WM 286 C653d 1895 44410420R NLH 0SEE5530 7 ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED 1836 WASHINGTON, D.C NLM052255307 RETURN TO NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE BEFORE LAST DATE SHOWN // HB DOCTOR JUDAS A portrayal of THE OPIUM HABIT WILLIAM ROSSER COBBE Opium is the Judas of drugs; it kisses and then betrays Qumque ipse miserrima vidi Et quorum pars magna fui VIRGIL CHICAGO S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 1895 p\ v\ v\ O < ( Copyright, 1895 By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY Uf)t ILafctsiftt $rtss R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO., CHICAGO <^ ^r TO MY WIFE, WHO, INNOCENT, SUFFERED MOST FOR MY TRANSGRESSIONS, AND IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF HER GENTLENESS, FORBEARANCE AND LOVE THROUGHOUT THE LONG NIGHT OF OPIUM SLAVERY, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. In Vinculis Tyranni, CHAPTER II. The Master's Iron Rule, CHAPTER III. Links of Lying and Deceit, CHAPTER IV. Whimsies Rule the Slave, CHAPTER V. Fears Encompass Him, CHAPTER VI. Loquacity and Obstructed Memory, CHAPTER VII. Impairment of Memory, CHAPTER VIII. Pleasures of Slavery, CHAPTER IX. The English Opium Eater, CHAPTER X. The Slave of the Pipe, CHAPTER XI. The Slave of Many Masters, - 5 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. The Drug Before Anything, CHAPTER XIII. How the Tyrant Enslaves, CHAPTER XIV. Assaults upon the Body, CHAPTER XV. How the Drug Works, - CHAPTER XVI. Voices of the Air, CHAPTER XVII. Double and Distorted Vision, CHAPTER XVIII. Laudanum Phantasmagoria, CHAPTER XIX. Sleep, Insomnia and Semi-cerebration CHAPTER XX. Dreams of the Night, CHAPTER XXI. Fantastic and Horrific Dreams, CHAPTER XXII. A Wonderful Battle Scene, CHAPTER XXIII. Vision of Judgment, CHAPTER XXIV Sympathy for the Slave, CHAPTER XXV. The Chains are Broken, PREFACE. "What the gods impose upon us," says Eurip- ides, "we must bear with patience." The un- happy opium eater, alas, has no such consolation as that intimated by the great poet and philoso- pher of the Greeks. Could the victim of the in- satiate drug but feel that the infliction was part of the divine harmony, he might learn to submit to a ministration, the justice of which is to him past cognition. He does understand perfectly that it is not a punishment from the gods, but, rather, determining by effects and suggestions, a device of the Spirit of Evil wherewith to torture men before their time. Of all the ills that exist the opium habit is most utterly barren of a suggestion of consolation. The heavens are closed to the prayers of the habitue for deliver- ance, the charity of the world is denied him, and the skill of the physician is diverted in other directions. His faith is destroyed, his hope has passed into infinite despair, and his love is tinc- tured of the misery that comes of distrust. Will- 7 8 PREFACE. less, helpless, nerveless, and desolate, he is of all creatures most unhappy. Cured as by a miracle of the dreary and heart- breaking habit, the woes and sorrows of those yet under bondage have borne upon my spirit by day and by night. Searching the libraries for literature bearing upon the addiction I have been appalled at the absolute dearth of reliable information concerning the effects of the habit. The world cannot be greatly reprobated for its want of sympathy for the sufferers, since it has had no education upon the all-important subject. Mine has been the misfortune to gain all the needed facts (at a price so terrible the blood runs cold at the very thought of what perils I endured and those I escaped), and there has been with me an ever present urgency to relate in as intelligent a manner as possible the agony of those years in which I suffered. I make no pretense to special inspiration, be- cause I may not understand the term properly, just as the world fails to agree upon its meaning. Still, I do say, that, if complete submission to inner promptings that are irresistible be such, then is every word contained in this book an inspiration. Neither the fame of man nor his wealth could have been any possible temptation PREFACE. g to pursue the painful task that has been under- taken and now practically ended. There has never come a thought of how the intelligence would be received — what motives might be as- cribed to me, or what the critics would say. "I heard a voice saying unto me, write." The sense of the obligation has overshadowed everything else. This is unequivocally true — my testimony comes of intimate knowledge. The story is as yEneas said to Dido, of "Scenes of misery which I myself witnessed and in which I took a principal part." The facts are as represented and can never be successfully confuted. They must at some time be accepted as truth by the scientific world, because they are words of soberness, verified in my life, as well as in that of many others who suffered in all things as I suffered. It is not for me to distress myself over the immediate action of medical men and others concerning the evidence. Truth is invincible when it asserts itself. There has been a groping in the dark, and it would be vain to hope that the shadows will be banished in a trice. The good God orders things well, and He can pierce any soul however "obdurate with the spear of infinite truth. Sub- missively I wait His good time, and rest me in the fact that according to my understanding I 10 PREFACE. have withheld nothing. A thousand facts I would have gladly concealed, a hundred weaknesses I preferred should not be made known; but called to the witness stand by that inexorable judge, conscience, there was insistence, rigorous and in- flexible, that the whole truth be told, and that naught should be extenuated, just as nothing should be set down in malice. Precisely as a trusted, though once sorely tried memory, evoked the shadows from out of the valley of opium night they will be found in the pages of this book. There could be no higher restraint placed upon one outside of the sense of responsibility to God than that which has bound me in the writing of "Doctor Judas." There has been ever present the knowledge that hundreds of dear friends (once slaves of the drug but now free) would at once promptly detect any errors or exaggerations in the recital, and