no craving of the
system for it during its deprivation for this space. At the end of
this period there would be a sense of depression amounting to little
beyond uneasiness. But soon four hours' deprivation of the drug gave
rise to a physical and mental prostration that no pen can adequately
depict, no language convey: a horror unspeakable, a woe unutterable
takes possession of the entire being; a clammy perspiration bedews the
surface, the eye is stony and hard, the noise pointed, as in the
hippocratic face preceding dissolution, the hands uncertain, the mind
restless, the heart as ashes, the "bones marrowless."
To the opium-consumer, when deprived of this stimulant, there is
nothing that life can bestow, not a blessing that man can receive,
which would not come to him unheeded, undesired, and be a curse to
him. There is but one all-absorbing want, one engrossing desire--his
whole being has but one tongue--that tongue syllables but one
word--_morphia_. And oh! the vain, vain attempt to break this
bondage, the labor worse than useless--a minnow struggling to break
the toils that bind a Triton!
I pass over all the horrible physical accompaniments that accumulate
after some hours' deprivation of the drug when it has long been
indulged in, it being borne in mind that it occurs sooner or later
according to the constitution it contends against. Suffice it to say
that the tongue feels like a copper bolt, and one seems to carry one's
alimentary canal in the brain; that is to say, one is perpetually
reminded that there is such a canal from the constant sense of pain
and uneasiness, whereas the perfection of functional performance is
obtained when the mind is unconscious of its operation.
The slightest mental or physical exertion is a matter of absolute
impossibility. The winding of a watch I have regarded as a task of
magnitude when not under the opium influence, and I was no more
capable of controlling, under this condition, the cravings of the
system for its pabulum, by any exertion of the will, than I, or any
one else, could control the dilatation and contraction of the pupils
of the eye under the varying conditions of light and darkness. A time
arrives when the will is killed absolutely and literally, and at this
period you might, with as much reason, tell a man to will not to die
under a mortal disease as to resist the call that his whole being
makes, in spite of him, for the pabulum on which it has so long been
depending for carrying on its work.
When you can with reason ask a man to aerate his lungs with his head
submerged in water--when you can expect him to control the movements
of his limb while you apply an electric current to its motor
nerve--then, but not till then, speak to a confirmed opium-eater of
"exerting his will;" reproach him with want of "determination," and
complacently say to him, "Cast it from you and bear the torture for a
time." Tell him, too, at the same time, to "do without atmospheric
air, to regulate the reflex action of his nervous system and control
the pulsations of his heart." Tell the Ethiopian to change his skin,
but do not mock the misery and increase the agony of a man who has
taken opium for years by talking to him of "will." Let it be
understood that after a certain time (varying, of course, according to
the capability of physical resistance, mode of life, etc., of the
individual) the craving for opium is beyond the domain of the will. So
intolerant is the system under a protracted deprivation, that I know
of two suicides resulting therefrom. They were cases of Chinese who
were under confinement. They were baffled on one occasion in carrying
out a previously-successful device for obtaining the drug. The awful
mystery of death which they rashly solved had no terrors for them
equal to a life without opium, and the morning found them hanging in
their cells, glad to get "anywhere, anywhere out of the world."
I have seen another tear his hair, dig his nails into his flesh, and,
with a ghastly look of despair and a face from which all hope had
fled, and which looked like a bit of shrivelled yellow parchment,
implore for it as if for more than life.
But to return to myself. I attained a daily dose of forty grains, and
on more than one occasion I have consumed sixty. It became my bane and
antidote; with it I was an _unnatural_--without it, less than
man. Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a
dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would
sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to
diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a
hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest
comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and
indescribably yellow. I had then been taking _morphia_ for nearly
two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses for the
six months already indicated.
Finally, even the sixty grains brought no perceptible increase to the
vitality of which the body seemed deprived during its abstinence. It
stimulated me to not one-tenth of the degree to which a quarter of a
grain had done at the commencement. Still, I had to keep storing it up
in me, trying to extract vivacity, energy, life itself, from that
which was killing me; and grudgingly it gave it. I tried hard to free
myself, tried again and again; but I never could at any time sustain
the struggle for more than four days at the utmost. At the end of that
time I had to yield to my tormentor--yield, broken, baffled, and
dismayed--yield to go through the whole struggle over again; forced to
poison myself--forced with my own hand to shut the door against hope.
With an almost superhuman effort I roused myself to the determination
of doing something, of making one last effort, and, if I failed, to
look my fate in the face. What, thought I, was to be the end of all
the hopes I once cherished, and which were cherished of and for me by
others? of what avail all the learning I had stored up, all the
aspirations I nourished?--all being buried in a grave dug by my own
hand, and laid aside like funeral trappings, out of sight and memory.
I will not detail my struggles nor speak of the hope which I had to
sustain me, and which shone upon me whenever the face of my Maker
seemed turned away. Let it suffice that I fought a desperate
fight. Again and again I recoiled, baffled and disheartened; but one
aim led me on, and I have come out of the _melée_ bruised and
broken it may be, but conquering. One month I waged the fight, and I
have now been nearly two without looking at the drug. Before, four
hours was the longest interval I could endure. Now I am free and the
demon is behind me. I must not fail to add that the advantage of a
naturally sound and preternaturally vigorous constitution, and (except
in the use of opium) one carefully guarded against any of the causes
which impart a vicious state of system and so render it incapable of
recuperative effort, was my main-stay, and acted the part of a
bower-anchor in restoring my general system. This, and a long
sea-voyage, aided efforts which would have been otherwise
fruitless. On the other hand, let us not too rashly cast a stone at
the opium-eater and think of him as a being unworthy of sympathy. If
he is not to be envied--as, God knows, he is not--let him not be too
much contemned.
I do not now refer to the miserable and grovelling Chinese, who are
fed on it almost from the cradle, but to the ordinary cases of
educated and intellectual men in this country and in Europe; and I
assert that, could there be a realization of all the aspirations, all
the longings after the pure, the good and noble that fill the mind and
pervade the heart of a cultivated and refined man who takes to this
drug, he would be indeed the paragon of animals. And I go further and
say that, given a man of cultivated mind, high moral sentiment, and a
keen sense of intellectual enjoyment, blended with strong imaginative
powers, and just in proportion as he is so endowed will the
difficulty be greater in weaning himself from it. I mean, of course,
before the will is killed. When that takes place he is of necessity as
powerless as any other victim, and his craving for it is as automatic
as in the case of any other opium slave. What he becomes then, I have
attempted to describe, and in doing so have suppressed much in
consideration of the feelings of those who read.
This it is to be an opium-eater; and the boldest may well quail at the
picture, drawn not by the hand of fancy, but by one who has supped of
its horrors to the full, and who has found that the staff on which he
leaned has proven a spear which has well-nigh pierced him to the
heart. Let no man believe he will escape: the bond matures at last.
ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WM. WILBERFORCE,
The compiler has hesitated as to the propriety of calling attention to
the opium-habits of these eminent men, both because little instruction
is afforded by the meagre information that is accessible to him
respecting their use of opium, and because he apprehends their example
may be pleaded in extenuation of the habit. Yet they were confirmed
opium-eaters, and remained such to the day of their death; and a
reference to their cases may not be without its lesson to that large
class of men eminent in public or professional life, who already are,
or are in danger of becoming, victims of the opium tyranny, as well as
to that larger class who find in undiscriminating denunciations of bad
habits, a cheap method of exhibiting a cheap philanthropy.
ROBERT HALL.
With the single exception of Richard Baxter, no clergyman of eminence
on record appears to have suffered so acutely or for so long a period
from nervous disorders as this eloquent divine. So little,
unfortunately, is known of the nature of his disorder, that it would
be unjust to express any opinion as to the urgency of the temptation
which drove him to the enormous consumption of opium in which he
indulged. His biography by Olinthus Gregory sufficiently indicates the
severity as well as the early manifestation of his painful
disorder. "At about six years of age he was placed at a day-school
about four miles from his father's residence. At first he walked to
school in the morning and home again in the evening. But the severe
pain in his back, from which he suffered so much through life, had
even then begun to distress him; so that he was often obliged to lie
down upon the road; and sometimes his brother and his other
school-fellows carried him in turn.
"Sir James Macintosh described Mr. Hall, when in his twentieth year,
as attracting notice by a most ingenuous and intelligent countenance,
by the liveliness of his manners, and by such indications of mental
activity as could not be misinterpreted. His appearance was that of
health, yet not of robust health, and he suffered from paroxysms of
pain, during which he would roll about on the carpet in the utmost
agony; but no sooner had the pain subsided than he would resume his
part in conversation with as much cheerfulness and vivacity as before
he had been thus interrupted.
"At that period, though he was strong and active, he often suffered
extremely from the pain to which I have before adverted, and which was
his sad companion through life. On entering his room to commence our
reading, I could at once tell whether or not his night had been
refreshing; for if it had, I found him at the table, the books to be
studied ready, and a vacant chair set for me. If his night had been
restless, and the pain still continued, I found him lying on the sofa,
or more frequently upon three chairs, on which he could obtain an
easier position. At such seasons, scarcely ever did a complaint issue
from his lips; but inviting me to take the sofa, our reading
commenced. They, however, who knew Mr. Hall can conjecture how often,
if he became interested, he would raise himself from the chairs, utter
a few animated expressions, and then resume the favorite reclining
posture. Sometimes, when he was suffering more than usual, he proposed
a walk in the fields, where, with the appropriate book as our
companion, we could pursue the subject. If _he_ was the
preceptor, as was commonly the case in these peripatetic lectures, he
soon lost the sense of pain, and it was difficult to say whether the
body or the mind were brought most upon the stretch in keeping up with
him.
"During the early months of the year 1803, the pain in Mr. Hall's back
increased both in intenseness and continuity, depriving him almost
always of refreshing sleep, and depressing his spirits to an unusual
degree.
"Often has he been known to sit close at his reading, or yet more
intently engaged in abstract thought, for more than twelve hours in
the day; so that when his friends have called upon him, in the hope of
drawing him from his solitude, they have found him in such a state of
nervous excitement as led them to unite their efforts in persuading
him to take some mild narcotic and retire to rest. The painful result
may be anticipated. This noble mind lost its equilibrium.
"Throughout the whole of Mr. Hall's residence at Leicester, he
suffered much from his constitutional complaint; and neither his habit
of smoking nor that of taking laudanum seemed effectually to alleviate
his sufferings. It was truly surprising that this constant, severe
pain, and the means adopted to mitigate it, did not in any measure
diminish his mental energy.
"In 1812 he took from fifty to one hundred drops every night. Before
1826 the quantity had increased to one thousand drops.
"Mr. Hall commonly retired to rest a little before eleven o'clock; but
after his first sleep, which lasted about two hours, he quitted his
bed to obtain an easier position on the floor or upon three chairs,
and would then employ himself in reading the book on which he had been
engaged during the day. Sometimes, indeed often, the laudanum, large
as the doses had become, did not sufficiently neutralize his pain to
remove the necessity for again quitting his bed. For more than twenty
years he had not been able to pass a whole night in bed. When this is
borne in mind it is truly surprising that he wrote and published so
much; nay, that he did not sink into dotage before he was fifty years
of age.
"Early on the Sunday morning (Mr. Addington says) being requested to
see him, I found him in a condition of extreme suffering and
distress. The pain in his back had been uncommonly severe during the
whole night, and compelled him to multiply at very short intervals the
doses of his anodyne, until he had taken no less than 125 grains of
solid opium, equal to more than 3000 drops, or nearly four ounces of
laudanum!! This was the only instance in which I had ever seen him at
all overcome by the soporific quality of the medicine; and it was even
then hard to determine whether the effect was owing so much to the
quantity administered as to the unusual circumstance of its not having
proved, even for a short time, an effectual antagonist to the pain it
was expected to relieve.
"The opium having failed to assuage his pain, he was compelled to
remain in the horizontal posture; but while in this situation a
violent attack in his chest took place, which in its turn rendered an
upright position of the body no less indispensable. The struggle that
ensued between these opposing and alike urgent demands became most
appalling, and it was difficult to imagine that he could survive it,
especially as from the extreme prostration of vital energy, the remedy
by which the latter of these affections had often been mitigated--
viz., bleeding--could not be resorted to. Powerful stimulants, such as
brandy, opium, ether, and ammonia, were the only resources, and in
about an hour from my arrival we had the satisfaction of finding him
greatly relieved."
The following references to the opium habits of Hall are found in
"Gilfillan's Literary Portraits."
"Owing to a pain in his spine, he was obliged to swallow daily great
quantities of ether and laudanum, not to speak of his favorite potion,
tea. This had the effect of keeping him strung up always to the
highest pitch; and, while never intoxicated, he was everlastingly
excited. Had he been a feeble man in body and mind the regimen would
have totally unnerved him. As it was, it added greatly to the natural
brilliance of his conversational powers, although sometimes it appears
to have irritated his temper, and to have provoked ebullitions of
passion, and hasty, unguarded statements.
"A gentleman in Bradford described to us a day he once spent there
with Hall. It was a day of much enjoyment and excitement. At the close
of it Hall felt exceedingly exhausted, and on retiring to rest asked
the landlady for a wine-glass half full of brandy. 'Now,' he says, 'I
am about to take as much laudanum as would kill all this company; for
if I don't, I won't sleep one moment.' He filled the glass with strong
laudanum, went to bed, and enjoyed a refreshing rest."
JOHN RANDOLPH.
The eccentricities of no man in America who has been at all
conspicuous in public life approach the eccentricities of the late
John Randolph of Roanoke. Diseased from his birth, with a temperament
of the most excitable kind, he seems during the greater part of his
days to have lived only just without the bounds of confirmed
insanity. His constitutional infirmities were peculiarly the
infirmities that find relief in opium; and it has generally been
understood that his addiction to the habit was of many years'
continuance and lasted to his death. I have been assured by a Virginia
gentleman that when, in one of his last days, he directed his servant
to write upon a card for his inspection the word "REMORSE," Randolph
was understood to have in mind his excessive use of opium. His
biographer, Mr. Hugh Garland, however, has given apparently as little
prominence to his habit in this respect as was consistent with any
mention of it whatever. The letters which follow contain nearly all
the information that we can gather from this source. Under date of
February, 1817, Randolph says:
"The worst night that I have had since my indisposition commenced. It
was, I believe, a case of _croup_ combined with the affection of
the liver and the lungs. Nor was it unlike tetanus, since the muscles
of the neck and back were rigid, and the jaw locked. I never expected,
when the clock struck two, to hear the bell again. Fortunately, as I
found myself going, I dispatched a servant (about one) to the
apothecary for an ounce of laudanum. Some of this, poured down my
throat, through my teeth, restored me to something like life. I was
quite delirious, but had method in my madness; for they tell me I
ordered Juba to load my gun and to shoot the first 'doctor' that
should enter the room; adding, 'they are only mustard-seed, and will
serve just to sting him.' Last night I was again very sick; but the
anodyne relieved me. I am now persuaded that I might have saved
myself a great deal of suffering by the moderate use of opium."
Under date of March of the same year he writes to a friend: "No
mitigation of my worst symptoms took place until the third day of my
journey, when I threw physic to the dogs, and instead of opium, etc.,
I drank, in defiance of my physician's prescription, copiously of cold
spring water, and ate plentifully of ice. Since that change of regimen
my strength has increased astonishingly, and I have even gained some
flesh, or rather skin."
In a letter to Dr. Brockenbrough, dated May 30, 1828:
"I write again to tell you that extremity of suffering has driven me
to the use of what I have had a horror all my life--I mean opium--and
I have derived more relief from it than I could have anticipated. I
took it to mitigate severe pain, and to check the diarrhea. It has
done both; but to my surprise it has had an equally good effect upon
my cough, which now does not disturb me in the night, and the diarrhea
seldom until toward day-break, and then not over two or three times
before breakfast, instead of two or three-and-thirty times.
His biographer, speaking of the state of his health in the autumn of
1831, says, "Mr. Randolph made no secret of his use of opium at this
time: 'I live by if not upon opium,' said he to a friend. He had been
driven to it as an alleviation of a pain to which few mortals were
doomed. He could not now dispense with its use. 'I am fast sinking,'
said he, 'into an opium-eating sot, but, please God! I will shake off
the incubus yet before I die; for whatever difference of opinion may
exist on the subject of suicide, there can be none as to _rushing
into the presence of our Creator_ in a state of drunkenness,
whether produced by opium or brandy.' To the deleterious influence of
that poisonous drug may be traced many of the aberrations of mind and
of conduct so much regretted by his friends during the ensuing winter
and spring. But he was by no means under its constant influence."
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.
So little is known, beyond what appears in the following brief
notices, of the opium habits of this distinguished philanthropist,
that their citation here would be of little service to opium-eaters,
except as they tend to show that the regular use of the drug in small
quantities may sometimes be continued for many years without apparent
injury to the health, while the same difficulty in abandoning it is
experienced as attends its disuse by those whose moderation has been
less marked.
The son of Wilberforce, in the "Life" of his distinguished father,
says: "His returning health was in a great measure the effect of a
proper use of opium, a remedy to which even Dr. Pitcairne's judgment
could scarcely make him have recourse; yet it was to this medicine
that he now owed his life, as well as the comparative vigor of his
later years. So sparing was he always in its use, that as a stimulant
he never knew its power, and as a remedy for his specific weakness he
had not to increase its quantity during the last twenty years he
lived. 'If I take,' he would often say,'but a single glass of wine, I
can feel its effect, but I never know when I have taken my dose of
opium by my feelings.' Its intermission was too soon perceived by the
recurrence of disorder."
In a letter from Dr. Gilman, already quoted in the "Reminiscences of
Coleridge," he says, speaking of the difficulty of leaving off opium,
"I had heard of the failure of Mr. Wilberforce's case under an eminent
physician of Bath," etc.
A HALF CENTURY'S USE OF OPIUM.
The case of Wilberforce, however, is thrown into the shade by that of
a gentleman now living in New York, whose use of opium has been much
more protracted than that of the British philanthropist, and who
affirms that opium, instead of weakening his powers of mind or body in
any respect, has, on the contrary, been of eminent service to both.
