Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas De Quincey (i love reading books .TXT) 📗

commentary throws a new light upon the case, and greatly improves it as a story; for the old gentleman’s speech, considered as a lecture on pharmacy, is highly absurd; but considered as a hoax on Anastasius, it reads excellently. ↩

I have not the book at this moment to consult; but I think the passage begins⁠—“And even that tavern music, which makes one man merry, another mad, in me strikes a deep fit of devotion,” etc. ↩

A handsome newsroom, of which I was very politely made free in passing through Manchester by several gentlemen of that place, is called, I think, The Porch; whence I, who am a stranger in Manchester, inferred that the subscribers meant to profess themselves followers of Zeno. But I have been since assured that this is a mistake. ↩

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. Teaspoons vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops; so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan’s indulgent allowance. ↩

This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London magistrate (Harriott’s Struggles Through Life, vol. iii. p. 391, third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying laudanum for the gout he took forty drops, the next night sixty, and on the fifth night eighty, without any effect whatever; and this at an advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which sinks Mr. Harriott’s case into a trifle; and in my projected medical treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published gratis. ↩

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. ↩

The reader must remember what I here mean by thinking, because else this would be a very presumptuous expression. England, of late, has been rich to excess in fine thinkers, in the departments of creative and combining thought; but there is a sad dearth of masculine thinkers in any analytic path. A Scotchman of eminent name has lately told us that he is obliged to quit even mathematics for want of encouragement. ↩

William Lithgow. His book (Travels, etc.) is ill and pedantically written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting. ↩

In saying this I mean no disrespect to the individual house, as the reader will understand when I tell him that, with the exception of one or two princely mansions, and some few inferior ones that have been coated with Roman cement, I am not acquainted with any house in this mountainous district which is wholly waterproof. The architecture of books, I flatter myself, is conducted on just principles in this country; but for any other architecture, it is in a barbarous state, and what is worse, in a retrograde state. ↩

On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather, perhaps, it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader may judge for himself, and above all that the Opium-eater, who is preparing to retire from business, may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary:⁠—

First Week Second Week Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud. Mond. June 24 … 130 Mond. July 1 … 80 “ 25 … 140 “ 2 … 80 “ 26 … 130 “ 3 … 90 “ 27 … 80 “ 4 … 100 “ 28 … 80 “ 5 … 80 “ 29 … 80 “ 6 … 80 “ 30 … 80 “ 7 … 80 Third Week Fourth Week Drops of Laud. Drops of Laud. Mond. July 8 … 300 Mond. July 15 … 76 “ 9 … 50 “ 16 … 73½ “ 10 … } “ 17 … 90 “ 11 … } “ 18 … 73½ “ 12 … } Haitus in MS. “ 19 … 70 “ 13 … } “ 20 … 80 “ 14 … 76 “ 21 … 350 Fifth Week Drops of Laud. Mond. July 22 … 60 “ 23 … none “ 24 … none “ 25 … none “ 26 … 200 “ 27 … none.

What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, etc.? The impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the motive, where any motive blended with this impulse, was either the principle, of “reculer pour mieux sauter;” (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awakening found itself partly accustomed to this new ration); or else it was this principle⁠—that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now, whenever I ascended to my large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and could then have borne anything. ↩

Colophon

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
was published in 1821 by
Thomas De Quincey.
This ebook edition is based on the first revision.

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