they would be sorely distressed if they found that in any degree I was guilty of prevarica- tion. Then, too, it must be said at the risk of being charged with presumption, I have had the conscious- ness that the testimony would go down to the chil- dren of this generation and their children indefi- nitely, so long as the poppy grows and man is weak. Other books will be written upon this all- important subject ; yet the facts herein related must PREFACE. n be and abide because they are truth. Writing for the living and for those yet to live, mindful of the duty one owes to self and God, the sense of profoundest responsibility has been ever present. The work has been executed in a period of de- cided professional activity and the exigencies of the case have demanded greater expedition than was desired. Under most favored conditions it could scarcely have been hoped that all errors and mistakes would be avoided ; under existing affairs a claim to perfection would be absurd ; but the insistence is as to the facts, the rationale of the habit, the terrible effects, the blinding, absorbing, fright- ful slavery,—all these are given with most faithful exactitude. Where the critic would discover sug- gestions of fancy or riot of words, let him reflect that the Judas of drugs is mad in its diabolic revel- ing with the brains of its slaves and that faithful record demands a following of truth wherever it may lead. The pathology of the habit may clash with pre- conceived ideas in certain quarters ; yet it must stand because it is scientific truth. If accepted science has not yet advanced so far, this is no fault of the writer. This portion of the book is neces- sarily brief, being confined chiefly to a single chapter ; temptations to enter more fully into the 12 PREFACE. technical phases of the subject were successfully resisted, because the story is that of an habitue, designed for the general reader and not for scien- tific students and scholars only. Dreams constitute more than sixty per centum of the life of the slave, for the reason that their realism forces them into his waking moments and makes infinitely more horrible the conjured shapes of sentient hours. Consequently they have been given prominence, and certain of them have been minutely recorded, in order that some idea may be conveyed of their grewsome nature. Terrible as are those that are recorded and the others to which reference only is made, it is here solemnly declared that the worst has not been told, because the world is not ready to accept the whole truth in the matter. What is written concerning De Quincey was essential to a proper understanding of the subject. He is dead, it is true, and it is a good and charita- ble sentiment which urges that nothing be said of the dead, except it be good. Yet the highest obli- gation is to the living and those unborn. The evils of the fascinating " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater " have been beyond estimate and are daily luring innocents to eternal ruin. With intense admiration for the genius of the man and infinite PREFACE. 13 sympathy for his invincible weakness, the duty was laid upon me to puncture the inconsistencies and misleading evidences of the author of the "Confes- sions," and it has been done in a spirit of kindness and charity. There may be an imputation of im- pertinence upon me in assuming a criticism of the corypheus of critics; yet impertinence even may at times become a sublime necessity. There is danger, it is plainly foreseen, that the utterances concerning physicians are likely to be misconstrued by some members of the profession, who will fail to appreciate the fact that one may entertain a high admiration for a science that is far from perfect, as well as for a body of professional men which may have some derelict members. Medical science is by no means as yet exact, and medical practice is not free from mistakes. Such views as these do not constitute disloyalty to the healing art nor prove want of confidence in practi- tioners. Because I have suffered I speak, and be- cause of positive knowledge I warn physicians to exercise greater caution in the use of opium. A word here as to the title of this volume : It will be seen in a subsequent chapter that when a child I was fed with opium cordials to quiet my infantile cries. The drug in this way took the place of the family physician, and this associa- 14 PREFACE. tion, with the subsequent bitter experience with this most treacherous of all remedial agents, led me to give it a personality ; hence the name and the title, " Doctor Judas." Broadened investigation since the cure has demonstrated a fearful increase in this and other enslaving habits. There are thousands of books on drunkenness and thousands of public speakers who warn against the evils of strong drink. Silence profound exists as to the opium habit, the victims of which are chiefly people of intelligence and merit who deserve deliverance. Men rush on their fate ignorantly and without warning. The province of this book is to tell the world that there is no palace of opium full of delectation. The way leads down to hell, and the path is filled with horrors whose shapes are so fearful human pen cannot ade- quately portray them. Eighteen months have passed since narcotic, stimulant, or medicine of any kind has entered my system. In all this time there has been neither desire nor need for any of these things. The former things of an enslaved existence have passed utterly away in the light of a completely restored manhood, which dares undertake any duty what- ever its magnitude. Those yet in slavery may be in all things as I; this is so positively true that I PREFACE. 