The compiler would have been glad, in the general interests of
humanity, to omit any reference to this case; but it is a legitimate
part of the story he has undertaken to tell; and however this isolated
exception to the ordinary results of the opium habit may be perverted
as a snare and delusion to others, it can not honestly remain
untold. In the compiler's interview with this gentleman, now in the
one hundred and third year of his age, he was impressed with the
evidences of a physical and mental vigor, and a high moral tone, which
is rarely found in men upon whom rests the weight of even eighty
years. Whatever may be thought of the convictions of the compiler, as
to the enormity of the injury inflicted upon society from the habitual
and increasing use of opium, he can not reconcile it to his sense of
fairness to omit distinct reference to this most anomalous case. The
gentleman in question was born in England in the year 1766, and
received his first commission in the army in 1786. Serving his country
in almost every military station in the world where the martial drum
of England is heard--in India, at the Cape, in the Canadas, on guard
over Napoleon at St. Helena--he illustrates, as almost a solitary
exception, the fact that a use of opium for half a century, varying in
quantity from forty grains daily to many times this amount, does not
_inevitably_ impair bodily health, mental vigor, or the higher
qualities of the moral nature. The use of opium was commenced by this
gentleman in the year 1816, as a relief for a severe attack of
rheumatism, and has been continued to the present time, with the
exception of a very brief period when an eminent physician of Berlin,
at the suggestion of the late Chevalier Bunsen, the Prussian
Embassador to Great Britain, endeavored to break up the habit. In this
effort he was unsuccessful, and the case remains as a striking
illustration of the weakness of that physiological reasoning which
would deduce certain phenomena as the invariable consequences of a
violation of the fundamental laws of health. Until the chemistry of
the living body is better understood, medical science seems obliged to
accept many anomalies which it can not explain. About all that can be
said of such exceptional cases is this: In the great conflagrations
which at times devastate large cities, some huge mass of solid masonry
is occasionally seen in the midst of the wide-spread ruin, looking
down upon prostrate columns, broken capitals, shattered walls, and the
cinders and ashes of a general desolation. The solitary tower
unquestionably stands; but its chief utility lies in this,--that it
serves as a striking monument of the appalling and wide-spread
destruction to which it is the sole and conspicuous exception.
WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED?
Most of the preceding pages were already prepared for the press, when
the attention of the compiler was attracted by a very remarkable
article in _Harper's Magazine_ for August, 1867, entitled, "What
Shall They Do to be Saved?" The graphic vividness of the story, as
well as the profound insight and wide experience with which it was
written, led me to solicit from the unknown author the addition of it
to the pages of my own book. It proved to be from the pen of Fitz Hugh
Ludlow, already recognized by the public as a writer of eminence, both
in science and letters. The permission being freely accorded, I was
still further moved to ask that he would give me a statement of the
method pursued by him in dealing with the class to which it refers.
The letter following his article was his response to my request. It
will be seen to contain an outline of his views upon the subject to
which he has devoted some years of study and practice, and is
especially valuable as embodying the germ of a plan by which,
according to his growing conviction, the opium-eater can alone be
saved. As the conclusions of a writer who seems to the compiler to be
singularly intelligent and definite in his knowledge of this most
interesting and difficult field of disease and treatment, it needs no
further recommendation to the attention of the reader. Since the
publication of his August article, a multitude of letters received
from all portions of the country, asking his advice and assistance in
such cases as this book describes, has left a profound conviction upon
his mind of the most crying need of the establishment of an
institution where opium-eaters can be treated specially. In this view
of the urgent necessities of the case, the compiler most heartily and
earnestly concurs.
* * * * *
I have just returned from forty-eight hours' friendly and professional
attendance at a bedside where I would fain place every young person in
this country for a single hour before the Responsibilities of Life
have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of his Will.
My patient was a gentleman of forty, who for several years of his
youth occasionally used opium, and for the last eight has habitually
taken it. During these eight years he has made at least three efforts
to leave it off, in each instance diminishing his dose gradually for a
month before its entire abandonment, and in the most successful one
holding the enemy at bay for but a single summer. In two cases he had
no respite of agony from the moment he dropped till he resumed it. In
the third case, a short period of comparative repose succeeded the
first fiery battle, but in the midst of felicitations on his victory
he was attacked by the most agonizing hemicranial headaches (resulting
from what I now fear to have been already permanent disorganization of
the stomach), and went back to his nepenthe in a state of almost
suicidal despair, only after the torture had continued for weeks
without a moment's mitigation.
He had first learned its seductions, as happens with the vast majority
of Anglo-Saxon opium-eaters, through a medical prescription. An attack
of inflamed cornea was treated with caustic applications, and the pain
assuaged by internal doses of M'Munn's Elixir. When my friend came out
of his dark room and bandages at the end of a month he had consumed
twenty ounces of this preparation, whose probable distinction from the
tincture known as laudanum I point out below in the note. [Footnote:
Mr. Frank A. Schlitz has kindly made for me a special analysis of
M'Munn's Elixir, which seems to prove that the process of its
preparation amounts to more than the _denarcotization_ of opium,
which is spoken of on the wrapper of each vial. As nearly as can be
ascertained, M'Munn's Elixir is simply an aqueous infusion of
opium--procured by the ordinary maceration--and preserved from
decomposing by the subsequent addition of a small portion of
alcohol. _Narcotin_ being absolutely insoluble in water is
eliminated as the circular says. This fact alone would not account for
the difference between its action and that of laudanum. This is
explained by the fact that all the other alkaloids possess diverse
rates of solubility in water, and exist in M'Munn's Elixir in very
different relative proportions from those which they bear to each
other in the alcoholic tincture called laudanum.] Here it may not be
superfluous to say that the former preparation has all the essential
properties of the latter, save certain of the constipatory and
stupefying tendencies which, by a private process known to the assigns
of the inventor, have been so masked or removed that it possesses in
many cases an availableness which the practitioner can not despise,
though compelled by the secrecy of its formula to rank it among quack
medicines. The amount of it which my friend had taken during his
month's eclipse represents an ounce of dry gum opium--in rough
measurement a piece as large as a French billiard ball. I thus
particularize because he had never previously been addicted to the
drug; had inherited a sound constitution, and differed from any other
fresh subject only in the intensity of his nervous temperament. I wish
to emphasize the fact that the system of a mere neophyte, with nothing
to neutralize the effects of the drug save the absorbency, so to
speak, of the pain for which it was given, could so rapidly adapt
itself to them as to demand an increase of the dose in such an
alarming ratio. There are certain men to whom opium is as fire to
tow, and my friend was one of these. On the first of October he
sensibly perceived the trifling dose of fifty drops; on the first of
November he was taking, without increased sensation, an ounce vial of
"M'Munn" daily.
From that time--totally ignorant of the terrible trap which lay
grinning under the bait he dabbled with--he continued to take opium at
short intervals for several years. When by the physician's orders he
abandoned "M'Munn," on the subsidence of the eye-difficulty, his
symptoms were uneasy rather than distressing, and disappeared after a
few days' oppression at the pit of the stomach and a few nights'
troubled dreaming. But he had not forgotten the sweet dissolving views
at midnight, the great executive achievements at noonday, the heavenly
sense of a self-reliance which dare go anywhere, say any thing,
attempt any thing in the world. He had not forgotten the nonchalance
under slight, the serenity in pain, the apathy to sorrow, which for
one month set him calm as Boodh in the temple-splendors of his
darkened room. He had not forgotten that the only perfect
_peace_ he had ever experienced was there, and he remembered that
peace as something which seemed to blend all the assuaged passion and
confirmed dignity of old age with that energy of high emprise which
thrills the nerves of manhood. He had tasted as many sources of
earthly pleasure as any man I ever knew; but the ecstasies of form and
color, wine, Eros, music, perfume, all the luxuries of surrounding
which wealth could purchase or high-breeding appreciate, were as
nothing to him in comparison with the memory of that time on which his
family threw away their sympathy when they called it his "month of
_suffering."_
Accordingly, without much more instinct of concealment than if it were
an occasional tendency to some slight convivial excess, he had resort
to M'Munn, in ounce doses, whenever the world went wrong with him. If
he had a headache or a toothache; if the weather depressed him; if he
had a certain "stint" of work to do without the sense of native vigor
to accomplish it; if he was perplexed and wished to clear his head of
passion; if anxieties kept him awake; if irregularities disturbed his
digestion--he had always one refuge certain. No fateful contingency
could pursue him inside M'Munn's enchanted circle. He was a young and
wealthy bachelor, living the life of a refined _bon vivant;_ an
insatiable traveller, surrounded by flatterers, and without a single
friend who loved him enough to warn him of his danger excepting those
who, like himself, were too ignorant to know it. After three years of
dalliance he became an habitual user of opium, and had been one for
eight years when I was first called to him.
By the time that the daily habit fastened itself he had learned of
other opiate preparations than M'Munn's, and finding a certain
insufficiency characterize that tincture as he increased the size of
the dose, had recourse to laudanum, which contains the full native
vigor of the drug unmodified. This nauseated him. He had the same
experience with gum opium, opium pills, and opium powder; so that he
was driven to that form of exhibition which sooner or later naturally
strikes almost every opium-eater as the most portable, energetic, and
instantaneous--morphia or one of its salts. My friend usually kept the
simple alkaloid in a paper, and dissolved it as he needed it in clear
water, sometimes substituting an equivalent of "_Magendie's
Solution_," which contains sixteen grains of the salt diffused
through an ounce of water by the addition of a few drops of sulphuric
acid. When I first saw him he had reached a daily dose of twelve
grains of sulphate of morphia, and on occasions of high excitement had
increased his dose without exaggerating the sensible effect to nearly
twenty. The twelve which formed his habitual _per diem_ were
divided into two equal doses, one taken immediately after rising, the
other just about sundown.
As yet he had not begun to feel the worst physical effects which
sooner or later visit the opium-eater. His digestion seemed unimpaired
so long as he took his morphia regularly; he was sallow and somewhat
haggard, but thus far no distressing biliary symptoms had manifested
themselves; his sleep was always dreamy, and he woke at short
intervals during the night, but invariably slept again at once, and
had so adjusted himself to the habit as to show no signs of suffering
from wakefulness; his hand was steady; his muscular system easily
exhausted, but by no means what one would call feeble. As he himself
told me, he had come to the conclusion to emancipate himself because
opium eating was a horrible mental bondage. The physical power of the
drug over him he not only realized when attempting its abondonment.
Its spiritual thraldom was his hourly misery. He was connected by
blood and marriage with several of the best families in the
land. Money had not been stinted in his education, and his
capabilities were as great as his advantages. He was one of the
bravest, fairest, most generous natures I ever came in contact with;
was versatile as a Yankee Crichton; had ridden his own horse in a
trotting match and beaten Bill Woodruff; had carried his own little
30-ton schooner from the Chesapeake to the Golden Gate through the
Straits of Magellan; had swum with the Navigators' Islanders, shot
buffalo, hunted chamois, and lunched on mangosteens at Penang. Through
all his wanderings the loftiest sense of what was heroic in human
nature and divine in its purified form, the monitions of a most tender
conscience, and the echoes of that Puritan education which above all
other schemes of training makes human responsibility terrible, had
gone with him like his tissue. He saw the good and great things within
reach of a fulfilled manhood, and of a sudden waked up to feel that
they could on earth never be his. He was naturally very truthful, and,
although the invariable tendency of opium-eaters is to extirpate this
quality, could not flatter himself. Other minds around him responded
to a sudden call as his own did not. Every day the need of energy took
him more by surprise.
The image-graving and project-building characteristic of opium, which
comes on with a sense of genial radiation from the epigastrium about a
quarter of an hour after the dose, had not yet so entirely disappeared
from its effect on him, as it always does at a later stage of the
indulgence. But instead of being an instigation to the delightful
reveries which ensued on his earlier doses, this peculiarity was now
an executioner's knout in the hands of Remorse. He was daily and
nightly haunted by plans and pictures whose feverish unreal beauty he
remembered having seen through a hundred times. Those Fata Morgana
plans, should he again waste on them the effort of construction? The
result had been a chaos of aimless, ineffectual days. Those pictures,
why were they brought again to mock him? Were they not horrible
impossibilities? Were they not, through the paralysis of his executive
faculties, mere startling likenesses of Disappointment? In his opium
dreams he had seen his own ships on the sea; commerce bustling in his
warehouse; money overflowing in his bank; babies crowing on his knee;
a wife nestling at his breast; a basso voice of tremendous natural
power and depth scientifically cultivated to its utmost power of
pleasing artists or friends; a country estate on the Hudson, or at
Newport, with emerald lawns sloping down to the amber river or the
leek-green sea; the political and social influence of a great
landholder. How pleasurably he had once perceived all these possible
joys and powers! How undeludedly he now saw their impossible
execution!
So, coming to me, he told me that his object in trying to leave off
opium was to escape from these horrible ghosts of a life's unfulfilled
promise. Only when he tried to abandon opium did he realize the
physical hold the drug had on him. Its spiritual thraldom was his
hourly misery.
For three months I tried to treat him in his own house, here in the
city. A practitioner of any experience need not be told with what
success. I could reduce him to a dose of half a grain of sulphate of
morphia a day, keep him there one week, and making a morning call at
the expiration of that time discover that some nocturnal nervous
paroxysm had necessitated either a return to five grains or a use of
brandy (which, though no drinker, he tried to substitute) sufficient
to demand a much larger dose of opium in its reaction. He had lost
most of his near connections, and not for one hour could any hired
attendant have withstood his appeal, or that marvellous ingenuity by
which, without appeal, the opium-eater obtains the drug which, to him,
is like oxygen to the normal man.
This ingenuity manifests itself in subterfuges of a complicated
construction and artistic plausibility which might have puzzled
Richelieu; but it is really nothing to wonder at when we recollect the
law of nature by which any extreme agony, so long as it continues
remediable, sharpens and concentrates all a man's faculties upon the
one single object of procuring the remedy. If my house is on fire, I
run to the hydrant by a mere automatic operation of my nerves. If my
leg is caught in the bight of a paying-out hawser, my whole brain
focuses at once on that single thought, "_an axe."_ If I am
enduring the agony which opium alone can cause and cure, every faculty
of my mind is called to the aid of the tortured body which wants
it. When a man has used opium for a long time the condition of brain
supervening on his deprivation of the drug for a period of twenty-four
hours is such as very frequently to render him suicidal. Cottle tells
us how Coleridge one day took a walk along Bristol wharves, and sent
his attendent down the pier to inquire the name of a vessel, while he
slipped into a druggist's on the quay and bought a quart of laudanum;
but in no fibre of his nature could Cottle conceive the awful sense of
a force despotizing it over his will, a degradation descending on his
manhood, which Coleridge felt as he concentrated on that one single
cry of his animal nature and the laudanum which it spoke for, all the
faculties of construction and insight which had created the "Ancient
Mariner" and the "Aids to Reflection."
Likewise I suppose there are very few people who could patiently
regard the fact that one of the very purest and bravest souls I ever
knew had become so demoralized by the perseverance of disease and
suffering as to deal like a lawyer with his best friends, and shuffle
to the very edge of falsehood, when his nature clamored for opium. I
was particular to tell him whenever I detected any evasion (an
occasion on which his shame and remorse were terrible to witness) that
_I,_ personally, had none the less respect for him. I knew he was
dominated, and in no sense more responsible for breaking his
resolution than he would have been had he vowed to hold his finger in
the gas-blaze until it burned off. In this latter case the mere
translation of chemical decomposition into pain, and round the
automatic nerve-arc into involuntary motion, would have drawn his
finger out of the blaze, as it did in the cases of Mutius Scaevola and
Cranmer, if they ever attempted the feat credited them by tradition.
In his case the abandonment of opium brought on an agony which took
his actions entirely out of voluntary control, eclipsing the higher
ideals and heroisms of his imagination at once, and reducing him to
that automatic condition in which the nervous system issues and
enforces only those edicts which are counselled by pure animal
self-preservation. Whatever may have been the patient's responsibility
in _beginning_ the use of narcotics or stimulants (and I usually
find, in the case of opium-eaters, that its degree has been very small
indeed, therapeutic use often fixing the habit forever before a
patient has convalesced far enough even to know what he is taking)
habituation invariably tends to reduce the man to the _automatic_
plane, in which the will returns wholly to the tutelage of sensation
and emotion, as it was in infancy; while all the Intellectual, save
_Memory,_ and the most noble and imperishable among the Moral
faculties may survive this disorganization for years, standing erect
above the remainder of a personality defrauded of its completion to
show what a great and beautiful house might have been built on such
strong and shapely pillars. Inebriates have been repeatedly known to
risk imminent death if they could not reach their liquor in any other
way. The grasp with which liquor holds a man when it turns on him,
even after he has abused it for a lifetime, compared with the
ascendency possessed by opium over the unfortunate habituated to it
for but a single year, is as the clutch of an angry woman to the
embrace of Victor Hugo's _Pieuvre._ A patient whom, after
habitual use of opium for ten years, I met when he had spent eight
years more in reducing his daily dose to half a grain of morphia, with
a view to its eventual complete abandonment, once spoke to me in these
words:
"God seems to help a man in getting out of every difficulty but
opium. There you have to _claw_ your way out over red-hot coals
on your hands and knees, and drag yourself by main strength through
the burning dungeon-bars."
This statement does not exaggerate the feeling of many another
opium-eater whom I have known.
Now, _such_ a man is a proper subject, not for _reproof_,
but for _medical treatment_. The problem of his case need
embarrass nobody. It is as purely physical as one of small-pox. When
this truth is as widely understood among the laity as it is known by
physicians, some progress may be made in staying the frightful ravages
of opium among the present generation. Now, indeed, it is a difficult
thing to prevent relatives from exacerbating the disorder and the pain
of a patient, who, from their uninformed stand-point, seems as sane
and responsible as themselves, by reproaches at which they would
shudder, as at any other cruelty, could they be brought to realize
that their friend is suffering under a disease of the very machinery
of volition; and no more to be judged harshly for his acts than a
wound for suppurating or the bowels for continuing the peristaltic
motion.
Finding--as in common with all physicians I have found so many times
before--that no control of the case could be obtained while the
patient stayed at home, and deeply renewing my often-experienced
regret that the science and Christian charity of this country have
perfected no scheme by which either inebriates or opium-eaters may be
properly treated in a special institution of their own, I was at
length reluctantly compelled to send my friend to an ordinary
water-cure at some distance from town.
The cause of my reluctance was not the prospect of a too liberal use
of water, for by arrangement with the heads of the establishment I was
able to control that as I chose; moreover, an employment of the
hot-bath in what would ordinarily be excess is absolutely necessary as
a sedative throughout the first week of the struggle. I have had
several patients whom during this period I plunged into water at 110°
Fahrenheit as often as fifteen times in a single day--each bath
lasting as long as the patient experienced relief. In some cases this
Elysium coming after the rack has been the only period for a month in
which the sufferer had any thing resembling a doze. My reluctance
arose from the necessity of sending a patient in such an advanced
stage of the opium disease so far away from me that I must rely on
reports written by people without my eyes, for keeping personally
_au courant_ with the case; that I must consult and prescribe by
letter, subject to the execution of my plans by men, who, though
excellent and careful, were ignorant of my theories of treatment, and
had never made this particular disease a specialty. I accordingly sent
Mr. A. away to the water-cure, all friendless and alone to fight the
final battle of his life against tougher odds than he had ever before
encountered. At no time in my life have I realized with greater
bitterness the helplessness of a practitioner who has no institution
of his own to take such cases to than when I shook his poor, dry,
sallow hand and bade him good-bye at the station.
