The Opium Habit

The Opium Habit

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Opium Habit, by Horace B. Day
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Opium Habit
Author: Horace B. Day
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7293] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 8,
2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OPIUM
HABIT ***

Produced by David Maddock, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

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