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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.
Wherever we go among civilized or savage races, in islands or upon continents, in the frigid North or the melting South, we find man resorting to some stimulant other than natural food and drink. It is an instinctive craving, apparently, exhibited and satisfied as surely in the wilds of Africa, or the South Sea Islands, as by the opium-eating Chinese, or the brandy-drinking Anglo-Saxons.
In contrast with the men of weak purpose, we have to admire one who had resolution enough to break off the three habits of opium-eating, whisky-drinking and tobacco-chewing no trifling matter when the first was of ten and the last of more than thirty years' duration.
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.
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.
We rayther think, as Bayley junior observes, 'that the explosion must have hung fire. 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.
As for the moral precepts of the Koran, they were ignored or defied. Wine-drinking and opium-eating were well-nigh universal, prostitution was rampant, and the most degrading vices flaunted naked and unashamed. Even the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, were sink-holes of iniquity, while the "Hajj," or pilgrimage ordained by the Prophet, had become a scandal through its abuses.
"It is not time to laugh yet," said my brother; and we ran on down the alley, out into a small by-street, and straight into the arms of a policeman, who promptly arrested us. The rest of the story was in the newspapers next day, although there was no mention of our names. When the police reached the battlefield they found one dead man the opium-eating and smoking bar-tender.
He looked once into seas which seemed to touch the clouds, drew himself stiff, and plunged into the depths of a mountain of foaming waters, whose summit seemed to him like one of those grotesque and nightmare-distorted efforts of the opium-eating brain. Then the roar sounded all behind him, and he knew that he was through the breakers. He swam to the side of the ship and clutched hold of a chain.
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.
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