As I said in the beginning, I am just home from seeing the
result. Mr. A. has fared as special cases always do in places where
there is no special provision for them. To speak plainly, he had been
badly neglected; and that, undoubtedly, without the slightest
intention on the part of the heads of the house to do other than their
duty. Six weeks ago I heard from the first physician that my friend
was entirely free from opium, and, though still suffering, was
steadily on the mend. I had no further news from him till I was called
to his bedside by a note which said he feared he was dying, pencilled
in a hand as tremulously illegible as the confession of Guy Fawkes. I
was with him by the earliest train I could take, after arranging with
a neighbor for my practice, and found him in a condition which led him
to say, as I myself said at the commencement of this article; "Would
to God that every young person could stand for a single hour by this
bedside before Life's Responsibilities have become the sentinels and
Habit the jailer of the Will!"
I had not been intelligently informed respecting the progress of his
case. He had been better at no time when I was told he was so, though
his freedom from opium had been of even longer duration than I was
advised. _For ninety days he had been without opium in any
form_. The scope of so un-technical an article leaves no room to
detail what had been done for him as alleviation. His prostration had
been so great that he could not correspond with me himself until the
moment of his absolute extremity; and only after repeated entreaties
to telegraph to myself and his family had been refused on the ground
that his condition was not critical, he managed to get off the poor
scrawl which brought me to his side.
For the ninety days he had been going without opium he had known
nothing like proper sleep. I desire to be understood with mathematical
literalness. There had been periods when he had been _semi-conscious;_
when the outline of things in his room grew vaguer and for five
minutes he had a dull sensation of not knowing where he was. This
temporary numbness was the only state which in all that time simulated
sleep. From the hour he first refused his craving, and went to the
battle-field of bed, he had endured such agony as I believe no man but
the opium-eater has ever known. I am led to believe that the records
of fatal lesion, mechanical childbirth, cancerous affection, the stake
itself, contain no greater torture than a confirmed opium-eater
experiences in getting free. Popularly this suffering is supposed to
be purely intellectual--but nothing can be wider of the truth.
Its intellectual part is bad enough, but the physical symptoms are
appalling beyond representation. The look on the face of the opium
sufferer is indeed one of such keen mental anguish that outsiders may
well be excused for supposing that is all. I shall never forget till
my dying-day that awful Chinese face which actually made me rein my
horse at the door of the opium _hong_ where it appeared, after a
night's debauch, at six o'clock one morning when I was riding in the
outskirts of a Pacific city. It spoke of such a nameless horror in its
owner's soul that I made the sign for a pipe and proposed, in
"_pigeon English_" to furnish the necessary coin. The Chinaman
sank down on the steps of the _hong_, like a man hearing medicine
proposed to him when he was gangrened from head to foot, and made a
gesture, palms downward, toward the ground, as one who said, "It has
done its last for me--I am paying the matured bills of penalty." The
man had exhausted all that opium could give him; and now, flattery
past, the strong one kept his goods in peace. When the most powerful
alleviative known to medical science has bestowed the last Judas kiss
which is necessary to emasculate its victim, and, sure of the prey,
substitutes stabbing for blandishment, what alleviative, stronger than
the strongest, shall soothe such doom? I may give chloroform. I always
do in the _dénouement_ of bad cases--ether--nitrous oxyd. In
employing the first two agents I secure rest, but I induce death nine
cases out of ten. Nothing is better known to medical men than the
intolerance of the system to chloroform or ether after opium. Nitrous
oxyd I am still experimenting with, but its simple undiffused form is
too powerful an agent to use with a patient who for many days must be
hourly treated for persevering pain. So the opium-eater is left as
entirely without anæsthetic as the usual practice leaves him without
therapeutic means. Both here and abroad opium-eaters have discovered
the fact that, in an inveterate case, where opium fails to act on the
brain through the exhausted tissues of the stomach, bichlorid of
mercury in combination with the dose behaves like a _mordant_ in
the presence of a dye, and, so to speak, _precipitates_ opium
upon the calloused surfaces of the mucous and nervous layers. This
expedient soon exhausts itself in a death from colliquative diarrhea,
produced partly by the final decompositions of tissue which the
poisonously antiseptic property of opium has all along improperly
stored away; partly by the definite corrosions of the new addition to
the dose. But in no case is there any relief to a desperate case of
opium-eating save death.
Remembering that Chinaman's face, I can not wonder at the popular
notion regarding the abandonment of opium. Men say it is a mental
pain; because spiritual woe is the expression of the sufferer's
countenance. And so it is, but this woe is underlain by the keenest
brute suffering. Let me sketch the opium-eater's experience on the
rugged road upward.
Let us suppose him a resolute man, who means to be free, and with that
intent has reduced to a hundred drops the daily dose which for several
years had amounted to an ounce of laudanum. I am not supposing an
extreme case. An ounce of laudanum is a small _per diem_ for any man
who has taken his regular rations of the drug for a twelvemonth. In
the majority of cases I have found an old _habitué's_ daily portion to
exceed three, or the equivalent of that dose in crude opium or
morphia; making seventy-two grains of the gum or twelve of its most
essential alkaloid. In one most interesting case I found a man who
having begun on the first of January with one half a grain of sulphate
of morphia for disease, at the end of March was, to all appearance, as
hopeless an opium-eater as ever lived, taking thirty-two grains of the
salt per day in the form of _Magendie's Solution_. This, however, was
an unusual case. According to my experience the average opium-eater
reaches twelve grains of morphia in ten years, and may live after that
to treble the amount: the worst case I ever knew attaining a dose of
ninety grains, or one and a half of the drachm vials ordinarily
sold. I am happy, in passing, to add that for more than two years both
the extreme cases just mentioned have been entirely cured.
If the opium-eater has been in the habit of dividing his daily dose he
begins to feel some uneasiness within an hour after his first
deprivation, but it amounts to nothing more than an indefinite
restlessness. In any case his first well-marked opium torments occur
early after he has been without the drug for twenty-four hours.
At the expiration of that time he begins to feel a peculiar
_corded_ and _tympanic_ tightness about the epigastrium. A
feverish condition of the brain, which sometimes amounts to absolute
_phantasia_, now ensues, marked off into periods of increasing
excitement by a heavy sleep, which, after each interval, grows fuller
of tremendous dreams, and breaks up with a more intensely irritable
waking. I have held a man's hand while he lay dreaming about the
thirty-sixth hour of his struggle. His eyes were closed for less than
a minute by the watch, but he awoke in a horrible agony of fear from
what seemed to have been a year-long siege of some colossal and
demoniac Vicksburg.
After the opium-eater has been for forty-eight hours without his
solace this heavy sleep entirely disappears. While it stays it never
lasts over half an hour at a time, and is so broken by the crash of
stupendous visions as not to amount to proper slumber. During its
period of continuance the opium-eater woos its approaches with an
agony which shows his instinct of the coming weeks of sleeplessness.
It never _rests_ him in any valid sense. It is a congestive
decomposition rather than any normal reconstruction of the brain. He
wakes out of it each time with a heart more palpitating; in a
perspiration more profuse; with a greater uncertainty of sense and
will; with a more confused memory; in an intenser agony of body and
horror of hopelessness. Every nerve in the entire frame now suddenly
awakes with such a spasm of revivification that no parallel agony to
that of the opium-eater at this stage can be adduced, unless it be
that of the drowned person resuscitated by artificial means. Nor does
this parallel fully represent the suffering, for the man resuscitated
from drowning re-oxydizes all _his_ surplus carbon in a few minutes of
intense torture, while the anguish which burns away that carbon and
other matter, properly effete, stored away in the tissues by opium,
must last for hours, days, and weeks. Who is sufficient for this long,
_long_ pull?
From the hour this pain begins to manifest itself it continues (in any
average case of a year's previous habituation to the drug) for at
least a week without one second's lull or exhaustion. A man may catch
himself dozing between spasms of tic-douloureux or toothache; he never
doubts whether he is awake one instant in the first week after
dropping his opium. One patient whom I found years ago at a water-cure
followed the watchman all night on crutches through his tour of
inspection around the establishment. Other people, after walking a
long time, shift from chair to chair in their rooms, talking to any
body who may happen to be present in a low-voiced suicidal manner,
which inexperience finds absolutely blood-freezing. Later such rock to
and fro, moaning with agony, for hours at a time, but saying
nothing. Still others go to their beds at once, and lie writhing there
until the struggle is entirely decided. I have learned that this last
class is generally the most hopeful.
The period during which this pain is to continue depends upon two
elements. 1st. How long has the patient habitually taken opium?
2d. How much constitutional strength remains to throw it off?
"How much has he taken in the aggregate?" is practically not an
equivalent of the first question. I have found an absolutely incurable
opium-eater who had never used more than ten grains of morphia _per
diem;_ but he had been taking it habitually for a dozen years. In
another case the patient had for six months repeated before each meal
the ten-grain dose which served the other all day; but he was a man
whose pluck under pain equalled that of a woman's, and after a
fortnight's anguish of such horror that one could scarcely witness it
without being moved to tears, came out into perfect freedom. The
former patient, although he had never in any one day experienced such
powerful effects from opium as the latter, had used the drug so long
that every part of his system had reconstructed itself to meet the
abnormal conditions, and must go through a second process of
reconstruction, without any anodyne to mask the pain resulting from
its decomposition, before it could again tolerate existence of the
normal kind. If opium were not an anodyne the terrible structural
changes which it works would cause no surprise; it would be _felt_
eating out its victim's life like so much nitric acid. During the
early part of the opium-eater's career these structural changes go on
with a rapidity which partly accounts for the vast disengagements of
nervous force, the exhilaration, the endurance of effort, which
characterize this stage, later to be substituted by utter nervous
apathy. By the time the substitution occurs something has taken place
throughout the physical structure which may be rudely likened to the
final equilibrium of a neutral salt after the effervescence between an
acid and an alkali. So to speak, the tissues have now combined with
their full equivalent of all the poisonous alkaloids in opium. Further
use of it produces no new disengagements of nervous force; the victim
may double, quadruple his dose, but he might as well expect further
ebullition by adding more aqua-fortis to a satisfied nitrate as to
develop with opium exhilarating currents in a tissue whose combination
with that drug have already reached their chemical limit. [Footnote: I
say "chemical" because so much it is possible to know experimentally;
and the very interesting examination of such higher forces as
constantly seem to intrude in any nervous disturbance would here
involve the discussion of a theoretical "vital principle"--something
apart from and between the soul and physical activities--which
scientific men are universally abandoning.]
The opium-eater now only continues his habit to preserve the terrible
static condition to which it has reduced him, and to prevent that yet
more terrible dynamic condition into which he comes with every
disturbance of equilibrium; a condition of energetic and agonizing
dissolutions which must last until every fibre of wrongly-changed
tissue is burned up and healthily replaced. Though I have called the
early reactions of opium rapid, they are necessarily much less so than
those produced by a simple chemical agent. No drug approaches it in
the possession of _cumulative_ characteristics; its dependence on
the time element must therefore be always carefully considered in
treating a case. This fact leads us to understand the other element in
the question, how long the torments of the opium-fighter must
continue. Having ascertained the chronology of his case, we must say,
"Given this period of subjection, has the patient enough
constitutional vigor left to endure the period of reconstruction which
must correspond to it?" [Footnote: Not correspond day by day. At that
rate a reforming opium-eater (I use the principle in the
_physical_ sense, for very few opium-eaters are more to blame
than any other sick persons) must pay a "shent per shent" which no
constitution could survive. The correspondence is simply
proportional.]
I am naturally sanguine, and began my study of opium-eaters with the
belief that none of them were hopeless. Experience has taught me that
there is a point beyond which any constitution--especially one so
abnormally sensitive as the opium-eater's--can not endure keen
physical suffering without death from spinal exhaustion. I once heard
the eminent Dr. Stevens say that he made it a rule never to attempt a
surgical operation if it must consume more than an hour. Similarly, I
have come to the conclusion never to amputate a man from his
opium-self if the agony must last longer than three months.
Uneasiness, corresponding to the irritations of dressing a stump--may
continue a year longer; a few victims of the habit outlive a certain
opium-prurience, which has also its analogue in the occasional
titillation of a healed wound--these are comparatively tolerable; but,
if we expect to save a patient's life, we must not protract an agony
which so absolutely interferes with normal sleep as that of the
opium-eater's for longer than three months in the case of any
constitution I have thus far encountered.
Usually as early as the third day after its abandonment (unless the
constituion has become so impaired by long habituation that there will
probably be no vital reaction) opium begins to show its dissolutions
from the tissue by a profuse and increasingly acrid bilious diarrhea,
which must not be checked if diagnosis has revealed sufficient
constitutional vigor to justify any attempt at abandonment of the
drug. Hemorrhoids may result; they must be topically treated; mild
astringents may be used when the tendency seems getting out of
eventual control; bland foods must be given as often as the usually
fastidious appetite will tolerate them; the only tonic must be
beef-tea--diffusible stimulus invariably increasing the agony, whether
in the form of ale, wine, or spirits. Short of threatened collapse,
the bowels must not be retarded. There is nothing in the faintest
degree resembling a substitute for opium, but from time to time
various alleviatives, which can not be discussed in an untechnical
article, may be administered with benefit. The spontaneous termination
of the diarrhea will indicate that the effete matters we must remove
have been mainly eliminated, and that we may shortly look for a marked
mitigation of the pain, followed by conditions of great debility but
increasingly favorable to the process of reconstruction. That
process, yet more than the alleviate, demands a book rather than an
article.
I have intentionally deferred any description of the agony of the
opium struggle, as a _sensation_, until I returned from depicting
general symptoms, to relate the particular case which is my text. The
sufferings of the patient, from whom I have just returned, are so
comprehensive as almost to be exhaustively typical.
When simple nervous excitement had for two days alternated with the
already mentioned intervals of delirious slumber, a dull, aching
sensation began manifesting itself between his shoulders and in the
region of the loins. Appetite for food had been failing since the
first denial of that for opium. The most intense gastric irritability
now appeared in the form of an aggravation of the tympanic tightness,
corrosive acid ructations, heart-burn, water-brash, and a peculiar
sensation, as painful as it is indescribable, of _self-consciousness_
in the whole upper part of the digestive canal. The best idea of this
last symptom may be found by supposing all the nerves of involuntary
motion which supply that tract with vitality, suddenly to be gifted
with the exquisite sensitiveness to their own processes which is
produced by its correlative object in some organ of special sense--the
whole organism assimilating itself to a retina or a finger-tip. Sleep
now disappeared. This initiated an entire month during which the
patient had not one moment of even partial unconciousness.
In less than a week from the beginning the symptoms indicated a most
obstinate chronic gastritis. There was a perpetual sense of corrosion
at the pit of the stomach very like that which characterizes the fatal
operation of arsenic. There was less action of the liver than usually
indicates a salvable case, and no irritation of the lowest
intestines. _Pari passu_ with the gastritic suffering, the neuralgic
pain spread down the extremities from an apparent centre between the
kidneys, through the trunk, from another line near the left margin of
the liver, and through the whole medullary substance of the brain
itself. Although I was so unfortunate as not to be beside him during
this stage, I can still infallibly draw on my whole experience for
information regarding the intensity of this pain. _Tic-douloureux_
most nearly resembles it in character. Like that agonizing affection,
it has periods of exacerbation; unlike it, it has no intervals of
continuous repose. Like _tic-douloureux_, its sensation is a curiously
fluctuating one, as if pain had been _fluidized_ and poured in
trickling streams through the tubules of nerve tissue which are
affected by it; but, unlike that, it affects every tubule in the human
body--not a single diseased locality. Charles Reade chaffs the doctors
very wittily in "Hard Cash" on their _penchant_ for the word
"_hyperaesthesia,"_ but nothing else exactly defines that exaggeration
of nervous sensibility which I have invariably seen in opium-eaters.
Some of them were hurt by an abrupt slight touch, and cried out at the
jar of a heavy footstep like a patient with acute rheumatism. Some
developed sensitiveness with the progress of expurgating the poison,
until their very hair and nails felt sore, and the whole surface of
the skin suffered from cold air or water like the lips of a
wound. After all, utterly unable to convey an idea of the _kind_ of
suffering, I must content myself by repeating, of its extent, that no
prolonged pain of any kind known to science can equal it. The totality
of the experience is only conceivable by adding this physical torture
to a mental anguish which even the Oriental pencil of De Quincey has
but feebly painted; an anguish which slays the will, yet leaves the
soul conscious of its murder; which utterly blots out hope, and either
paralyzes the reasoning faculties which might suggest encouragements,
or deadens the emotional nature to them as thoroughly as if they were
not perceived; an anguish, which sometimes includes just, but always a
vast amount of _unjust_ self-reproach, winch brings every failure and
inconsistency, every misfortune or sin of a man's life as clearly
before his face as on the day he was first mortified or degraded by
it--before his face, not in one terrible dream, which is once for all
over with sunrise, but as haunting ghosts, made out by the feverish
eyes of the soul down to the minutest detail of ghastliness, and never
leaving the side of the rack on which he lies for a moment of dark or
day-light, till sleep, at the end of a month, first drops out of
heaven on his agony.
A third element in the suffering must briefly be mentioned. It
results directly from the others. It is that exhaustion of nervous
power which invariably ensues on protracted pain of mind or body. It
proceeds beyond reaction to collapse in a hopeless case; it stops this
side of that in a salvable one.
On reaching his room I found my friend bolstered upright in bed, with
a small two-legged crutch at hand to prop his head on when he became
weary of the perpendicular position. This had been his attitude for
fifty days. Whether from its impeding his circulation, the
distribution of his nervous currents, or both, the prostrate posture
invariably brought on cessation of the heart--and the sense of
intolerable strangling. His note told me he was dying of heart
disease, but, as I expected, I found that malady merely simulated by
nervous symptoms, and the trouble purely functional. His food was
arrow-root or sago, and beef-tea. Of the vegetable preparation he took
perhaps half a dozen table-spoonfuls daily; of the animal variable
quantities, averaging half a pint per diem. This, though small, was
far from the minimum of nutriment upon which life has been supported
through the most critical periods. Indeed, I have known three patients
tided over stages of disease otherwise desperately typhoid by
_beef-tea baths_, in which the proportion of _ozmazone_ was
just perceptible, and the sole absorbing agency was a faint activity
left in the pores of the skin. But these patients had suffered no
absolute disorganization. The practitioner had to encounter a swift
specific poison, not to make over tissues abnormally misconstructed by
its long insidious action. On examination I discovered facts which I
had often feared, but never before absolutely recognized, in my
friend's case. The stomach itself, in its most irreproducible tissue,
had undergone a partial but permanent disorganization. The substance
of the organ itself had been altered in a way for which science knows
no remedy.