15 swear it as in the presence of a God who does not pardon perjury. Those who have not yet experi- enced the agony should know that where one has been delivered a million have died in chains, and herewith be warned. The Author. Chicago, III., January, 1895. DOCTOR JUDAS. CHAPTER I. IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. A sense of fancied bliss and heart-felt care, Closing at last in darkness and despair. Cowper — Hope. Inexorable duty, and that alone, has urged the writer to the painful task of recording the terrible story of a nine years' slavery to opium. Nothing can be farther from his mind than a purpose to crave sympathy ; for he, like Bunyan's Christian, has had his load removed ; the memory of it alone remains, and this no amount of pity can efface. The all-pervading law of compensation cannot be evaded by any creature of God, and my sins find their constant punishment in the remembrance of them. This record of sorrow is made that others may escape the great transgression, and that those now in the valley of the sombre shadows may find courage of hope in the wonderful deliverance of him who writes. I was born of parents whose natures were highly sensitive, both being subject to melancholy and to periodic attacks of excessive nervousness. My 2 17 i8 DOCTOR JUDAS. father was upwards of fifty at my birth, and he was born when his father was more than three-score and a drunkard ; my mother owed her being to an old man of seventy. While freely admitting the merit of the argument for the resistant properties of bod- ily cells to toxic drugs, where the habit has been confirmed for one generation or more, still, it is none the less true that old men afflicted with ner- vous disorders, whether superinduced by alcoholism or the result of natural infirmity, cannot be fathers of children who will be indifferent to nerve exci- tants. Physical diseases may not be hereditary, but it is an inflexible law that the weak cannot give forth strength. If the fathers have eaten the sour grapes of senility, the children that come at such period must have their teeth set on edge. Out from the thunder and cloud of Sinai burst the prophetic curse of innocents because of the sins of their sires. No physicist dares to deny that the denunciation includes mental and nervous, as well as moral dis- orders. Nothing is more sure than that from the womb I was heir to physical weakness, my earliest recollec- tion revealing a peculiar sensitiveness to pain, ner- vous disorder, upon slight provocation, and a ten- dency to non-assimilation of food. This was up- wards of forty years ago, when physicians did not, as now, urge hygienic prevention of disease, but, rather, made medicines the highest court of appeal, as well as the lowest trial place, in all cases. Un- happily, too, in those days the dicta of physicians IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. 19 were deemed infallible, and they not only gave med- icine for every ailment, small or great, but they also prescribed it in heroic doses. When but eight years old I was given fifteen grains of calomel at a single dose for the warding off of a hypothetical malarial attack, and ten hours later was coerced into swallowing twenty grains of quinine. "Sooth- ing" remedies for children were in universal use by mothers as well as physicians; nearly all these pre- parations then, as now, having opium as their basic principle. Thus from infancy up I was fed upon paregoric, Bateman's drops, Godfrey's cordial, or laudanum, whenever lamentations from any cause evoked the spectre of impossible disease. Natur- ally, as time passed, these pernicious decoctions were gradually discarded, but there can be no ques- tioning of the insistence that the persistent use of them in early childhood gave to the physical cells an appetite which they never lost. The readiness with which the mature man of thirty-eight suc- cumbed to opium was undoubtedly due to this early habitude and hereditary environment. Ungrateful and untruthful indeed would be a single reproach cast upon the authors of my being, who in all matters relating to the care and education of their children, as well as in all the relations and duties of life, were guided by the brightest light of gentle and affectionate Christian conscientiousness. They but practiced the lesson taught by their teach- ers, the physicians of their time, in whom they had implicit faith and confidence. Herein they differed 20 DOCTOR JUDAS. greatly from millions of parents of this generation, who persist in giving opiates to their children, in reckless indifference to the protest of enlightened modern practitioners. A detailed history of my life, eventful as it has been, would not be pertinent to the purpose of this writing, which is to reveal the danger of the poppy gum, even when restricted to the prescription of the physician, and the infinite despair of opium slavery, from which so few mortals have been emancipated. Only such portions, then, will be given as may have bearing upon the addiction which so nearly ended in utter destruction. At the age of fourteen the sound of guns turned against Fort Sumter proclaimed the civil war and throughout the entire four years of contention I was in almost daily peril; this at a period of life when there was the greatest need for the quiet and pro- tection of home. A nervous, easily irritated, and physically weak lad does not improve his condition by being thrust into adventures that challenge best intelligence to emerge from without fatal disaster. Mental strains protracted through weeks, incarcera- tion in military prisons, pursued by the enemy and forced to dwell among wild beasts in the jungles are not conducive to the healthy development of ado- lescence ; yet these and many additional perils were endured before the age of eighteen. In view of such an experience, it need not surprise any that at this time I was attenuated in body and confirmed in bodily ills. Thenceforward nervous unrest con- IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. 