Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [48]
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 Theodore"? 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 cannot 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 neighbouring 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, &c., 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 laboured, 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 for two reasons: first, because the mind revolts from retracing 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 anyway referable to opium--positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or even amongst 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, &c., but more
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring 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, &c., 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 laboured, 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 for two reasons: first, because the mind revolts from retracing 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 anyway referable to opium--positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst the last evils from the direct action of opium, or even amongst 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, &c., but more