Hereafter, then, it can only be rechanged by that ultimate
decomposition which men call death. Over the opium-eater's coffin at
least, thank God! a wife and a sister can stop weeping and say, "He's
free."
I called to my friend's bedside a consultation of three physicians and
the most nearly related survivor of his family. I laid the case
before them; assisted them to a full _prognosis_; and invited
their views. I spent two nights with my friend. I have said that
during the first month of trial he had not a moment of even partial
unconsciousness. Since that time there had been perhaps ten occasions
a day, when for a period from one minute in length to five, his poor,
pain-wrinkled forehead sank on his crutch, his eyes fell shut, and to
outsiders he seemed asleep. But that which appeared sleep was
internally to him only one stupendous succession of horrors which
confusedly succeeded each other for apparent eternities of being, and
ended with some nameless catastrophe of woe or wickedness, in a waking
more fearful than the state volcanically ruptured by it. During the
nights I sat by him these occasional relaxations, as I learned,
reached their maximum length, my familiar presence acting as a
sedative, but from each of them he woke bathed in perspiration from
sole to crown; shivering under alternate flushes of chill and fever;
mentally confused to a degree which for half an hour rendered every
object in the room unnatural and terrible to him; with a nervous jerk,
which threw him quite out of bed, although in his waking state two men
were requisite to move him; and with a cry of agony as loud as any
under amputation.
The result of our consultation was a unanimous agreement not to press
the case further. Physicians have no business to consider the
speculative question, whether death without opium is preferable to
life with it. They are called to keep people on the earth. We were
convinced that to deprive the patient longer of opium would be to kill
him. This we had no right to do without his consent. He did not
consent, and I gave him five grains of morphia [Footnote: To the
younger men of the profession rather than to the public generally I
need here to say that this dose is not as excessive as it would
naturally appear to be in the case of a man who had used no form of
opium for ninety days. When you have to resume the drug, go
cautiously. But you will generally find the amount of it required to
produce the sedative effects in any case which returns to opium, after
abandonment of a long habitation, _startlingly large_, and
_slow in its effects_.] between 8 and 12 o'clock on the morning
of the day I had to return here. He was obliged to eat a few mouthfuls
of sago before the alkaloid could act upon his nervous system. I need
only point out the significance of this indication. The shallower-lying
nervous fibres of the stomach had become definitely paralyzed, and
such _digestion_ as could be perfected under these circumstances
was the only method of getting the stimulant in contact with any
excitable nerve-substance. In other words, mere absorbent and
assimulative tissue was all of him which for the purpose of receiving
opium partially survived disorganization of the superficial nerves. Of
that surviving tissue, one mucous patch was irredeemably gone. (This
particular fact was the one which cessation from opium more distinctly
unmasked.) At noon he had become tolerably comfortable; before I left
(7 P.M.) he had enjoyed a single half-hour of something like normal
slumber.
He will have to take opium all his life. Further struggle is
suicide. Death will probably occur at any rate not from an attack of
what we usually consider disease, but from the disintegrating effects
on tissue of the habit itself. So, whatever he may do, his organs
march to death. He will have to continue the habit which kills him
only because abandoning it kills him sooner; for self-murder has
dropped out of the purview of the moral faculties and become a mere
animal question of time. The only way left him to preserve his
intellectual faculties intact is to keep his future daily dose at the
tolerable minimum. Henceforth all his dreams of entire liberty must be
relegated to the world to come. He may be valuable as a monitor, but
in the executive uses of this mighty modern world henceforth he can
never share. Could the immortal soul find itself in a more
inextricable, a more _grisly_ complication?
In publishing his case I am not violating that Hippocratic vow which
protects the relations of patient and adviser; for, as I dropped my
friend's wasted hand and stepped to the threshold, he repeated a
request he had often made to me, saying:
"It is almost like Dives asking for a messenger to his brethren; but
tell them, tell _all young men,_ what it is, 'that they come not
into this torment.'"
Already perhaps--by the mere statement of the case--I might be
considered to have fulfilled my promise. But since monition often
consists as much in enlightenment as intimidation, let me be pardoned
for briefly presenting a few considerations regarding the action of
opium upon the human system while living, and the peculiar methods by
which the drug encompasses its death.
WHAT IS OPIUM?
It is the most complicated drug in the Pharmacopoeia. Though
apparently a simple gummy paste, it possesses a constitution which
analysis reveals to contain no less than 25 elements, each one of them
a compound by itself, and many of them among the most complex
compounds known to modern chemistry. Let me concisely mention these by
classes.
First, at least three earthy salts-the sulphates of lime, alumina, and
potassa. Second, two organic and one simpler acid--acetic (absolute
vinegar), meconic (one of the most powerful irritants which can be
applied to the intestines through the bile), and sulphuric. All these
exist uncombined in the gum, and free to work their will on the mucous
tissues.
A green extractive matter, which comes in all vegetal bodies developed
under sunlight, next deserves a place by itself, because it is one of
the few organic bodies of which no rational analysis has ever been
pretended. Though we can not state the constitution of this
chlorophyl, we know that, except by turning acid in the stomach, it
remains inert on the human system, as one might imagine would happen
if he swallowed a bunch of green grass. _Lignin_, with which it
is always associated, is mere woody fibre, and has no direct physical
action. In no instance has any stomach been found to _digest_ it
save an insect's--some naturalists thinking that certain beetles make
their horny wing-cases of that. I believe one man did think he had
discovered a solvent for it in the gastric juice of the beaver, but
that view is not widely entertained. So far as it exists in opium it
can only act as a foreign substance and a mechanical irritant to the
human bowels. Next come two inert, indigestible, and very similar
gummy bodies, _mucilagin and bassorine_. Sugar, a powerfully
active volatile principle, and a fixed oil (probably allied to
turpentine) are the only other invariable constituents of opium
belonging to the great organic group of the hydro-carbons.
I now come to a group by far the most important of all. Almost
without exception the vegetable poisons belong to what are called the
"nitrogenous alkaloids." Strychnia, brucia, ignatia, calabarin,
woovarin, atropin, digitalin, and many others, including all whose
effect is most tremendous upon the human system, are in this
group. Not without insight did the early discoverers call nitrogen
_azote_, "the foe to life." It so habitually exists in the things
our body finds most deadly that the tests for it are always the first
which occur to a chemist in the presence of any new organic poison.
The nitrogenous alkaloids owe the first part of their name to the fact
of containing this element; the second part to that of their usually
making neutral salts with acids, like an alkaline base. The general
reader may sometimes have asked himself why these alkaloids are
diversely written--as, e.g., sometimes "_morphia,_" and sometimes
"_morphine,_" The chemists who regard them as alkalies write them
in the one way, those who consider them neutrals, in the other. Of
these nitrogenous alkaloids, even the nuts of the tree, which
furnishes the most powerful, _swift_ poison of the world,
contains but three--the above-named strychnia, brucia, and
ignatia--principles shared in common with its pathological congener,
the St. Ignatius bean. Opium may be found to contain _twelve_ of
them; but as one of these (cotarnin) may be a product of distillation,
and the other (pseudo-morphia) seems only an occasional constituent, I
treat them as ten in number--rationally to be arranged under three
heads.
First, those whose action is merely acrid--so far as known expending
themselves upon the mucous coats. (_Pseudo-morphia_ when it
occurs belongs to these.) So do _porphyroxin; narcein_; probably
_papaverin_ also; while _meconin_, whose acrid properties in
contact with animal tissue are similar to that of meconic acid, forms
the last of the group.
The second head comprises but a single alkaloid, variously called
paramorphta or thebain. (It may interest amateur chemists to know that
its difference from strycchnia consists only in having two less
equivalents of hydrogen and six of carbon--especially when they know
how closely its physical effects follow its atomic constitution.) A
dose of one grain has produced tetanic spasms. Its chief action
appears to be upon the spinal nerves, and there is reason to suppose
it a poison of the same kind as nux vomica without the concentration
of that agent. How singular it seems to find a poison of this totally
distinct class--bad enough to set up the reputation of any one drug by
itself--in company with the remaining principles whose effect we
usually associate with opium and see clearest in the ruin of its
victim!
The remainder, five in number, are the opium alkaloids, which act
generally upon the whole system, but particularly, in their immediate
phenomena, upon the brain. I mention them in the ascending order of
their nervine power; narcotin; codein; opianin; metamorphia, and
morphia.
The first of these the poppy shares in common with many other narcotic
plants--tobacco the most conspicuous among the number. In its
anti-periodic effects on the human system it has been found similar to
quinia, and it is an undoubted narcotic poison acting on the nerves of
organic life, though, compared with its associates in the drug,
comparatively innocent.
The remaining four act very much like morphia, differing only in the
size of the dose in which they prove efficient. Most perfectly fresh
constitutions feel a grain of morphia powerfully; metamorphia is
soporific in half-grain doses; [Footnote: American Journal of
Pharmacy, September, 1861.] opianin in its physical effects closely
approximates morphia; codein is about one-fifth as powerful; a new
subject may not get sleep short of six grains; its main action is
expended on the sympathetic system. It does not seem to congest the
brain as morphia does; but its action on the biliary system is
probably little less deadly than that of the more powerful narcotic.
Looking at the marvellous complexity of opium we might be led to the
_apriori_ supposition that its versatility of action on the human
system must be equally marvellous. Miserably for the opium-eater,
fortunately for the young person who may be dissuaded from following
in his footsteps, we are left in no doubt of this matter by the
conclusions of experience. In practical action opium affects as large
an area of nervous surface, attacks it with as much intensity, and
changes it in as many ways as its complexity would lead us to
expect. I have pointed out the existence in opium of a convulsive
poison congeneric with brucia. The other chief active alkaloids, five
in number, are those which specially possess the cumulative
property. Poisons of the strychnia and hydro-cyanic acid classes
(including this just mentioned opium alkaloid, thebain) are swifter
agents; but this perilous opium quintette sings to every sense a
lulling song from which it may not awake for years, but wakes a slave.
Every day that a man uses opium these cumulative alkaloids get a
subtler hold on him. Even a physician addicted to the practice has no
conception how their influence piles up.
At length some terrible dawn rouses him out of a bad sleep into a
worse consciousness. Though the most untechnical man, he must already
know the disorder which has taken place in his moral nature and his
will. For a knowledge of his physical condition he must resort to his
medical man, and what, when the case is ten years old, must a
practitioner tell the patient in any average case?
"Sir, the chances are entirely against you, and the possession of a
powerfully enduring constitution, if you have it, forms a decided
offset in your favor."
He then makes a thorough examination of him by ear, touch,
conversation. If enough constitution responds to the call, he advises
an immediate entrance upon the hard road of abnegation.
If the practitioner finds the case hopeless he must tell the patient
so, in something like these words:
"You have either suffered a disorganization of irreproducible
membranes, or you have deposited so much improper material in your
tissue that your life is not consistent with the protracted pain of
removing it.
"One by one you have paralyzed all the excretory functions of the
body. Opium, aiming at all those functions for their death, first
attacked the kidneys, and with your experimental doses you experienced
a slight access of _dysouria_. As you went on, the same action,
progressively paralytic to organic life, involved the liver.
Flatulence, distress at the epigastrium, irregularity of bowels,
indicated a spasmodic performance of the liver's work which showed it
to be under high nervous excitement. Your mouth became dry through a
cessation of the salivary discharge. Your lachrymal duct was parched,
and your eye grew to have an _arid_ look in addition to the dullness
produced by opiate contraction of the pupil.
"All this time you continued to absorb an agent which directly acts
for what by a paradox may be called fatal conservation of the
tissues. Whether through its complexly combined nitrogen, carbon, or
both, the drug has interposed itself between your very personal
substance and those oxidations by which alone its life can be
maintained. It has slowed the fires of your whole system. It has not
only interposed but in part it has substituted itself; so that along
with much effete matter of the body stored away there always exists a
certain undecomposed quantity of the agent which sustains this morbid
conservation. [Footnote: I frequently use what hydropaths call "a
pack" to relieve opium distress, and with great benefit. After an hour
and a half of perspiration, the patient being taken out of his
swaddlings, I have found in the water which was used to wash out his
sheet enough opium to have intoxicated a fresh subject. This patient
had not used opium for a fortnight.]
"When this combination became established, you began losing your
appetite because no substitution of fresh matter was required by your
body for tissue wrongly conserved. The progressive derangement of
your liver manifested itself in increased sallowness of face and
cornea; the organ was working on an inadequate vital supply because
the organic nervous system was becoming paralyzed; the veins were not
strained of that which is the bowels' proper purgative and the blood's
dire poison. You had sealed up all but a single excretory passage--the
pores of the skin. Perhaps when you had opium first given you you were
told that its intent was the promotion of perspiration but did not
know the _rationale._ The only way in which opium promotes
perspiration is by shutting up all the other excretory processes of
the body, and throwing the entire labor of that function upon the
pores. (When the skin gives out the opium-eater is shut up like an
entirely choked chimney, and often dies in delirium of blood-
poisoning.)
"For a while--the first six years, perhaps--your skin sustained the
work which should have been shared by the other organs--not in natural
sweat, but violent perspiration, which showed the excess of its
action. Then your palms became gradually hornier--your whole body
yellower--at the same time that your muscular system grew tremulous
through progressively failing nervous supply.
"About this time you may have had some temporary gastric disturbance,
accompanied with indescribable distress, loathing at food, and
nausea. This indicated that the mucous lining of the stomach had been
partially removed by the corrosions of the drug, or that nervous power
had suddenly come to a stand-still, which demanded an increase of
stimulus.
"Since that time you have been taking your daily dose only to preserve
the _status in quo_. The condition both of your nervous system
and your stomach indicate that you must always take some anodyne to
avoid torture, and _your_ only anodyne is opium.
"The rest of your life must be spent in keeping comfortable, not in
being happy."
Opium-eaters enjoy a strange immunity from other disease. They are not
liable to be attacked by miasma in malarious countries; epidemics or
contagions where they exist. They almost always survive to die of
their opium itself. And an opium death is usually in one of these two
manners:
The opium-eater either dies in collapse through nervous exhaustion
(with the blood-poisoning and delirium above-mentioned), sometimes
after an overdose, but oftener seeming to occur spontaneously, or in
the midst of physical or mental agony as great and irrelievable as men
suffer in hopeful abandonment of the drug, and with a colliquative
diarrhea, by which--in a continual fiery, acrid discharge--the system
relieves itself during a final fortnight of the effete matters which
have been accumulating for years.
Either of these ends is terrible enough. Let us draw a curtain over
their details.
Opium is a corrosion and paralysis of all the noblest forms of
life. The man who voluntarily addicts himself to it would commit in
cutting his throat a suicide only swifter and less ignoble. The habit
is gaining fearful ground among our professional men, the operatives
in our mills, our weary sewing-wormen, our fagged clerks, our
disappointed wives, our former liquor-drunkards, our very
day-laborers, who a generation ago took gin. All our classes from the
highest to the lowest are yearly increasing their consumption of the
drug. The terrible demands especially in this country made on modern
brains by our feverish competitive life, constitute hourly temptations
to some form of the sweet, deadly sedative. Many a professional man of
my acquaintance who twenty years ago was content with his
_tri-diurnal_ "whisky," ten years ago, drop by drop, began taking
stronger "laudanum cock-tails," until he became what he is now--an
habitual opium-eater. I have tried to show what he will be. If this
article shall deter any from an imitation of his example or excite an
interest in the question--"_What he shall do to be saved?_"--I am
content.
NOTE.--The patient whose sorrowful case suggested this article died
just as the magazine was issued. His unassisted struggle had been too
long protracted after abandonment of the drug was evidently hopeless,
and his resumption of opium came too late to permit of his rallying
from his exhaustion.
OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE.
No. 1 Livingston Place,
Stuyvesant Square,
April 25, 1868.
MY DEAR SIR:--In accordance with your request, I sketch the brief
outline of my plan for the treatment of opium-eaters, premising that
it pretends much less to novelty than to such value as belongs to
generalizations made from large experience by sincere interest and
careful study in the light of science and common sense.
That experience having shown me how impracticable in the large
majority of cases is any cure of a long-established opium habit while
the patient continues his daily avocations and remains at home,
[Footnote: In my article upon opium-eating, entitled, "What Shall They
Do to be Saved?" published in _Harper's Magazine_ for the month
of August, 1867, and hereto prefixed, I have referred to this
impracticability in fuller detail. It arises from the fact that in his
own house a man can not isolate himself from the hourly hearing of
matters for which he feels responsible, yet to which he can give no
adequate attention without his accustomed stimulus; that his best
friends are apt to upbraid him for a weakness which is not crime but
disease, and that the control of him by those whom he has habitually
directed, however well-judged, seems always an harassment.] I shall
simplify my sketch by supposing that one great object of my life is
already attained, and that an institution for the treatment of the
disease is already in successful operation. Starting at this
fictitious _datum_, I shall carry from his arrival under our care
until his discharge a healthy, happy, and useful member of society, a
gentleman whom for convenience we will name Mr. Edgerton.
Our institution is called not an "Asylum," nor a "Retreat," nor by any
of those names which savor of restraint and espionage--not even a
"Home," as spelled with a capital H--but simply by the name of the
spot upon which it is erected--to wit, "Lord's Island."
It is erected on an island because in the more serious cases a certain
degree of watchfulness will always be necessary. On the main-land this
watchfulness must be exercised by attendants with the aid of fences,
bolts, and bars. On an island the patient whose case has gone beyond
self-control will be under the Divine Vigilance, with more or less
miles of deep water as the barrier between him and the poison by which
he is imperilled. For this reason, and because whatever good is
accomplished on it for a class which beyond all other sufferers claim
heavenly mercy will be directly of the Lord himself, our island is
called "Lord's Island." Here our patient will feel none of the irksome
tutelage which in an asylum meets him at every step--thrusting itself
before his eyes beyond any power of repulsion, and challenging him to
efforts for its evasion which are noxious whether they succeed or not;
defeating the purpose of his salvation when they do, irritating him
when they do not, and keeping his mind in a state of perpetual morbid
concentration upon his exceptional condition among mankind in either
case. Here he has all the liberty which is enjoyed by the doctors and
nurses--save that he can not get at the medicine-chest.