21 stantly called for change and my lot was cast in many places during the next twenty-five years. Immediately following the war two years were spent in a counting room, where the responsibilities were grave, especially for one so young; in addi- tion, studies that had been too frequently inter- rupted during the war were renewed with nervous ardor. Again and again, after unremitting labors in business during the day, would the entire night be passed among text-books; it was rare that four hours of the twenty-four were spent in bed. At the end of the first year of this life an irresistible resolve came to enter the Christian ministry; a step that was foolishly improper and one that led to infinite after disquietude and wretchedness. Such an impulse could have come, under the conditions that existed, only of a mind that was distraught through unhealthy speculation upon the deep and unfathomable things pertaining to the infinite here- after. Far back in childhood there was displayed a remarkable precocity in matters relating to Christian duty, religious dogma, and reflections upon the Divine character. Before the age of six I seriously inquired concerning the beginning of God, a subject that Hindoo philosophy declares to be too profound for the sanity of mature minds. Favorite authors a year later, the seventh of existence, were Paradise Lost, Pilgrim's Progress, Dr. Dick's Works, Young's Night Thoughts. Pollok's Course of Time, lives of saints and modern prelates, with divers other books along the same lines. Had the unhealthy child 22 DOCTOR JUDAS. been less reflective and more confiding, intelligent parents would have diverted the mind from such injudicious reading. The mischief grew unchecked, until, at the age of seventeen, there was ill-defined skepticism, which excited great alarm; because, brought up in the orthodox faith, doubting could not remove the threats and promises of the Script- ures. The mental struggle continued, until, in despair of other solution of the vexed problem, the determination was reached to enter the ministry, under the delusion that doubts dare not penetrate the holy of holies of a temple dedicated to the ser- vice of the Infinite Good. Looking backward through nearly thirty years, no excuse can be found for such a proceeding. The pious and eminent man who instructed me in spir- itual truth loved me as a son in the flesh ; a single word would have caused him to check this wayward movement of immature and inconsiderate youth. Pride, which has been the evil genius of a checkered life, urged to silence and precipitate study ; so that, eighteen months later, the bookkeeper and account- ant was a clergyman. Nothing could have been more ideally delight- ful, exteriorly, than a pastorate which covered but a single year. Assigned to a circuit in one of the wealthy and aristocratic counties of the Old Domin- ion, as assistant to a minister of distinguished goodness, my home was in his happy family. The infinite charm of that domestic hearth remains in quickened and precious memory, which tells with IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. 23 affection and gratitude of the disinterested kind- ness and ineffable sympathy of that righteous man, now resting on the bosom of Christ, and of his saintly wife, and beautiful and intellectual daughters. The two sons, also, became closely bound in warmest brotherly affection. Theirs was a Chris- tian home that presented the sublimest form of liv- ing ; a home where discord never entered, but the great law of life was the law of gentle love. Beneath such a roof doubts and fears should have been dispelled like mists before the bright, rising sun. I made many warm friends, because I worked dili- gently, honestly seeking to do the right. The people everywhere were kind and considerate, being ready at all times to overlook callowness and accept immature utterances for words of intended wisdom. The country was strikingly picturesque, the air delightful, even in midwinter, and horseback rides were made daily, covering wide stretches of romantic country. Still, neither the solace of a peaceful and happy home, nor the charm of wood and field could bring rest to a spirit that brooded constantly over the unknowable. While oppressed with doubts and fears an ap- pointment as chaplain in the United States navy, unsolicited and unexpected, turned thought and action in an entirely different direction. After a year of "waiting orders" at home I was assigned to duty at the Gosport (Virginia) Navy Yard ; but precarious health demanding a change I was soon transferred to the " Severn," flagship of the North 24 DOCTOR JUDAS. Atlantic squadron, joining her at Key West, Florida. The serious illness of my wife, for I had married the previous year, necessitated a return home. Early in June, 1871, orders were received for duty at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis; thence I accompanied the midshipmen upon their cruise in northern waters, as chaplain of the old ship " Constellation." During the first month or two after the return to the Academy I was acting chap- lain of the institution, preaching to the expressed satisfaction of officers and cadets, but to my own infinite misery. Great was the relief, consequently, when the clerical duties came to an end and I was made an instructor in the department of ethics and English studies. Such a life as that now led should have brought contentment, peace, and happiness ; because I was on the best of terms with the faculty and students, the salary was ample for modest wants, and the position one for life ; while domestic rela- tions were all that could be desired, a baby having come to strengthen marital love. Nevertheless unrest continued, and health finally giving away I was detached at my request in November, 1872. In the following January I was ordered to the Mare Island (California) Navy Yard. The climate of the Pacific coast was found to be most hurtful ; returning east I resigned the commission as a naval officer, because of an abiding belief that there was moral culpability in discharging the duties of a clergyman when fitness was lacking for that work. Credentials as a minister were not surrendered until a year or more IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. 