Mr. Edgerton arrives at Lord's Island at 2 P.M. of a summer's day,
having crossed by our half-hourly sail-boat, row-boat, or tug, from
the railroad station on the main-land. If he is very much
debilitated, either by his disease or fatigue, he has full opportunity
to rest and refresh himself before a word is spoken to him
professionally. If a friend accompanies him, he is invited to remain
until Mr. Edgerton feels himself thoroughly at home in his new
quarters.
After becoming fully rested, Mr. Edgerton is invited to state his
case. The head physician must be particular to assure him that every
word he utters will be regarded as in the solemnest professional
confidence. Mr. Edgerton is made to feel that no syllable of his
disclosures will ever be repeated, under any circumstances, even to
the most intimate of his friends or the most nearly related of his
family. This conviction upon his part is in the highest degree
essential. Opium makes the best memory treacherous, and, sad as it may
be to confess it, the most truthful nature, in matters relating to the
habit at least, untrustworthy. Often, I am satisfied, the opium-eater,
during periods of protracted effort or great excitement, takes doses
of the drug which he does not recollect an hour afterward, and may,
practically without knowing it, overrun his supposed weekly dose
twenty-five per cent. I often meet persons addicted to the habit who,
I have every reason to believe, honestly think they are using twelve
grains of morphia daily, yet are found on close watching to take
eighteen or twenty. Again, the opium-eater who by nature would scorn a
lie as profoundly as the boy Washington, is sometimes so thoroughly
changed by his habit that the truth seems a matter of the most
trifling consequence to him, and his assertion upon any subject
whatever becomes quite valueless. Occasionally this arises from an
entire _bouleversement_ of the veracious sense--similar to
certain perversions of the insane mind, and then other faculties of
his nature are liable to share in the alteration. If the man was
previously to the highest degree merciful and sympathizing, he may
become stolid to human suffering as any infant who laughs at its
mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of
the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change
goes far to explain the ghastly unfeelingness of many a Turkish and
Chinese despot whose ingeniously cruel tortures we shudder to read of
scarcely more than the placidity with which he sees them inflicted. If
he was originally so sensitive to the boundaries between Meum and Tuum
that the least invasion of another's property hurt him more than any
loss of his own, this delicate sense may become blunted until he
commits larceny as shamelessly as a goat would browse through a
gardener's pickets, or a child of two years old help himself to a
neighbor's sugar-plums. This, too, quite innocently, and with the
excuse of as true a Kleptomania as was ever established in the records
of medical jurisprudence. I knew a man who had denied himself all but
the bare necessaries of life to discharge debts into which another's
fraud had plunged him, and whose sense of honor was so keen that when
afflicted with chronic dyspepsia the morbid conscientiousness which is
not an unusual mental symptom of that malady took the form of hunting
up the owner of every pin he picked up from the floor, nor could he
shake off a sense of criminality till he had found somebody who had
lost one and restored it to him--yet on being prescribed opium for his
complaint, his nature, under its operation, suffered such an entire
inversion that the libraries, and on several occasions even the
pocket-books of his friends were not safe from him, his larcenies
comprising some of the most valuable volumes on the shelf and sums
varying between two and twenty dollars in the porte-monnaie. "The
Book-Hunter" writing of De Quincey, as you will recollect, under the
_sobriquet_ of "Papaverius," describes the perfectly child-like
absence of all proprietary distinctions which prevailed in that
wonderful man's mind during his later years as regarded the books of
his acquaintance, and the innocent way in which he abstracted any
volume which he wanted or tore out and carried away with him the
particular leaves he wished for reference.
In many cases where the moral sense has suffered no such general
_bouleversement_, the tendency which opium superinduces to look
at every thing from the most sanguine point of view--the vague,
dreamy habit of thought and the inability to deal with hard facts or
fixed quantities--make it necessary to take an opium-eater's
assertions upon any subject with a certain degree of allowance--to
translate them, as it were, into the accurate expressions of literal
life; but even where this necessity docs not exist, in cases sometimes
though rarely met with, where opium has been long used without tinging
any of life's common facts with uncertainty, an opium-eater can
scarcely even be relied on for the exact truth concerning his own
habit. He may be trusted without hesitation upon every other subject,
but on this he almost always speaks evasively, and though about any
thing else he would cut his hand off rather than say the thing that is
not, will sometimes tell a downright falsehood. In most cases he has
been led to this course by witnessing the agony or suffering the
reproach with which the knowledge of his habit is received by his
friends. He lies either in mercy to them or because the pangs which
their rebuke inflicts would become still more intolerable if they knew
the extent of his error.
It is therefore always proper that the opium-eater should find in his
physician a confidant who will not violate his secret even to parent
or wife. The closer the relation and the dearer the love, the greater
will be the likelihood that the optum-eater has shrunk from revealing
the full extent of his burden to the friend in question, and the
greater will be the temptation to deceive the doctor unless the
patient be made to feel that his revelation is as sacred as the
secrets of the bridal-chamber.
I solicit from the friend who accompanied Mr. Edgerton the thoroughest
statement which he can give me of the case, _ab extra_. Such a
statement is of great value--for the inroads which the habit has made
upon the system are often visible to an outsider only. Furthermore, a
friend may give me many circumstances connected with the inception of
the case: family predispositions and inherited tendencies; causes
contributing to the formation of the habit, such as domestic or
business misfortune, prior bad habits of other kinds, illnesses
suffered, and a variety of other agencies concerning which the patient
might hesitate or forget to speak for himself. Then I make
Mr. Edgerton the proffer of that inviolable confidence which I have
mentioned, and having won his perfect faith in me, obtain the very
fullest history of his case which can be elicited by searching, but
most kindly and sympathizing cross-examination. The two statements I
collate and enter for my future guidance in a private record.
Let us suppose an average hopeful case.
I find that my patient is about thirty years of age--of the energetic
yet at the same time delicate and sensitive nervous organization which
is peculiarly susceptible to the effects of opium, from which it draws
the vast majority of its victims, and in which it makes its most
relentless havoc; with a front brain considerably beyond the average
in size and development. My patient's general health, apart from the
inevitable disturbances of the drug, has always been fair, and his
constitufion, under the same limitations, is a vigorous one. His
habit, as in nine cases out of every ten, dates from the medical
prescription of opium for the relief of violent pain or the cure of
obstinate illness. He was not aware of the drug then administered to
him, or at any rate of the peril attending its use, and his malady was
so long protracted that opium had established itself as a necessary
condition of comfortable existence before he realized that it
possessed the slightest hold upon him. When the prescription was
discontinued he suffered so much distress that he voluntarily resumed
it, without consulting his physician, or, if he did consult him,
receiving no further warning as to his danger than that "he had better
leave off as soon as practicable." Or else, on leaving off his use of
opium, the symptoms for which it had originally been administered
returned with more or less severity, and under the idea that they
indicated a relapse instead of being one of the characteristic actions
of the drug itself, he resumed the dose. It gradually lost its power;
little by little he was compelled to increase it; and having begun
with 1/3 grain powders of which he took three per diem, he is now
taking 18 grains of morphia per diem at the end of five years from his
first dose.
If I find him tolerably vigorous on his arrival, as will be the case
when he has come to Lord's Island after calm deliberation and the
conviction not that he _must_, but on all accounts _had better_
abandon the habit, I leave him to recover from the fatigues of his
journey and get acquainted with his surroundings before I begin any
treatment of his case. If, however, as sometimes occurs, he reaches us
in desperate plight, having been so far injured by his habit as to
show unequivocal signs of an opium-poisoning which threatens fatal
results; if, as in several cases known to me, he has summoned all his
remaining vitality to get to a place of refuge, being overtaken either
by that terrible _coma_ which often terminates the case of the
opium-eater in the same fashion that persons new to the narcotic are
killed by an overdose, or by that only less terrible opium-delirium
belonging to the same general class as mania potu--then his case
admits of not a moment's delay. Opium-eaters differ so widely--every
new case furnishing some marked idiosyncrasy which may demand an
entirely different management and list of remedies from those required
by the last one--that for any general scheme of treatment a week's
study of the patient will be necessary. During that week our attitude
will be simply tentative and expectant, and at its close the proper
fidelity and vigilance will have authorized us in making out something
like a permanent schedule for the patient's upward march, though even
then we must be prepared, like skillful generals, to meet new
emergencies, take unforeseen steps, even throw overboard old theories,
at any stage of his progress. In no disease is there such infinite
variety as in that of opio-mania, in none must the interrogation of
nature be more humbly deferent and faithfully attentive; in none do
slight differences of temperament, previous habits, and circumstances
necessitate such wide variation in the remedies to be used. Notice, by
way of illustration, the fact that one opium-eater under my care was
powerfully affected and greatly benefited by the prescription of _one
drachm_ of the fluid extract of _cannabis indica_, while another, in
temperament, history, tendencies, and all but a few apparently
trifling particulars almost identical, not only received no benefit
but actually experienced no perceptible effect whatever from the
absolutely colossal dose of _four fluid ounces_. [Footnote: I am
aware how incredible this statement will seem to those who have never
had any extensive experience of the behavior of this remarkably
variable drug, and get their notion of its action from the absurd
directions on the label of every pound vial I have seen sent forth by
our manufacturing pharmaceutists. "Ten to twenty drops at a dose,"
they say, "cautiously increased." Cannabis should always be used with
caution, but ten or even twenty drops must be inert in all but the
rarest cases, and I have given an ounce per diem with beneficial
effect. But four ounces of the best extract (Hance & Griffith's)
producing literally no effect of any kind on an entirely fresh
subject, is a phenomenon that I must have needed eye-witness to
imagine possible.] I may add that in the latter case, _bromide of
potassium_ was administered with the happiest result--in fact as
nearly approaching in its efficiency the character of a succedaneum as
any remedy I ever used to alleviate the tortures of opium, while in
the former no result attended its administration salutary or
otherwise. The vast diversity of operation exhibited in different
patients by the drug _scutellaria_ is still another illustration of
the careful study of idiosyncrasies requisite for a successful
treatment of the opium disease. But when the case comes into our hands
at a desperate period there are many means of instant alleviation
which may anticipate without interfering with future treatment based
on study.
Mr. Edgerton, though by no means a man of ruined constitution, has
brought himself temporarily into a critical place by the fatigues and
anxieties of harassing business, by exceptional overwork which kept
him at his desk or in his shop until inordinately late hours; even,
let me say, by going for entire nights without sleep and neglecting
his regular meals day after day for a period of several weeks;
performing and enduring all this by the support of extra doses of
opium. Perhaps, finding the stimulus to which he has become accustomed
too slow in its operation, he has violated his usual custom of
abstinence from alcoholic drinks and reinforced his opium with more or
less frequent potations of whisky. This is no fancy sketch, Our
overtasked commercial men frequently go on what might with propriety
be called "a business spree," in which for a month at a time, whether
using stimulants or not, they plunge into as mad a vortex with as
thorough a recklessness as those of the periodical inebriate; finding
out in the long run that the fascinations of speculation, and the
spring and fall trade, bring as dire destruction to soul and body as
those of the bowl and the laudanum vial. During times of great
financial pressure or under the screws of preparation for some great
professional effort, the moderate opium-eater finds that he must
inevitably increase his dose. When he adds liquor to it (and this
addition to an old opium-eater is often as necessary as liquor alone
would have been before he used opium at all) he is indeed burning his
candle at both ends. Mr. Edgerton reached the commencement of his
period of extra exertion with as sound a constitution--in as
comfortable condition of general health--as is enjoyed by any man
habituated to opium for four or five years; and such cases are
frequently found among men who appear to enjoy life pretty well,
attend to their business with as much regularity as ever, and show no
trace of the ravages wrought by their insidious foe to any but the
expert student. After six weeks of exciting labor and solicitude,
during which his sleep and his rations were always delayed till
exhaustion overpowered him, and then cut down below half the normal
standard, he wakes one morning from a slumber heavy as death into a
state of the most awful vigilance his mind can conceive of. He even
doubts for some moments whether he shall ever sleep again, and in the
agony of that strange, wild suspicion, a cold sweat breaks out over
him from head to foot. Waking from the most utter unconsciousness
possible to a wide-awake state like having the top of one's skull
suddenly lifted off by some surgeon Asmodeus, and the noonday sun
poured into every cranny of his brain, he suffers a shock compared
with which any galvanic battery, not fatal, gives but a gentle
tap. The suddenness of the transition--no gentle fading out of
half-remembered dreams, no slow lifting of lids, no pleasant
uncertainty of time and place gradually replacing itself by dawning
outlines of familiar chair and window frame and cornice--the leap from
absolute nonentity into a glaring, staring world--for a moment almost
unsettles Mr. Edgerton's reason. Then the fear for his sanity passes
and a strange horror of approaching death takes its room. His pulse at
the instant of waking throbs like a trip-hammer; an instant more and
it intermits. Then it begins again at the old pace. He snatches up his
watch from the bureau with a trembling hand and counts--the beat is
130 a minute. Again it stops; again it begins; but now little by
little growing faster and threadier until it runs so swiftly yet so
thinly as to feel under his finger like some continuous strand of
gossamer drawn through the artery. His feet and hands grow deadly
cold. He seems to feel his blood trickling feebly back to his heart
from every portion of his body. He catches a hurried look at the
glass--he sees a dreadful spectre with bistre rings around the
eyelids, an ashen face, leaden lips, and great, mournful, hollow,
desolate eyes. Then his pulse stops altogether; his lungs cease their
involuntary action; and with a sense of inconceivable terror
paralyzing the very effort he now feels it vital to make, he puts them
under voluntary control and makes each separate inspiration by an
effort as conscious as working a bellows. I doubt not that many men
have died just at this place through absolute lack of will to continue
such effort. Then the metaphorical paralysis of fear is seconded by
the simulation of a literal one, extending through the limbs of one
side or both; the sufferer reels, feeling one foot fail him--tries to
revolve one arm like a windmill, that he may restore his circulation,
and that arm for some instants hangs powerless. Presently, with one
tremendous concentration of will, his brain shouts down an order to
the rebellious member--it stirs with sullen reluctance--it moves an
inch--and then it breaks from the prison of its waking nightmare.
Summoning his entire array of vital forces, our patient leaps, and
smites his breast, kicks, whirls his arms, and little by little feels
his heart tick again. By the time a feeble and sickly but regular
pulse is re-established he has gone through enough agony to punish the
worst enemy, my dear Sir, that you or I ever had. The vague,
overpowering fear of death which during such an attack afflicts even
the man who by grace or nature is at all other times most exempt from
it is one of this period's most terrible symptoms. This passes with
the return of breath and circulation.
But the clammy sweat continues--pouring from every point of the
surface--saturating the garments next the skin as if they had been
dipped in a tub of water. Presently our patient begins to suffer an
intolerable thirst, and runs to the ice-pitcher to quench it. In
vain. He can not retain a mouthful. The instant it is swallowed it
seems to strike a trap and is rejected with one jerk. He seeks the
sedative which up to this hour has allayed his worst gastric
irritations. Now, if never before, opium in every form produces
nausea. Laudanum instantly follows the example of the water, and even
a dry dose of morphia, swallowed with no moisture but saliva, casts
itself back after agonizing retchings. To liquor his rebellious
stomach proves yet more intolerant--food is almost as irritating as
liquor. In a horror he discovers that even pounded ice will not stay
down--and he is parching like Dives. His anguish becomes nearly
suicidal as the fact stares him in the face that he has come to the
place where he can not take opium any more--though to be without it is
hell--that food, drink, medicine, are all denied him.
A merciful, death-like apathy ensues. He lies down, and with his brain
full of delirious visions, appalling, grotesque, meaningless,
beautiful, torturing by turns, still manages to catch an occasional
minute of unconsciousness. He hears his name called--tries to rise and
answer--but his voice faints in his throat and he falls back upon his
bed. Friends enter his bed-chamber--in an agony of alarm rouse
him--lift him to his feet--but he has not the strength of an infant,
and he falls again. In this condition he may continue for a day or
two, then sink into absolute coma, and die of nervous exhaustion, or
his constitution may rally as the effects of the last overdose pass
off, and the man, after a fortnight's utter prostration, come
gradually back to such a state of tolerable health and comfort as he
enjoyed before he overtaxed himself.
Mr. Edgerton is brought to Lord's Island in the condition I have
described, living near enough to be transported on mattresses in
carriage and boat. A few hurried questions put to his friends reveal
that although his condition is alarming it is by no means necessarily
fatal; being one of those in which the habit is of such comparatively
short standing, and the constitution still so vigorous, that even at
home he might come up again by natural reactions.
He is immediately undressed and put to bed, with hot bricks and
blankets at the extremities, and the galvanic battery is judiciously
administered by placing both feet in contact with a copper plate
constituting the negative electrode, while the operator grasps the
positive in one hand, and having wetted the fingers of the other,
follows the spine downward, exerting gentle pressure with them as he
goes. "Judiciously," I say, because there is a vast deal of
injudicious use of the battery. In many cases, for instance, a
powerful and spasmodic current is used to the absolute injury of the
patient, where the greatest benefit might be secured by an even one so
light as scarcely to be perceptible. But I can only mention the
battery. Its application is by itself a science, and demands a
book. The practitioner who treats opium patients needs that science as
much as any one interested in whatsoever branch of nervous
therapeutics. The battery in the hands of a scientific man is one of
our most powerful adjuncts throughout every stage of treatment, both
of opium-eating and its sequelae. Paralysis following the habit, and
persistent long after its abandonment, I have cured by it when all
other means failed. Here, however, we have only room to indicate the
weapons in our armory.
If Mr. Edgerton's digestive apparatus is still as intolerant as at the
commencement of the attack which hurried him to Lord's Island, we may
hope for a marked mitigation of this symptom, in the use of the
battery by passing a mild current transversely through him in the
region of the solar plexus. As soon as it is possible for his stomach
to retain any thing we administer a bolus of _capsicum_,
compounded of five grains of the powder with any simple addition like
mucilage and and liquorice to make it a coherent mass. The remaining
nausea and irritability will in great likelihood be speedily relieved
as by magic, and with these will disappear some of the most
distressing cerebral symptoms--the horror and frenzy or comatose
apathy among them. In few cases will a patient reach the Island in
time for the advantageous use of _belladonna_. That is a direct
antidote--exerting its function in antagonism to the earlier toxical
effects of the opium. In cases where a single overdose has worked the
difficulty and produced the coma which Mr. Edgerton's now resembles,
it may be given to an old _habitué_ of the drug with as good
advantage as to a person whose overdose is his first experience of
opium. It is of especial value where the absorbents have carried the
excess beyond the reach of an emetic, any time, indeed, within fifteen
or twenty hours after the overdose, when sulphate of zinc and the
stomach-pump have failed to bring the poison. If our patient on the
Island has taken his overdose so recently, and it seems still worth
while to act by antidote, we shall be obliged to get over the
difficulty presented by his stomach's lack of retention by
administering our belladonna in the form of _atropin_ in solution
as a hypodermic injection. The many eminent researches of late made in
this interesting method of administering remedies, and the
practitioner's own judgment, must guide him as to the proportions of
his dose--whether one-fortieth grain, one-twentieth, or larger. Of
this operation, with opium-eaters, I have seen several most successful
instances.
In all probability, however, there will be a better field in such
cases as Mr. Edgerton's for the use of nux vomlca than of
belladonna. Where the prostration is so great as to call for the most
immediate action to avoid a syncope from which there shall be no
rallying, it will be unwise to await the soothing action of the
battery, capsicum, or any other means preparatory to giving nux
votnica by the mouth. _Strychnia_ in solution (it is needless to
say with what caution) must be administered like the atropin,
subcutaneously, or else nux vomica tincture in the form of the
ordinary enema in about the same dose as it would be given by the
mouth. The former method in wise hands is the better, both as the
speedier, and, considering the opiate torpidity of the intestines, by
far the more certain. In cases where the stomach tolerates fluid, as
our ability to await the action of the battery and capsicum have now
enabled us to find Mr. Edgerton's, we may give from fifteen to twenty
drops of the ordinary pharmaceutical tincture of nux vomica in a
table-spoonful of water.
In the course of ten minutes we find a decided improvement in the
pulse of the patient; he experiences great relief from his feelings of
apprehension and distress about the epigastrium; and the most powerful
tonic known to science begins dispatching its irresistible behests to
every fibre of the organic life. That painful as well as agitating
_subsultus_--that involuntary twitching and cramp in the muscles
of the limbs and abdomen which often characterizes this form of the
opium malady, by degrees gets lulled as under a charm, and it may not
even be necessary to repeat the dose in two and a half hours to remove
it so entirely that the patient gets ten or fifteen minutes of
refreshing sleep.
The earliest symptoms of this species of attack sometimes indicate
such prostration as make any bath of the ordinary kind unsafe; yet
rare indeed are the cases (not one in a hundred I should say) where
there is any danger of further depressing the nervous system (of
course the great thing to guard against) by putting a patient like
Mr. Edgerton into a _Russian bath_. I need not enlarge upon the
value of this most admirable appliance--all the most enlightened men
of the medical profession know it and esteem it as it deserves, though
its use in rheumatic affections and cutaneous diseases has hitherto
received more study than in the class of maladies where its employment
is perhaps the most beneficial of all--the nervous. Pre-eminently
valuable is it in the treatment of delirium tremens and in every stage
of the opiomania.
As your book is for the purpose of the public rather than professional
men, I may perhaps properly say a few words about this bath by way of
description. We have one, as a matter of course, at Lord's Island.
A room forty-five feet long and twenty broad, with a vaulted ceiling
twenty feet high at the crown, is provided along each of its two
longer sides with a series of marble slabs rising in three tiers from
eighteen inches above the floor to a couple of feet below the
ceiling. The idea may be gained more accurately by supposing three
steps of a giant staircase mounting from an aisle three feet wide
through the middle of the room, back and upward to the parallel
cornice. The level surface of each of these steps is sufficiently wide
to accommodate a man stretched on his back, and the upright portion of
each step is an iron grating. Under the series of steps on both sides
runs a system of sinuous iron pipes pierced with minute holes, and
connected by stop-cocks with a boiler out of sight.
The steps occupy in length twenty-five feet of the room, and its
entire breadth except the narrow aisle between the is occupied by a
tank sunk beneath the floor, sixteen feet square by four and a half
deep, filled with water kept throughout the year at a uniform
temperature of about 70° F., and by the gallery which runs round the
railing of the tank on the floor level. About the sides of the gallery
are arranged hot and cold water-pipes with faucets and hose
connections, the hose being terminated by a spray apparatus similar to
the nose of a watering-pot. Opening off the gallery at the end
furthest from the steps is a small closet fitted up with ascending,
descending, and horizontal shower apparatus, by means of perforated
plates connecting with the water-pipes by faucets set in floor, walls,
and ceiling.
After the battery, the capsicum, and the nux, if Mr. Edgerton can
retain it, we feed him by slow tea-spoonfuls from one-half to a whole
cup of the most concentrated beef-tea--prepared after Lieblg's recipe
or another which I have usually found better relished, and as that,
where food must be administered to fastidious stomachs, is half the
battle, which I prefer. (I will give it hereafter.) Should his stomach
reject it thus administered, it must be given as an enema. Its place
in the plan of all enlightened medical treatment is too lofty to need
my insisting on. We must rely on it at Lord's Island every step of our
way. It will not have been within our patient's system five minutes
before the pulse shows it, nor ten before he feels from head to foot
as if he had taken some powerful and generous stimulant. It is always
wise to give beef-tea, even just before a bath of any kind, and it is
never well to enter the Russian bath on an empty stomach.
Having taken his beef-tea, Mr. Edgerton is carried or propelled in a
wheel-chair by attendants to the Russian bathroom. Having stripped in
an anteroom, upon entering the vaulted chamber he finds himself in an
atmosphere of steam at 120° F., which fills the apartment, even
obscures the skylights, yet to his surprise does not impede his
respiration or produce any unpleasant sense of fullness in the
head. He is now stretched on his back upon one of the lowest slabs,
where the atmosphere is coolest and the vapor least dense; a large wet
sponge is put under his occiput for a pillow, and another sponge in a
pail of cool water placed by his side with which he, or in case of too
extreme debility his attendants, may from time to time bathe and cool
the rest of his head. As soon as he has become accustomed to the heat
and moisture, a sensation of pleasant languor steals over him; all
remains of his nausea and other gastric distress vanish; his nervous
system grows more and more placid; his clammy skin is bedewed by a
profuse and warm natural perspiration. Perhaps, as in cases of extreme
debility and where the nerves have suffered tension from protracted
pain, he even falls into a pleasant sleep. He is allowed to lie
quietly on this lower slab for about fifteen minutes. An attendant
then lathers him from head to foot with a perfumed cake of soap and
gives him a gentle but thorough scrubbing with an oval brush like that
in use among hostlers--finishing the operation by vigorously
shampooing, Oriental fashion, each separate joint of his whole body,
with a result of exquisite relief not exaggerated by Eastern
travellers as applicable to well people and quite beyond expression
when its subject is the poor, long-tortured frame of a sick
opium-eater. The process over, the patient is taken to the gallery and
stood up before the hose apparatus above-mentioned. One hand of the
attendant directs over his body a fine spray of steam and the other
follows it up and down with a spray of cool water (either of which by
combining and graduating appropriate faucets may be made as warm as
you like), producing a fine glow and reaction of the whole
surface. The up, down, and lateral showers are then administered,
after which the patient is sent to plunge into the tank, and if able
to swim, a stroke or two. Emerging, rosy as Aphrodite, and with a
sense of vigor he can hardly believe, he again lies down on the
slab-this time taking the next higher tier, and in about ten minutes
more, mounting, if so disposed, to the highest, where the perspiration
rolls from him in rivulets, and with it as makes him feel like a new
being. Finally, in about an hour from the time he entered the
bath-room he is treated to one last plunge in the tank and carried
back to the anteroom. The thermometer there marks but 70° F., or half
a hundred degrees cooler than the steam from which he has just
emerged; still his blood has been set in such healthful circulation,
and during the last hour he has absorbed such an amount of caloric,
that the change seems a very pleasant one, and his skin has been so
toned that he runs not the slightest risk (even were he the frailest
person with pulmonary disease) of catching cold. Singular as it may
seem, the first case of such a result has yet to be recorded.
This is all the more remarkable when we consider that instead of being
immediately wrapped up after his vigorous drying with furzy
bath-towels, he is kept naked for five minutes longer during a further
process of hand-rubbing and shampooing by an attendant. The shampooing
takes place as he lies prostrate on a couch and thus gives his
debility all the advantage of rest and passive exercise at the same
time. Whether we explain it upon the yet unsettled hypotheses of
friction, the suppling which the patient gets in this part of the
process from the hands of a strong, faithful, cheerful-minded and
hale-bodied servant is one of the most valuable means which can be
relied upon for the relief of opium suffering at any stage
whatever. After coming from the anteroom our patient who entered more
dead than alive may feel vigor that he would like to give his
recovered powers play in walking back to his room, but it is best not
to humor him by letting him draw on his first deposit. He should be
tenderly wheeled back as he came--put to bed, and if it does not
revolt his appetite, fed slowly as before another cup of
beef-tea. After that he will probably fall into a refreshing slumber
from which he is on no account to be roused, but suffered to wake
himself. On his waking another cup of beef-tea should be given him,
and no other medicine, unless his pulse becomes alarming and he shows
signs of return to the original sinking condition in which we found
him--when the nux may be repeated.
It is now improbable, after the happy change described has taken place
in him, that he will succumb to the acute attack of opium-poisoning
which led him to us. Alarming as it appears, it is seldom dangerous or
persistent. The patient who has not constitutional strength to rally
at once, goes down rapidly and dies in a few days, while he who
rallies once gets well, _pro hâc vice_, without much medical
treatment save that which was promptly given at the critical moment,
or treatment of any kind but nourishing food, rest, baths, and
vigilant, tender nursing. As soon as the chronic appetite calls for
its habitual dose, and the stomach receives it without revenging its
grudge against the recent excesses, the patient may be considered out
of danger as far as the acute attack is concerned.
Here I will be asked (as I am constantly out of the book), why not
begin the abandonment of the drug as soon as this acute attack is
over? When the terrible and immediate peril has been staved off by
such a mere hair's-breadth, why listen again to "the chronic appetite"
which "calls for its habitual dose?" Surely, now that the patient has
gone for forty-eight hours or more without that dose, would it not be
better never to return to it? Must he begin his former career again
and afterward have all the same ground to go over?
I answer that he will not have the same ground. That which he has just
traversed was the ground separating between an excess and his normal
life--and he is in reality in a worse condition to try the experiment
of instant abandonment than he was before the struggle. It is a very
different thing to cure a man of acute from curing him of chronic
opium-poisoning; and my own large experience, together with that of
all the most experienced, the soundest and most skillful men that I
have ever known as successful practitioners among these cases, points
to the unanimous conclusion that it is not safe, either to mind or
body, to make the abrupt transition required of an old opium-eater who
must give up his drug _in toto_ and at once, especially after
such an acute attack as that just described. He would be very likely
to die of exhaustion, to endure an amount of agony which would
permanently enfeeble his mind, or to commit suicide as his only way of
escape from it, if we cut him short from the equivalent of 15 or 20
grains of sulphate of morphia after having used the drug for five
years. The most terrible case of opium-eating which I ever saw
instantly cu short was one where the patient used 33 grains of morphia
per diem, but he had used it for less than a year, and possessed a
constitution whose physical grit and mental pluck anybody would
pronounce exceptional, though even that did not save him from the
tortures which endangered his reason. I am always in favor of a man's
"breaking off short" if he can. I believe that the majority of people
who have used the drug less than a year can, but the number who are
able to do it after that diminish in geometric ratio with every month
of habituation.
I therefore permit Mr. Edgerton, as soon as his stomach will bear it,
to return to the use of opium.
But before giving him his dose I make the stipulation that from this
moment he shall deal as frankly with me as he does with his own
consciousness--that we shall have no opium secrets apart.
In advanced cases, where opium has been used long enough to break down
the will and the sense of moral accountability, I may feel it wise to
ask of the friend who accompanies my patient that he go through the
baggage and clothes of the latter before leaving him, and report to me
that no form of opium is contained in them. But in most cases I prefer
to rely entirely upon the good understanding established between my
patient and myself for my guarantee that no opiate is smuggled into
the institution, and upon my own daily examination of the patient to
determine whether this guarantee is kept inviolate. To an expert
reader of opium cases it will soon become apparent whether in any
given case a patient is taking more than the amount prescribed--and
after total abandonment is resolved upon, the question whether the
patient is taking opium at all may be decided by a tyro.
In the case of Mr. Edgerton, who has voluntarily come to ask our help
on the way upward, I proceed by a system of complete mutual
confidence. I tell him that I am sure he feels even more deeply than
myself the necessity of abandoning the drug. I promise him that he
shall never be pushed beyond the limits of endurance, and ask only
that he will allow any dose he may take to pass through my hands. I
request that if he has brought any form of opium with him he will give
it to me, and we enter into a stipulation that he will come to me for
any opiate or other alleviative which he may desire. I bind myself
never to upbraid or censure him--never to reveal to a living soul any
confidence soever which he may repose in me--and then I ask him to
name me the average dose upon which, before his late acute attack, he
has managed to keep comfortable--rather, I should say, before the
overwork and consequent opiate excess which brought it on. During his
terrible six weeks of high-pressure, he tells me, he reached a per
diem as high as 25, on one occasion even 30 grains; but for a year
previous he had never taken more than the equivalent of 18 grains of
morphia a day. This, then, shall furnish our starting-point.
Whether he has previously adopted the same method or not, I divide
this amount into three or more doses to be taken at regular intervals
during the day.
I say "the equivalent of 18 grains of morphia," because although the
majorify of _habitués_ use that principle of opium as their favorite
form, there are some who after many years' use of the drug still
adhere to crude gum opium or laudanum. The portability and ease of
exhibition which belong to morphia--the fact that it fails to sicken
some persons in whom any other opiate produces violent nausea--its
usual certainty, rapidity, and uniformity of action, and the ability
which it possesses to produce the characteristic effects of the
narcotic after other preparations have become comparatively inert,
make it the most general form in use among opium-eaters of long
standing. Still, bearing in mind the wonderful complexity of opium
(_vide_ "What Shall They Do to be Saved?") and the equally marvellous
diversity in the manner in which it affects different people, we can
not wonder at the fact that some of its victims require for their
desired effect either the crude drug or other preparations containing
its principles entire. Morphia is by far the most important of these
principles, and more nearly than any one stands typical of them
all. Still, it is easy to conceive how certain constitutions may
respond more sympathetically to the complex agent of Nature's
compounding than to any one of its constituents. [Footnote: In some
cases, especially of shorter standing, codeia may be used as the form
of opiate to diminish on. In any case its employment is worth trying,
for it possesses much of the pain-controlling efficiency of opium and
morphia, with less of their congestive action upon the brain.
Practically it may be treated in such an experiment as the equivalent
of opium; not that it at all represents all the drug's operations, but
that where crude opium has been the form in use, codeia may be
substituted grain for grain. Some patiets find it quite valueless as
a substitute, but there is always a chance of its proving adequate.
When tried, the best form is a solution similar to Magendie's, but
replacing one grain of morphia by six of codeia.] We may therefore
find it necessary to carry on our reformatory process upan laudanum or
M'Munn's Elixir, but by far the larger number of cases will do better
by being put instantly upon a regimen of Magendie's Solution of
Morphia. The formula for this preparation is:
Rx
Morph. Sulph. . . . . . . . . . . . grs. xvi.
Aqua Destill. . . . . . . . . . . . ounce j
Elix. Vitrioli. . . . . . . . . . . quant. suff.
Mr. Edgerton has used 18 grains of morphia per diem. His equivalent in
Magendie's Solution will be 9 fluid drachms.
This amount I divide into three equal doses--one to be administered
after each meal. By administering them after meals I give nutrition
the start of narcotism, prevent the violent action possessed by
stimulants and opiates on the naked stomach, and secure a slower, more
uniform distribution of the effects throughout the day. The position
of the third dcse after the 6 o'clock meal of the day is particularly
counselled by the fact that opium is only secondarily a narcotic, its
sedative effects following as a reaction upon its stimulant, and the
third dose accordingly begins to act soporifically just about
bed-time, when this action is especially required.
I keep a glass for each of my patients, upon which their "high-water
mark" is indicated by a slip of paper gummed on the outside. When
Mr. Edgerton, pursuant to our stipulation, comes to me for his dose, I
drop into the glass before his eyes a shot about the size of a small
pea--then fill the glass with Magendie's Solution up to the mark
indicated. (This shot varies in each case with the rapidity of
diminution I think safe to adopt. In some cases it is a buckshot or a
small pistol bullet.) Every day a new shot goes in--and if he bears
that rate of progress I may even drop one into the glass with each
alternate dose.
Midway between the doses of morphia I give Mr. E. a powder of bromide
of potassium, amounting to 30 or even 40 grains at a time, and an
average of about 100 grains per day. The value of this remedy has been
a matter of much controversy--some practitioners lauding it to the
skies as one of the most powerful agents of control in all disorders
of the nervous system, others pronouncing it entirely inert. Where it
has proved the latter it has probably been given in too small doses or
not persevered in for a sufficient length of time. (The timidity with
which it is often prescribed may be seen in the fact that one of the
principal druggists on Broadway lately warned a person to whom I had
given a prescription for 30 grain doses that he was running a very
dangerous risk in taking such a quantity!) Its operation is so
entirely different from that of the vegetable narcotics that people
looking for their instantaneous sedative effect can not fail to be
disappointed. It is very slowly cumulative in its action, seeming to
act upon the nervous system by a gradual constitutional change rather
thin any special impetus in a given direction. Because that is its
_modus operandi_, I begin to give it thus early; and it is of
peculiar value now, not only as making the daily diminution of the
opium more tolerable, but as preparing the system for the time when
the drug is to be abandoned altogether and the hardest part of the tug
comes.
In Mr. Edgerton's case the gradual descent to 1/2 grain per diem, when
we leave off the opium entirely, consumes let us say a period of one
month. It is not to be expected that this period will pass without
considerable discomfort and some absolute suffering, for the nervous
system can not be dealt with artfully enough to hide from it the fact
that it is losing its main support. It is the nature of that system
not even to rest content with the continuation of the same dose. It
grows daily less susceptible to opium and more clamorous of
increase. When the dose does not even remain _in statu quo_ but
suffers steady diminutions however small, the nerves can not fail to
begin revenging themselves. Still, this period may be made very
tolerable by keeping the mind diverted in every pleasant occupation
possible, such as I shall presently refer to as abounding on our
Island. Our physical treatment for the month is especially directed to
the establishment of such healthy nutrition and circulation as shall
provide the nervous system with a liberal capital to for at least the
first ten days or fortnight after the complete abandonment of
opium. The patient's digestion must be carefully attended to, and kept
as vigorous as is consistent with the still continued use of the
drug. Beef-tea, lamb-broth with rice, all the more concentrated forms
of nutriment, are to be given him, in small quantities at a time, as
frequently as his appetite will permit; and if progressive gastric
irritability does not develop itself as the diminution of the narcotic
proceeds, he is to have generous diet of all kinds. We must pay
particular attention to the excretory functions--getting them as
nearly as possible in complete working order for the extra task they
have presently to fulfill when the barriers are entirely withdrawn and
the long pent-up effete matters of the body come rushing forth at
every channel. The bowels must be trained to perfect regularity, and
the skin roused to the greatest activity of which it is capable.