25 had passed, because of a desire to spare the feelings of a devoted mother, whose heart was set upon the continuance of her son in that sacred office. Retirement from the navy was almost immedi- ately followed by service in the internal revenue department, the duties being discharged in one of the Southern States, during which time active literary work was begun and has continued to the present hour. Concerning the subsequent six years, at the end of which came the fastening of the gyves of opium, but little need be said. This was a period of greatest possible intellectual activity, there being the duty of conducting a daily paper in a small city. This involved the writing of every editorial, all of the miscellany and much of the local copy; managing the entire business depart- ment ; giving personal care to the mechanical work (there being a job printing and book bindery department). Besides the daily a weekly edition was issued, while two monthlies were published under contract. Added to these duties were local party leadership and active participation in local public improvements, to say nothing of compre- hensive reading and study or of voluminous writ- ings upon a wide range of subjects. A frame that had never been strong was at last crushed by these superimposed burdens, and physical and mental disaster followed. What was needed at this time was a long rest from labor of all kind. There was superlative nervousness with great irritability and most dis- 26 DOCTOR JUDAS. tressing insomnia. Any excitant, and opium is a powerful disturber of the nerves, was a menace to life, which was then on a tension that stretched its limitations to the utmost. There had been ever present since childhood a consuming desire for stimulants, which self-respect and exercise of the will kept under control. Not- withstanding these facts and this condition, advant- age was taken of an illness to saturate the system with the hell drug, morphine, and when conscious- ness returned the mastery of the tyrant was com- plete. The curse had been fixed, and weak, help- less, and crushed, I was bound like Prometheus, while the vultures of despair tore at my vitals. This book is in no sense an apology for the frightful addiction, yet the confessions are value- less, except they be veracious and entirely candid. It is simple truth that no more responsibility at- taches to me for my opium slavery than to the babe which contracts diphtheria through the igno- rance or heedlessness of its mother. From the hour the horrible fact was revealed until the final deliverance, there was a persistent endeavor to break the chains and escape from the gloomy dun- geon. Alas! I was as powerless as Laocoon in the coils of the writhing serpents. Now, emerged from the gloomy prison house and competent to testify concerning the habit, in behalf of the innumerable hosts that are bound hand and foot, it is meet, right, and a bounden IN VINCULIS TYRANNI. 27 duty to declare that the opium " fiend " merits the profoundest sympathy of every heart that has been touched by a single woe. The first work of the Judas drug is to double-lock the prison door of the will, so that successful struggle against the demo- niac possession is impossible. During the subjec- tion I fought nine times three hundred and sixty- five days against the diabolic master. Again and again the adversary seemed to be nearly overcome, the daily quantity having been reduced to a mini- mum, while in one titanic contest there was com- plete victory for five days ; not one drop having entered the mouth in that time. At the end of these one hundred and twenty hours I was in a most deplorable condition. The entire surface of the body was pricked by invisible needles. If one who has felt the painful sensation of a single one will multiply that by ten million, he may dimly grasp the intensity of that form of suffering. All the muscles of the body were relaxed; there were copious watery discharges from mouth, nose, and eyes ; the fingers seemed to be falling away from the hands, the hands from the wrists, and the knees smote together in an agony. Every joint of the body was racked with consuming fire, while inter- mittently from every skin-pore there issued a del- uge of sweat, which speedily dried and left the skin like parchment. Above all, the soul was oppressed with disquietude, the heart fluttered like a wounded bird, and the brain faltered from irresolution. Thus 28 DOCTOR JUDAS. tortured by bodily inquisitorial demons, crazed by wild darting nerves, and devoured by apprehen- sion of shapeless death, I held out my hand and, placing the poisoned chalice to the crackling lips, soon subsided into physical quiet and mental torpor. CHAPTER II. THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. What pale distress afflicts those wretched isles. There hope never dawns, and pleasure never smiles. Falconer — Shipwreck. No stars were visible in the long night of the opium habit. The face of the moon was hidden and there were no sweet influences of Pleiades to bind the spirit. Visitors in Mammoth Cave, who stand by the black and silent waters of Echo River, can extinguish their lights, and, in the mighty shadows of a darkness that may be felt, hear the heart-beats of their companions. Infinite as the physical gloom of this cavern and awfully silent as its depths is the night of the soul in thrall to opium. The way leads along the edge of yawning chasms, and gnomes and goblins infest every path. It is time that the beauteous garb which distorted fancy has thrown around the Jezebel drug be torn off, and the hideous, painted hag be revealed in all her hateful deformity. It is not denied that, as a rule, beatific visions appear to the opium neophyte; but only too soon the inexorable tyrant leads his vassals out of the myth paradise into the Inferno over whose gate burn the damning words, "Abandon all hope, ye 29 30 DOCTOR JUDAS. who enter here." The periodicity of exaltation gradually diminishes, the ecstatic visions pale and finally go out like the sputtering candle in the socket. Vainly the victim has repeated recourse to his drug; uselessly he resorts to increased quantity; its power of enchantment is lost forever. Between the stages of delight and pain there is a middle ground of hebetude, where one "forgets one's self to marble"; he is cold, indifferent, supine, and cal- lous. Presently the pricks and goads are applied and the quivering flesh agonizes under the affliction. The stricken one passes into an arctic night of hor- ror, unrelieved by borealis, or moon, or star, a night of thick cloud and darkness, where phosphorescent phantoms with seeming of real substance torture remorselessly. Personally there come out of the past no visions or dreams of an ecstatic character. This may have been due in part to physical pain, or to a tolerance for the drug, so that the quantity taken was not adequate to the end attained by others. That such recollections do not return is assuredly no fault of the memory. Would to God that a great wall might be built up to shut off forever the accursed fields of opium land. Possessed of a prodigious memory, that faculty has in no sense been impaired by the saturation which the brain received. All