Exercise, carried to the extent of healthy fatigue, but rigorously
kept short of exhaustion, may be secured in our bowling-alley,
gymnasium, and that system of light gymnastics perfected by Dio
Lewis--a system combining amusement with improvement to a remarkable
degree, as being a regular drill in which at certain regular hours all
those patients, both ladies and gentlemen, who are able to leave their
rooms, join under the command of a skillful leader to the sound of
music. This system has an advantage, even for well people, with its
bars, poles, ropes, dumb-bells, etc., inasmuch as it secures the
uniform development, on sound anatomical and physiological principles,
of every muscle in the human body, instead of aiming at the
hypertrophy of an isolated set. I do not mean by this to deny the
value of the old style gymnasium, our Island will possess as good a
one as any athlete could desire. Horseback riding will form another
admirable means of effecting our purpose, especially where the patient
suffers from more than the usual opiate torpidity of the liver. We
shall have room enough if not for an extended ride at least for a mile
track around the Island, and a stud, however unlikely to set John
Hunter looking to his laurels, capable of affording choice between a
trotter and a cantering animal. During the summer there will be ample
opportunity for those who love horticulture to take exercise in the
flower and vegetable garden attached to the institution, and such as
wished might be assigned little plots of ground whose management and
produce should exclusively belong to them. Looking for a moment from
the therapeutics to the economics of the matter, I can see no reason
why the house might not rely largely upon itself for at least its
summer vegetables and its fruit--if the poorer patients were permitted
to pay part of their dues, when they so elected and the exertion was
not too much for them, by taking care of the grounds. Another
admirable means of exercise will be found in rowing. Our Island must
have a good substantial boat-house, containing a good-sized barge for
excursions and several pleasure-boats pulling two or three pair of
sculls each; perhaps, eventually, a pair of racing-boats for such of
our guests as were well enough to manage a club. Bath-houses for the
convenience of those who love a plunge or a swim will be
indispensable--affording facilities for a species of summer exercise
which nothing can replace.
In winter and summer the bath must be our principal reliance for
promoting that vigorous action of the excretory system which with
healthy nutrition is our great aim in treating the patient.
Quackery has to so great an extent monopolized the therapeutic use of
water, and so much arrant nonsense has been talked in that pure
element's name, that we are in danger of overlooking its wonderful
value as a curative means. It is one of the most powerful agents at
the command of the practitioner, and should no more he trifled with
than arsenic or opium. Used by a blundering, shallow-pated empiric it
may be worse than useless--may do, as in many cases it has done,
incalculable mischief to a patient. In the hands of a clear-sighted,
experienced, scientific man, who administers it according to
well-known laws of physiology and therapeutics, it is an inestimable
remedy, often capable of accomplishing cures without the assistance of
any other medicine, and, indeed, where all other has failed. Many of
the forms in which it is applied at water-cures well deserve adoption
by the more scientific practitioner. Among these the pack occupies a
front rank. During Mr. Edgerton's month of diminution we use this with
him daily. Its sedative effect, when given about three and a half
P.M., just after the second dose of bromide of potassium, is
exceedingly happy-seeming, as I have heard a patient remark, "to
smooth all the fur down the right way"--removing entirely the
excessive nervous irritability of the opium-craving, and often
affording the patient his only hour of unbroken sleep during the
twenty-four. Its tendency to promote perspiration makes it a most
effective means for restoring the activity of the opium-eater's skin,
and this benefit will be still further increased if it be followed by
sponging down the body with strong brine at a temperature as low as
the patient can healthily react from, concluding the operation with a
vigorous hand-rubbing administered by the attendant until the skin
shines. This same salt sponge is a most invigorating bath to be taken
immediately on rising. Another excellent bath in use at water-cures,
of value both for its tonic and sedative properties, is "_the
dripping sheet_," in which a sheet like that used in the pack, of
strong muslin and ample size, is immersed in a pail of fresh water at
about 70° F., and, without wringing, spread around the standing
patient so as to envelop him from neck to feet, the attendant rubbing
him energetically with hands outside it for several minutes till he is
all aglow. In cases where great oppression is felt at the
epigastrium--that _corded_ sensation so much complained of by
opium-eaters during their earlier period of abandonment, and that
peculiar self-consciousness of the stomach which follows in the track
of awakening organic vitality--the greatest relief may be expected
from "_hot fomentations_," This is the well-known "hot and wet
external application" of the regular practice, and consists of a
many-folded square of flannel wrung out of water as hot as the skin
can bear, and laid over the pit of the stomach, with renewals as often
as the temperature perceptibly falls.
The symptom of cerebral congestion--a chronic sense of fullness in the
head--is often very simply alleviated by placing the patient in "_a
sitz_" or hip-bath, with the water varying from 70° to 90° F,
_Enemata_ will constantly be found of service where the torpidity
of the bowels is extreme. Not only so, but in cases where the liver is
beginning to re-assert itself, and its tremendous overaction sends
down such a supply of bile as to provoke inversion of the pylorus, an
enema may often act sympathetically beyond that portion of the
intestine actually reached by it, and change the direction of the
intestinal movement, so as to convert the deadly nausea excited by the
presence of bile in the stomach into a harmless diarrhea which at once
removes the cause of the suffering. Of the value of foot-baths I need
not speak, and to the hot full-bath I must now make reference as the
most indispensable agent in ameliorating the sufferings of one who has
completely abandoned the drug.
When Mr. Edgerton's dose has reached as low an ebb as 1/2 grain of
morphia he abandons the drug entirely. In my _Harper's Magazine_
article I have fully depicted the sufferings which now ensue--as
fully, at least, as they can be depicted on paper--though that at the
best must he a mere bird's-eye view. During the period of diminution
he has endured considerable uneasiness and distress, but these have
been trifling to compare with the suffering which he must endure for
the first few days and nights, at least, after total abandonment.
Universal experience testifies that although the previous period of
diminution greatly shortens and softens the sufferings to be endured
after giving up opium altogether, the descent from 1/2 grain of morphia
to none at all must involve a few days at least of severe suffering,
which nothing borne during the diminution at all foreshadows.
In my _Harper's_ article I have said:
"An employment of the hot bath in what would ordinarily be excess is
absolutely necessary as a sedative throughout the first week of the
struggle. I have had several patients whom during this period I
plunged into water at [Footnote: On some occasions, by repealed
additions from the hot faucet as the temperature of the water in the
bath-tub fell, I have raised the bath as high as 120° F. without
causing any inconvenience to the patient. Most bath-tubs--all in our
own city houses--are too capacious, and too broad for their depth. To
prevent cooling by evaporation the tub should be just the width of a
broad pair of shoulders and about two feet deep.] 110° F. as often as
fifteen times in a single day--each bath lasting as long as the
patient experienced relief."
Science and experience have thus far revealed no other way of making
tolerable the agonizing pain which Mr. Edgerton now endures. This pain
is quite inconceivable by the ordinary mind. It can not be described,
and the only hint by which an outsider can be let into something like
an inkling of it is the supposition (which I have elsewhere used) that
pain has become _fluidized_, and is throbbing through the
arteries like a column of quicksilver undergoing rhythmical
movement. If the arteries were rigid glass tubes, and the pain
quicksilver indeed, there could not be a more striking impression of
ebb and flow every second against some stout elastic diaphragm whose
percussion seems the pain which is felt. This is especially the case
along the course of the sciatic nerve and all its branches, where the
pulse of pain is so agonizing that the sufferer can not keep his legs
still for an instant. There is occasionally severe pain of this kind
in the arms also, but this is very rare. The suffering which usually
accompanies that of the legs is a maddening frontal headache, and a
dull perpetual ache through the region of the kidneys, described as a
sensation of "breaking in two at the waist;" nausea, burning, and
constriction about the epigastrium, and intense sensitiveness of the
liver--besides general nervous and mental distress which has neither
representative nor parallel.
All these symptoms are instantaneously met and for the time being
counteracted by the hot-bath. When the patient gets tired of it, and
it temporarily loses its efficiency from this cause, great advantage
may be gained by substituting either the Russian bath or the common
box vapor-bath, with an aperture in the top to stick the head out of,
and a close-fitting collar of soft rubber to prevent the escape of the
steam.
I must here refer to another means of alleviation, concerning which I
can not bear the witness of personal experience, but which has been
highly recommended to me. Even this brief sketch of treatment would be
imperfect without at least a mention of it, and if it possesses all
the value claimed for it by persons of judgment who have reported it
to me, it will form an indispensable part of our apparatus on Lord's
Island. This is an air-tight iron box of strongly-riveted boiler
plates, with a bottom and top fifteen feet square and sides ten feet
high; thick plate-glass bull's-eyes in each side sufficiently large to
light the interior as clearly as an ordinary room; and a cast-iron
door, six feet in height, shutting with a rubber-lined flange, so that
all its joints are as air-tight as the rest of the box. Inside of the
box, in the centre, stands a table, suitable for reading, writing,
draughts, cards, chess, or games of any similiar kind, with
comfortable chairs arranged around it corresponding in number to the
people who for an hour or two could comfortably occupy the room. In
one side of the box is a circular aperture connecting with an iron
tube, which in its turn is joined to a powerful condensing air-pump
outside, and on the other side is a pressure gauge with its index
inside the box. Sufferers from severe neuralgic pain being admitted,
the air-tight door is shut; they seat themselves, and the condensing
pump is set in motion by an engine until the gauge within indicates a
pressure of any amount desired. I am told that the severest cases of
neuralgia have found instantaneous and thorough relief by the addition
of six or eight atmospheres to the usual pressure of air upon the
surface of the body. There is no reason why the condensation might not
be continued to twenty or more, the increased density causing no
uneasiness to those within the box, the same equilibrium between
internal and outward pressure that exists everywhere in the air being
maintained here. Persons who have made trial of this apparatus speak
of the cessation of their pain as something magical; say they can feel
it leaving them with every stroke of the pump; and although as yet we
may not be able to offer a scientific explanation of the relief
afforded, we can not fail to see its applicability to the case of the
reforming opium-eater. If it does all that is claimed for it, it
probably acts both mechanically and chemically--the pressure, even
though imperceptible from its even distribution, affecting the body
like the shampooing, kneading action of an attendant's hand, and the
vastly increased volume of oxygen which it affords to the lungs and
pores accelerating those processes of vital decomposition by which the
causes of many a pain, but especially that of our patient, are to be
removed.
The shampooing just referred to, and previously mentioned as forming
one process in the Russian bath, is another means of relief constantly
in use while the patient is going through his terrible struggle. Our
attendants upon Lord's Island are picked men. We do not proceed on the
principle in such favor among most of our public institutions,
asylums, water-cures, and the like, of procuring the very cheapest
servants we can get, and thinking it an economical triumph to chuckle
over if [Footnote: This is all that the "canny" business men who
compose the managing boards of some of the first asylums in this
country permit the heads of the institutions to offer those who must
for twenty-three hours of the twenty-four be responsible for the
moral, and physical well-being of a class of patients (the insane) who
require, above all others, wisdom, tact, benevolence, courage,
fidelity, and the highest virtues and capacities in those who attend
them.] we can manage our patients with the aid of subordinates at
twenty dollars a month. We know that in the long run it will
pre-eminently _pay_ to engage the best people, and we pay the wages
which such deserve--wages such as will ensure their quality. Our
attendants are selected from the strongest, healthiest, best-tempered,
most cheerful-minded, kindest-hearted, most industrious and faithful
men and women we can find--people not afraid of work and indefatigable
in it--people who understand that no office they can perform for the
sick is degrading or menial, and who will not object, when the patient
needs it, to lift him like a haby and rub him vigorously with their
hands for an hour at a time. This rubbing our patient often finds the
most heavenly relief, not only right after a bath, but at any hour of
the day or night. There is, therefore, no hour of either during which
Mr. Edgerton can not procure this means of relief from some servant
upon duty. Applied to the back and legs especially, it is a sovereign
soother for both the opium-eater's acute pain and that malaise which
is only less terrible. In very severe cases it may be necessary to rub
the patient for many consecutive hours, and in such cases It may be
necessary either to assign an attendant to the patient's sole care,
or, better yet, to have several attendants relieve each other in the
manual labor. If the patient could afford and desired it, I should
approve of his having his own private servant during the worst of the
struggle to perform this labor for him, with the distinct
understanding, however, that he was to be private only in the sense of
devoting himself to this patient solely, and to receive all his orders
from the head of the institution. The expense of such an arrangement
would be trifling compared with the amount and intensity of agony
which it would save, and in a case of no longer standing than
Mr. Edgerton's need last only through the first fortnight or so after
abandoning the drug.
Another most important means of alleviation is the galvanic
bath. House's patent is an excellent apparatus for the purpose;
convenient in shape and size, comfortable, not easily deranged,
affording a variety of simple and combined currents, adjustable so as
to pass the current either through the whole body or along almost any
nervous tract where it is especially wanted for the relief of local
suffering like that of the opium sciatica, and manageable by any
intelligent child who has ever watched attentively while it was
getting put into operation. Many a sufferer who seems quite a
discouraging subject under the dry method of administering galvanism
responds to it at once transmitted through a bath, and in any case
this is a no less beneficial than delightful way of using it. The skin
is so much better a conductor when wet, and the distribution by water
so uniform, that in most cases it may be pronounced the best way. The
Turkish bath I have seen used with excellent result during the earlier
days of suffering. It will seem almost incredible to any one who has
taken a Turkish bath for other purposes, and knows the tax which it
seemed to inflict upon his nervous system for the first few minutes
after entering the heated chamber and till profuse perspiration came
to his relief, when I say that I have seen a man brought to the bath
in that almost dying state of prostration some pages back described as
belonging to the acute attack of opiomania, at once subjected to the
temperature of 130° F., and in ten minutes after to thirty degrees
higher, not only without rapidly sinking into fatal collapse, but with
a result of almost immediate and steady improvement. To my own great
surprise his pulse began getting fuller, slower, steadier, and in
every way more normal from the moment that the attendant laid him down
upon his slab. When he came in he was obliged to be carried in the
arms of his friends like an infant; his pulse one minute was 140, the
next 40-60, or entirely imperceptible, and when fastest alarmingly
thready; his countenance was corpse-like, he breathed nine or ten
times a minute, and his general prostration so utter that he could
scarcely speak even in a whisper. He stayed in the bath an hour and a
quarter, in a streaming perspiration for the last forty minutes, and
much of the time sleeping sweetly. He came out walking easily without
assistance, and in the cool anteroom fell asleep again upon the
lounge, not to wake for an hour longer. This one bath entirely broke
up the attack. He kept on improving, and with the aid of beef-tea was
well enough to go to business in a week. The value of the bath in
treating Mr. Edgerton at present will he greatest when he suffers most
severely from acute neuralgic pains in the legs and back, especially
if the efficiency of the hot full-baths and vapors seem temporarily
suspended through frequent use. His own feelings are the best
criterion of its worth at any given time. It operates very differently
on different people and in different conditions of the system. To some
persons it is less debilitating than the use of hot water, and others,
myself among the number, find it so excessively disagreeable from the
apoplectic sensation it produces in their heads, and the difficulty of
breathing which they suffer from it, that nothing but a discovery that
it was the only means in their particular case of relieving sufferings
like those of opium would induce them to enter it. Many persons
profess to like it as well as the Russian (which, singularly enough,
in no case have I ever known to produce the disagreeable feeling in
head or lungs), and it certainly ranks with the foremost alleviatives
of the opium suffering--the agonizing rythmical neuralgia of which I
have spoken usually becoming magically lulled within two minutes from
the time of entering the first heated chamber, and ceasing altogether
as soon as the perspiration becomes thoroughly established. At Lord's
Island our Turkish bath-room will immediately adjoin our Russian, and
the temperature being supported by pipes from the same boiler which
furnishes vapor to the other, will be no heavy addition to our expense
in the way of apparatus. I don't know whether it is necessary to tell
any body that the Turkish bath is merely an exposure of the naked body
(with a wet turban around the head) to a dry heat varying from 110º
F. to a temperature hot enough, to cook an egg hard--followed by
ablutions and shampooings somewhat similar to those of the Russian
bath.
As it is our aim to _cure_ the opium-eater by bringing to bear
upon his most complicated of all difficulties every means which has
proved effectual in the treatment of any one of its particulars,
however caused in other instances, we ask no questions of any
appliance regarding its nativity, but take from the empiric whatever
he has stumbled on of value as freely as the worthiest discoveries of
the philosopher from him. There have been various attempts to erect
into a _pathy_ every one of the applications we have already
mentioned, and I shall close this brief outline of our therapeutic
apparatus at Lord's Island with one more valuable method of relief and
cure whose enthusiastic discoverers (or rather adapters) have outraged
etymology worse than the regular practice by trying to build on their
one good thing an entire system under the title of "Motorpathy."
[Footnote: I see that some scholar has lately got hold of them and
forced them to respect philological canons by kicking the mongrel out
of their dictionary and calling themselves _Kinesipathists_,
instead of the other Graeco-Latin barbarism.] The "_Movement
Cure_" contains some very good ideas, which, like many of the
Hydropathists', ought to be taken up by Science, in whose hands and
their proper place they can do fine service.
As we have found in the case of shampooing, a great deal of the
suffering of any part can be taken out by giving it something else to
do. A portion of the good done by rubbing an aching leg is no doubt
accomplished by setting the nerve at work upon the sensations of
pressure and of heat and so diverting it from that of pain, but
another portion is probably due to the fact of motions producing
changes, in the nature of mechanical and chemical decompositions, in
the substance of the tissue; thus by a well known physiological law
summoning a concentration of the nervous forces to the particular
part. Nature is thus accelerated in her action there, and as that
action is always toward cure (so long as life and hope exist), the
nerves of the part are reinforced to act sanely. To be weak is to be
miserable--to be strong is to be free from pain--thus the nerve's
returning vigor eliminates its suffering. The fresh blood that is
pumped into the part by motion brings about another set of
ameliorating changes of more especial importance where the pain is
caused by a local lesion instead of rather being sympathetic with the
whole systematic debility. Whatever be our theory, the tenet that
motion relieves pain, as a tenet, is as old as the "_back-
straightening_" process used in some shires by the British
turnip-hoers who on coming to the end of their rows lie down and let
the rest of the women in the field walk over their toil-bent spine and
cramped dorsal muscles, while as a fact it is as old as pain itself.
On Lord's Island, therefore, we have a room fitted up with apparatus
intended to give passive exercise to every part of the body which the
pain of abandoning opium is especially likely to attack.