the events, scenes, incidents, tragedies, doubts, fears, dreams, and visions of that epoch are graven as deep in the mind as hieroglyphs in Cleopatra's needle. Designing that these confessions shall be THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 31 honest before God and man, the effort has been earnest, yet vain, to call out from among the grim spectres and multiform apparitions the Agepomena and ravishing attractions so graphically portrayed by De Quincey in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." That there was excitation during the first months is true, but at the best the day vis- ions and night dreams were as the semi-delirium of the fever-touched brain, which flashes elusive wraiths whose smiling lips are shadowed by eyes of melancholy. In all ihejeux de theatres of the evanes- cent imagination no single scene is presented in which angels hover over the boards, or fairies enter with God-offered gifts. There were periods of in- differentism, many of them, when the lethean draught caused the realities of the world to appear as shadows and time passed as in a dream, although the senses lay awake in their restful cells. But this was, after all, an i?isoucia?it state, a fiddle-faddle existence, little removed from that of the dormouse or slug. In such hours there was positive insensi- bility to pain, but likewise incapacity to enjoy. The distinguished writer quoted dwells with unc- tuous delight upon the ineffably sensuous dreams and the Canterbury Tale visions of his waking hours during the first years of his addiction. His expe- rience is similar to that of most opium takers whom I know, except that not one claimed that the fool's paradises of the night or the fairy lands of the day endured for more than one year. The greater num- ber declared that all the pleasure they derived from 32 DOCTOR JUDAS. it ended with the first six months. Their evidence is to be credited before his, because they have been cured of the addiction, with its associated evils of lying, deception, and moral cowardice. The hours of that long night of gloom are num- bered; it is possible to give the events that hap- pened in them, in their order ; but it seems best to follow out ideas and impressions to their logical re- sults, emphasizing in this way the several effects of the drug, rather than to pursue incidents in their sequence. The latter course would result in a rec- ord of symptoms and tendencies that grow in inten- sity with time, since nearly all of the evils were manifest in the first year of the habit; merely tak- ing on added potency with the persistence of the dispensation. The habit was riveted in the form of mor- phine by injection. A million years would not eradicate the recollection of the first flash of the truth upon a brain that had been clouded by fever. It was upon an autumn day when a broad landscape was revealed through an open window, showing groves of vari-colored foli- age, meadows, and hilltops yet green. A noble river flowed through a lovely valley, flashing its brilliants regally as it overrode the eternal rocks that sought to impede its progress. The sun was sinking in splendor of crimson in a bed of purest gold, throwing out goodnight benisons upon wood and field and water. Just awakened out of sleep, the beauty of the entire scene was flashed at a THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 33 glance. Here was an Eden, with but a single habi- tant ; my heart for a moment exulted in the posses- sion of it ; but, within an instant, almost, an inde- scribable horror rushed upon me with the fury of a cyclone, and in that whirlwind was brought the con- sciousness of slavery. There was not needed any confirmation from the lips of the physician, who was responsible for the immortal soul committed to his keeping in the helplessness of physical weakness. There is no quibble or evasion by which accounta- bility can be transferred from the intelligent direc- tor of the act to the unconscious and helpless suf- ferer. Either there is no sin in the opium habitue's life, or his misdeeds belong to him who made them possible. Lying there in an agony of thought, the gloam- ing came and star gems glittered in the bosom of the night, suggesting an eternity of entailed suffer- ing; when the cause of the wretchedness entered. What boots now his tergiversations and his final ad- mission, with the avowal that the drug had saved life. Mercy is the name of the good angel through whose benign influence knowledge of the future is hidden from mortality. Had it been possible to foresee what the future would bring, there would have then been enacted a double tragedy. Let the curtain be rung down upon this scene, for the poor fool who was the prime demon of the drama is not worthy the attention he has already attracted. Le jeu ne vant pas la chandclle. When dawning consciousness permitted intelli- 3 34 DOCTOR JUDAS. gent reflection, it became apparent that hypodermic injections of morphine would speedily lead to a use of extraordinary quantities of the drug. Each exaltation was followed by a depression lower than the preceding one, which necessitated an increase of the opium salt, that even then was racking the entire nervous system. The first attempt at relief was one that looked to a complete breaking asunder of the bonds. A thought came of Samson bound and forced to "grind in bonds of steel" for his cap- tors ; and there was a willingness to be buried in the ruins of the temple drug, if only the strength might be present to tear down and destroy the devil of melancholy and unrest that was goading the spirit. As Jacob at Bethel I wrestled with the good angel of resolution and refused to let him go ; invoking the assistance of that Deity whose physical laws had been ruthlessly violated and whose providence had been doubted. The intensity of this period of struggle endured for weeks ; yet, though the contest was manful, the conviction finally and despairingly came that I was hopelessly fettered. There was no Vulcan to break with his hammer the forged chains, and, panting and half-expiring, submission was made to the inexorable tyrant. Then it was that a compromise was suggested and acted upon. Knowing that quinine, an alkaloid of cinchona, was more active than the bark and that persons who were unable to