Mr. Edgerton is suffering extremely, about the close of the third day
after his last 1/2 grain dose of morphia, from the agonizing rythmical
neuralgia of which I have spoken, throbbing from the loins to the
feet; and although with good effect we have given him galvanism,
shampooing, baths of several kinds, and a number of internal remedies,
still, wishing to keep each of these appliances fresh in its potency,
we make a change this time to the "movement-room." He is stripped to
his shirt, dressing-gown, and drawers, and laid on his back along a
comfortable stuffed-leather settee, running quite through whose bottom
are a number of holes about four by three and a half inches. These
holes are occupied by loose-fitting pistons which play vertically up
through the cushion--lying level with it when at rest, and when in
motion projecting about two inches above it at the height of their
stroke. Motion is secured to them by crank connection with a light
shaft running beneath the settee, revolved by a band-wheel, which in
its turn connects by a belt with the small engine outside the
building, by which all the drudgery of the house is performed.
Mr. Edgerton is adjusted over the holes so that, in coming up, the
pistons, which are covered with stuffed leather pads, strike him
alternately on each side of the spine, from about the region of the
kidneys to just beneath the shoulder-blade. The shifting of a lever
throws the machine into gear, and for the next five minutes, or as
long as he experiences relief, the artificial fists pummel and knead
him at any rate of speed desired, according to the adjustment of a
brake. This process over, if he still feels pain in the lower
extremities, his foot is buckled upon an iron sole which oscillates in
any direction according to its method of connection with the power,
from side to side, so as to twist the leg about forty-five degrees
each way, up and down, to imitate the trotting of the foot, or with a
motion which combines several. A variety of other apparatus gives play
to other muscles; but I have said enough to show the idea of its
_modus operandi_. The passive exercise thus afforded is an admirable
substitute for that active kind which in his first few days of
deprivation the intensity of his agony often incapacitates him from
taking. I have seen men at this period almost bent double from mere
pain, and hobbling when they attempted to walk like subjects of
inflammatory rheumatism. Their debility also is often so great as to
prevent exercise, especially when the characteristic diarrhea has been
for some days in operation, though different people differ
astonishingly in this respect. I knew one case where an opium-eater of
three years' habituation to the drug endured in its abandonment every
conceivable distress without suffering from debility at all, as may be
inferred from the fact that as his only way of making life tolerable
he took a walk of twelve miles every morning while going through his
trial. The majority, however, suffer not only pain but prostration of
the most distressing character--a combination as terrible as can be
conceived, since the former will not let the victim remain in one
position for a single minute, and the latter takes away all his own
control of his motion, so that he seems a mere helpless, buffeted mass
of agony--an involuntary devil-possessed, devil-driven body,
consciousness at its keenest, will at its deepest imbecility--almost
fainting with fatigue, unable to limp across the room on legs which
seem dislocated in every joint and broken in a thousand places, yet
unable to stop tossing from side to side, and writhing like a trodden
worm all night, all day, perhaps for weeks.
"Oh!" I have heard the patient say, "would to God this made me
_tired!_ healthily tired, so that I could fall into a minute's
doze!"
The apparatus I have just been describing meets this want. Sometimes
while the leather and iron fists are pegging away and pummelling him
at their hardest, he falls asleep on the machine! It has done for him
all that he had not the strength to do for himself--tired him
healthily.
The remedies I have mentioned are capable of indefinite
combinations. The head of an institution like Lord's Island will want
them all, although any one given case may not require all of them. In
the hands of a thoroughly scientific, skillful man, they form an
armory of means with which such an amount of good can be done as
beggars our imagination. Combined with the most faithful attention to
the patient's diet--the establishment of healthful nutrition, so that
as fast as those abnormal matters which have been clogging the system
get cleared away by Nature's relentless processes of decomposition,
fresh material may be soundly built up into the system to replace the
strength which the fatal stimulant feigned--combined with vigilant,
tender, patient nursing--the means described are probably, in many
cases, adequate of themselves to restore any opium-eater who is
salvable at all. Still, brief as this sketch is, and so far from
making any pretensions to be an exhaustive treatise for the guidance
of the profession, I should fail of presenting even a fair outline of
the treatment which an unusually wide experience with opium-eaters has
convinced me to be the true one, did I not add to the above a few
words regarding the medicinal agents which are of value during the
month of peculiar trial through which Mr. Edgerton is now passing.
It is scarcely necessary to premise that no such thing as a
succedaneum for opium is comprehended in the list of these agents. Any
drug which would so nearly accomplish for the opium-eater what opium
accomplishes that he would not miss the latter, must be nowise
preferable to opium itself. Such a drug must be able to prevent the
decompositions which cause the suffering; to continue that
semi-paralysis of the organic functions in which opium's greatest
fascination exists, a paralysis leaving the cerebral man free to
exhaust all the vitality of the system in pleasant feelings, lofty
imaginings, and aerial dreams, without a protest from the gauglionic
man who lies a mere stupefied beggar without any share in the funds of
the partnership wherewith to carry on the business of the stomach and
bowels and heart, the kidneys and lungs and liver. It must be a drug
that can prevent the re-awakening ol the nutritive and excretory
processes--for it is these whose waking, seeing how late in the day
it is, clamoring at the confusion in which they find affairs and at
the immense quantity of behind-hand work suddenly thrown on them,
together with that re-sharpening of long-dulled sensation by which the
clamor comes into consciousness loud as the world must be to a totally
deaf man suddenly presented with his hearing, which constitute the
series of phenomena which we call pain. No! there is no such thing as
a substitute for opium, save--more opium or death. And I do not know
that I need say "_or_."
Still, there are many alleviatives by which the suffering may be
rendered more endurable--by which now and then our patient may be
helped to catch a few moments of that heavenly unconsciousness which
makes the nervous system stronger to fight the battle out to its
blessed end--by which processes of Nature may be slowed when they get
too fiery-forceful for human courage to endure, or accelerated when
the pull seems likely to be such a long one as to kill or drive mad
through sheer exhaustion. I have spoken of bromide of potassium. This
in connection with the pack may in many cases wisely be continued
throughout the whole progress of the case, and often hastens the
restoration of general nervous equilibrium by many days, removing to a
very pereptible degree that _hyperaesthesia_, that exaggerated
sensation of all the natural processes normally unconscious, which
continues to rob the sufferer of sleep long after acute pain is
lulled. The greatest variety of opinions prevails upon the subject of
cannabis and scutellaria. The principal objection to the cannabis lies
in two facts. First, it is very difficult to obtain any two
consecutive specimens of the same strength, even from the same
manufacturer. Second, in its gum state it is exceedingly slow of
digestion, and unlike opium not seeming to affect the system at all by
direct absorption through the walls of the stomach, it is very slow in
its action; the dose you give at 4 P.M. may not manifest itself till 9
or even midnight, and even then may still move so sluggishly that you
get from it only a prolonged, dull, unpleasant effect instead of a
rapid, favorable, and well-defined one. If it is given in the form of
a fluid extract or tincture, its operation can be more definitely
measured and counted on, but the amount of alcohol required to
dissolve it is sufficient often to complicate its effects very
prejudicially, while in any case the immense proportion of inert
rubbish, gum, green extractive, woody fibre, and earthy residuum is so
great as to be a severe tax on the digestive apparatus--often
seriously to derange the stomach of the well man who uses it, and much
more the exquisitely sensitive organ of the opium-eater, I might add a
third objection-the fact that its effects vary so wonderfully in
different people--but the physician can soon get over that by making
his patient's constitution in the course of a few experiments with the
drug the subject of his careful study. Both its lack of uniformity and
its difficulty of exhibition may be nullified by using the active
principle. It has been one of the _opprobria medicinæ_ that in a
drug known to possess such wonderful properties so little advance has
been made toward the isolation of the alkaloid or resinoid on which it
depends for its potency. I have for years been endeavoring to interest
some of our great manufacturing pharmaceutists in the attainment of a
form--condensed, uniform, and portable--which should stand to cannabis
in the same relation which morphia bears to opium. I believe that, in
collaboration with my friend Dr. Frank A. Schlitz (a young German
chemist of remarkable ability and with a brilliant professional career
before him), I have at last attained this desideratum. I have no room
or right here to dwell upon this interesting discovery further than to
say that we have obtained a substance we suppose to bear the analogy
desired and to deserve the title of _Cannabin_. If further
examination shall establish our result, we have in the form of
grayish-white acicular crystals a substance which stands to cannabis
in nearly the same proportional relation of potency as niorphia to
opium, and this most powerful remedy can be given as easily and
certainly as any in the pharmacopoeia. If we are successful we shall
ere long present it to the medical profession. With all the objections
that prejudice cannabis now, I have still witnessed repeated proofs of
its great value in lulling pain and procuring sleep, when all other
means had failed with the reforming opium-eater, in doses of from one
drachm to five of fluid extract or tincture (in some rare cases even
larger), administered twice a day. Like opium it is only secondarily a
soporific, and to produce this effect it should be given three or four
hours before the intended bed-time. Then the earliest effect will be a
cerebral stimulus, sufficient to divert the mind from the body's
sufferings during day-light, and the reaction will come on in time to
produce slumber of a more peaceful and refreshing character--more
nearly like normal sleep in a strong, energetic constitution fatigued
by healthy exertion, than that invoked by any drug I know of.
It may sometimes be necessary, when the pain has become so maddening
and been so protracted, to save the brain from the delirium of
exhaustion (or even as I have known to happen, _death_) by
procuring sleep for half an hour at any cost save that of a
return. The most interesting patient and noble man whose sufferings
compose the text and prompted the writing of my _Harper's
Magazine_ article, died just as it was going to press through the
exhaustion of a brain that had no true sleep for months. To avoid such
a termination, sleep must be had at any cost, and even the danger
attending chloroform or ether must be risked, though I need not point
out the necessity of pre-eminent wisdom, and the constant personal
presence and watchfulness of symptoms, in the physician during the
time that the anaesthetic is inhaled. Of ether as much as three or
four ounces may be inhaled during a single evening without much
danger, if the precaution of alternating the inspirations from a
saturated handkerchief with those of pure atmospheric air be carefully
attended to. Chloroform is much more risky, and almost always tends
to derange the stomach for several days after its use, still its
action is certain in some cases where ether fails even to obscure
sensation, and must be resorted to. A single ounce per evening,
inhaled with rather longer intervals between whiffs, need not be a
perilous dose, and in my experience has often conferred magical
relief. Nitrous oxide is too transient to be of much use, but to the
extent of twenty or thirty gallons may be used with pleasant effect
and about five minutes of alleviation.
Very different from these powerful agents is the humble,
much-neglected _scutellaria_. It has been repeatedly pronounced
inert, but is beyond all question a minor sedative of charmingly
soothing properties, giving sleep, as I have sometimes witnessed, out
of the very midst of intolerable rythmical neuralgic suffering--in one
case the first sleep the patient had enjoyed since leaving off
opium. It may be given with impunity in much larger doses, but on
those constitutions with which it has any effect at all a
table-spoonful is usually efficacious about ten minutes after its
exhibition in the form of fluid extract. Lupulin, valerian,
valerianate of zinc, and hyoscyamus (or with a much less tendency to
derange the stomach, _hyoscyamin_ in 1/10 grain doses) all have
their value in the less violent cases or toward the close of the
struggle. Capsicum, in the five grain doses earlier mentioned, may
often be relied on to counteract the tendency to frightful dreams
arising from the exquisitely irritable state of the stomach in which
the opium-habit leaves its victims.
Our object with Mr. Edgerton during the month of struggle has been to
assist Nature in eliminating the obsolete matters of the system by all
the excretory passages as preparative to the rebuilding of his system
on a healthy plan by new material. During most of the time he has
suffered from a profuse and weakening diarrhea, but this we have not
checked nor retarded, because it was Nature's indispensable condition
precedent to the new man. His perspiration has been profuse, and that
we have assisted for the same reason by every means in our power--all
our baths and rubbings, our galvanism and medicine so far as used,
have favored to the utmost the activity of his skin. Our repeated
hot-baths have greatly relaxed him; he may have come to the end of his
month so weak that he could not walk a quarter of a mile if his life
depended on it. No matter. This, however alarming at first sight, is
good practice. The more rapidly he has become relaxed, the further and
the further we have banished pain, from whose presence a state of
_tension_ is inseparable. We have not injured him. It is astonishing
to any one accustomed to dealing only with the prostration of ordinary
disease to see to what an extremity the opium-eater will bear to be
reduced--what an extent of muscular debility he will even thrive
under. If we look at him closely, we will see through all his pallor a
healthy texture of skin--in all his languor a _soundness_ of vital
operation which stands to his account for more valid strength, than if
he could lift all the weights of Dr. Winship. Unless the opium-disease
is complicated with some serious organic difficulty it is safe to
carry on the process of relaxation as long as it relieves pain until
the patient has just enough strength left to lift his eyelids. We
have kept him up with the constant, faithful administration of
beef-tea--half a tea-cupful, by slow sips, every hour or hour and a
half that he was awake during day or night, but never rousing him for
any purpose whatever if he showed any inclination to sleep. The nurse
who does that when an opium-eater is going through his struggle should
be discharged without warning. Sleep for ten minutes any time during
this month is worth to nutrition alone more than a week's feeding.
At the end of the month Mr. Edgerton can sleep with tolerable
soundness for half an hour--even an hour at a time, and the sum of all
his dozes amount to about four hours out of the twenty-four. He is
still nervous, though the painful tigerish restlessness is gone. The
pangs of his opium-neuralgia are also gone--or re-appear at long
intervals, and much mitigated, to stay but a few minutes. He is in
every respect on the upward grade. When his sleep becomes decidedly
better, so that most of his night, despite frequent wakings, is
consumed in it, he enters on an entirely different stage of his
treatment. We stop pulling him down. We begin toning him up.
To the description of this process I need devote but little room. It
consists in a gradual cooling of the temperature of his baths--a
substitution of the more bracing and invigorating for one after
another of the relaxing and soothing forms of treatment. The hot
full-bath is discontinued almost entirely, and we replace it by the
use of a couple of pailfuls of water at 65-75, doused over the
patient; or "the flow," in which the water spreads through a
fan-shaped faucet like a funnel with its sides smashed flat and falls
over his shoulders; or the salt sponge--all followed by vigorous towel
and hand-rubbing until the skin is in a healthy glow. The pack we
still employ, wringing the sheet out of water as near the natural
temperature as he can comfortably and at once react from. It is an
admirable means of equalizing the circulation of our patient and
soothing his remaining nervous irritability. We encourage his being
in the open air and sunshine as much as is compatible with the season
and the weather, and favor his taking exercise in every unexhausting
way possible. His appetite will by this time take care of his
nutrition with-out much nursing, but we must listen to its caprices
and provide it with every thing it thinks it would like. Our sedative
medicines may in all likelihood be safely discontinued, and very
little indeed of any kind be given him save tonics. In my experience,
and that of all others to whom I have recommended them, the very best
and most universally to be relied on at this stage are quinine, nux
vomica tincture, and pyro-phosphate of iron, together with last, but
most important of all, our invaluable stand-by, beef-tea. This may be
made more palatable to the fastidious palate which has become palled
by a steady month or two of it, by a few whole cloves and shreds of
onion, but most people relish its delicious meaty flavor quite as well
when it is simply made by chopping lean rump into pieces the size of
dice, covering them with cold water in the proportion of about three
pints to two pounds, letting the whole stand a couple of hours to soak
in a saucepan, then drawing it forward upon the range, where it will
gently simmer for ten minutes, and salting and pouring it out just as
it comes up to a brisk boil. If the meat be just slightly browned on
both sides (not broiled through, remember) before being chopped, the
flavor of the tea is to many tastes still more exquisite. Beef-tea
should be on the range, ready for patients in our house who need it,
at all hours of the day and night, and all the year round. The whole
cookery of our establishment must be of the very best. There is no
greater mistake than that existing in most sanitary institutions--
stinting in the larder and the kitchen. The best meats, the most
skillful, delicate cookery, the freshest of vegetables and fruit, the
ability to tempt the capricious palate by all sorts of savory little
made dishes--these should always characterize the table of a place
where food has to do so much as with us in replacing the fatal
supports of the narcotics and stimuli. It will be noticed that neither
here nor in my mention of tonics have I referred to alcoholic
stimulants. The omission has been intentional. My entire experience
has gone to prove that the use of alcohol in any form with
opium-eaters undergoing cure is worse than useless, almost invariably
redoubling their suffering from loss of opium, and frequently
rendering the craving for a return to their curse an incontrollable
agony. I therefore leave it entirely out, alike of my pharmacopia and
my bill of fare.
A few final words about the attractions of the Island. Besides the
amusements earlier mentioned, I propose that our perfected scheme
shall contain every thing necessary to make the social life in-doors a
delightful refuge, to all far enough advanced to take pleasure in
society, from the dejection and introversion peculiarly characteristic
of opium's revenges. This comprehends a suite of parlors where ladies
and gentlemen can meet in the evening on just the same refined and
pleasant terms that belong to an elegant home elsewhere; furnished
with piano to dance to, play, or sing with; first-class pictures as
fast as our own funds, aided by donations and bequests, can procure
them for us--but bare wall or handsome paper or fresco rather than any
daub to fill a panel; fine engravings in portfolios; cosy open
fire-places; unblemished taste in furniture and carpets; in fine, an
air of the highest ideal of a private family's handsomest
assembling-room. I propose a billiard-room with a couple of tables--so
neatly kept that both ladies and gentlemen can meet there to enjoy the
game, a reading-room with the best papers and magazines and a good
library, both to be enjoyed by guests of either sex; a smoking and
card-room for the gentlemen. I propose to have our engine before
mentioned do the work of taking our invalids up and down stairs by a
lift, like those in use in some of our best hoteis, so that the
highest rooms may be practically as near the baths, the dining and
social apartments, and as eligible as any of the lower ones. And if
feasible, I suggest that some at least of the rooms be arranged in
small suites or pairs, so as to admit of a well daughter, son, sister,
parent, wife, or brother coming to stay with any invalid who needs
their loving presence and nursing.
I have thus given as clear an outline as I can of my idea what such an
institution as we have so often talked over ought to be, and described
a method of treatment which has been successful wherever I have had
the opportunity even to approach its realization. For its perfect
realization an institution especially devoted to the noble work is a
_sine qua non_. If the publication of this letter shall call to
our aid in its establishment, by awakening to a sense of its
necessity, any of our vigorous, public-spirited countrymen, I am sure
we may live to see it flourishing on a sound basis and doing an
incalculable amount of good which shall make mankind wonder how so
many generations ever lived without it since opium began to scourge
the world. I shall then, too, be even more indebted to you than I am
now for the courtesy which has afforded so large a space in your book
to
Your Friend,
FITZ HUGH LUDLOW.
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