endure the former read- ily took the latter, I concluded that gum opium was less nerve-and-brain exciting than its active salt. It THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 35 was an easy matter to refer to the dispensatory and learn that the two and one-half grains then taken (morphine hypodermically given has twice the potency of that taken by the mouth) would be represented by about 34 grains of opium (dry). Gum and powdered opium were, however, most nauseating, and, within a fortnight, laudanum was substituted. The authority referred to shows that 10.4 minims of laudanum (tinctura opii) are equal to one grain of the gum ; so that the diurnal allot- ment of the tincture was 374 minims, or 6.25 fluid- drachms (teaspoonful). This quantity was divided into three portions, taken at 7 a. m., 1 p. m., and 7 p. m., daily; these hours remained unchanged dur- ing the continuance of the habit: This was in the fourth month of the addiction; eight months later, the allowance had grown to twelve fluid-drachms, or four teaspoonfuls three times daily. Then came the knowledge, profound and immutable, that the long- abused stomach could not possibly endure more of the poison; that election must be made between an early death or a fast holding to the point then reached. Great as is the enervating effect of the drug and terrible as is its prostration of the will, yet a determination to abide by the then imbibition was maintained throughout all the subsequent stages. Physical ills multiplied, nervous excitation increased, and the woe of an irrepressible sorrow became ever- present ; yet, except upon three occasions that may be noted elsewhere, nothing could shake this resolu- tion. How the man without will could exercise this 36 DOCTOR JUDAS. firmness in a single direction is inexplicable, because the struggle was one of daily occurrence and increas- ing with the passage of time. The cumulative evil effects are certain and depressing influences magnify in intensity. There were times when the tincture had no more effect, seemingly, than would an equal quantity of water taken from a spring gushing out of a hillside. The only possible explanation of this fortitude (if that may be so termed which was a sullen front offered against the further encroach- ments of a loathed invader) was an abiding belief that speedy death would follow any added yielding of ground, and the change out of mortality was invested with every horror that a disturbed fancy could invent. Frightful as the sufferings became, and "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered the heart of man to know" the measure- lessness of the opium "fiend's" torture, they were preferred before the ills that were shaped of the deft fingers of a crazed fancy given over to despair. Emphasis is laid upon this experience because it is radically different from that of numbers of friends who had the addiction in one form or another. Whether they smoked to lethean depths, ate the gum of the baneful poppy flower, or used the crys- tal alkaloid by syringe or the mouth, in every case the insatiable appetite of the habit monster was sought to be appeased by steadily increasing quan- tities. Like the horse-leech the incessant cry of the opium slave is for "more" of the drug that en- ticed him to his doom. The addictions of some of THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 37 these miserables reached astounding proportions. One added day by day to his potion until he swal- lowed 7,680 drops, one fluid-pint, or sixteen ounces, of laudanum daily; this being equal to 738 grains of opium (dry), or 110 grains of morphine. De Quincey drank 8,000 drops of laudanum daily, but his tincture was much weaker than that made by the United States formula, his daily potion being equal to but 320 grains of opium. Yet the author of the "Confessions" rated himself facile princeps among opium habitues. A gentleman living in Southern Illinois took 80 grains of morphine hypodermically every day, this being equal to 160 grains by the mouth; which stands for 1,072 grains of opium, or one and one-half pints of laudanum (U. S. formula). This extraordinary enslavement was surpassed by a resident of Northern Illinois, who swallowed 250 grains of morphine daily; which is equal to 1,685 grains of opium, or 17,524 drops, upwards of a quart of laudanum. The two last referred to had the cocaine addiction as well, each using a large quantity of this baleful drug every day. Still another acquaintance actually took 350 grains of morphine daily, this being equal to 2,345 grains of opium, or more than seven times that taken by De Quincey. Hundreds of instances might be given from personal knowledge of indi- viduals (whose diurnal addiction ranged from the equivalent of 20 grains of morphine to 190 grains of that salt), attesting the increasing tendencies of the habit. Opium non saltat—opium does not leap, 38 DOCTOR JUDAS. but, like Nature in all her works, is steady and pro- gressive in the development of the habitude, malgre" the resistance of the writhing victim. My own daily addiction was equal to 68-J- grains of opium, or io-f- grains of morphine; but comparison of symptoms and sufferings with many others would indicate that it is not so much a mat- ter of quantity as temperament and resisting power of the habitue. It does not by any means follow that those who take most endure greatest pains, and it is certain that in the treatment for cure, many whose addictions were the largest yielded to reme- dial agencies with least show of suffering. What has been said of the quantity is also true as to the duration of the habit; some who had been saturated as long as twenty-five years coming out from under the yoke with as little effort as those who had been enslaved but for three or five years. The crowning fact of all, in every case, is that whether the quan- tity taken was greater or less, or for a longer or shorter period, in every instance the restoration was complete. Of opium, as of no other enslaving drug, it may be truly said, cessante causa, cessat effectus—the effect ceases with the cause ; perfect health crowning the healed man with rejoicing. In this connection it may be suggested that opium (where not otherwise indicated in this book this word will be used in a generic sense, comprehending all the forms—the gum and powdered, laudanum and paregoric, as well as morphine) is one of the most eccentric drugs known to materia medica. As THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 39 Virgil said of Polyphemus, it is " monstrum, horren- dum, informe, ingens "—a monster, misshapen, hor- rid, huge, to the mental vision of every habitue ; yet it is more subtle than the serpent of Eden and more seductive than the sirens of the rocks. A learned student in the school of opium once said to the writer: "Opium has a personality, as it were, and displays extraordinary cunning in dealing with its captives. Much as we may loathe the drug, it is undeniable that it destroys the germs of seven- tenths of the diseases of mankind. Yet, such is its subtlety, that after a disease is cured by it the symptoms of that malady are simulated by the drug, in order to persuade the habitue of the necessity of continuing its use." While by no means inclined to indorse this poetic sentiment, it is most true that my physical pains which antedated the habit con- tinued, or seemed to, throughout the entire servi- tude, and it is equally certain that the last vestige of them disappeared with the opium. Since restora- tion my health is perfect and every faculty of the brain alert. Opium would seem to hold in prison many of the bodily and mental functions, only to release them unharmed when the drug itself is banished. The incarceration, however protracted, does not in anywise interfere with the potency of parts affected. Since the burden of this book is a condemnation of the poppy devil, it may be permitted me to say one word more concerning the virtue that may be found in the arch-enemy. The gentleman above 40 DOCTOR JUDAS. quoted, who is a most skilful physician, employed this strong language in a conversation had with me a short time ago : " You know what just cause I have to reprobate opium ; yet it is but fair to say that, if I were limited by law to the use of a single drug in my practice and were accorded the privilege of making a choice, I should not hesitate to name that toxic remedy. There are special diseases that can be reached by no other known agencies. I speak, of course, for a cautious and intelligent use of the highly dangerous drug." While offering this high testimony to the beneficent uses of opium, there flashes the reflection, considering the incalcu- lable harm which has been and is being done through its agency, does the good compensate for the evil? When the nine drear and despairing years of my addiction are considered, there will come the conviction that all the benefits it has conferred upon humanity will not atone for the sin it is guilty of towards a single individual who is its helpless slave. Contention has been made that in the hands of physicians there is safety in its use. This is con- trary to the evidence of numbers of former habitues, all of whom, save two, had the habit fastened upon them by their family doctors. Confirmation of the danger that comes from medical carelessness is had in a trustworthy record of more than twelve hun- dred cases, upward of seventy per centum of whom owed their serfdom to the same agent. It should be explained that many of those personally known THE MASTER'S IRON RULE. 41 are themselves physicians, who prescribed the drug that fastened the habit upon their souls ; yet this in no wise weakens the force of my insistence. This much is unqualifiedly true ; the opiate should never be given for a longer period than a week, at the most, and the patient should be kept in absolute ignorance of the nature of the prescription. It is absurd to insist that the physician can shut off the use of it merely by refusing to give it any longer. What does the sick one care for the doctor's interdict, when he can buy enough at the nearest drug store to fix the habit upon a score of persons? The one safety lies in keeping away from opium. Whatever the remedial virtues of the powerful nerve agent, " its lure is woe and its sting is death." Is " wine a mocker? is strong drink raging?" By how much more is opium a fretting storm of wind and wave, the fury of whose lashings will never cease until the poor wretch is wrecked on the illim- itable shore of infernal despair.. Now safely moored in the harbor of deliverance and every peril over, still there come out of the past the horrid din of the contending elements, the flare of the lightning, the angry roll of the thunder, the dull, heavy rush of the white-capped waves; the frightful memory will never fade so long as that faculty remains to the brain. Safe from the dan- gers of Scylla and Charybdis, from the lashed fury of the whirling and eddying waters, thought sug- gests the thousands and the millions that are yet in 42 DOCTOR JUDAS. the rage and fury of the sea, their frail barks helm- less and pilotless, and fast hurrying upon the rocks of eternity. Out of the everlasting calm my voice sounds a clarion shout of warning to those not yet engulfed to avoid the course marked by the opium ships down in the troughs of the waves. CHAPTER III. LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat, Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.—Butler. A fact that cannot be confuted is a growing tolerance for the drug in the habitue, as has been already clearly set forth. Were this tendency not present in all cases, then evils of the narcotic would be effaced, and opium, instead of being a prime curse of civilization, might be an unqualified blessing. Just as the desire for larger quantities grows, so the bodily and mental disturbances swell until the final flood of the habit. There is not pres- ent, however, that gradual, day-by-day accretion, the here a little and there a little, as an ancient deserted Asiatic city accumulated the dust of ages. Opium makes no vaulting, although what it does, it does quickly; that is to say, the tyrant loses no time in fettering the human soul, but all of the sequential effects are by no means apparent or cognizable until after accumulating attacks aggravate their symp- toms. There are certain organic disturbances that are kept smouldering like the pent-up fires of a Vesuvius ; being finally released in a lava-flow that threatens the engulfment of life. Nevertheless 43 44 DOCTOR JUDAS. these troubles had their beginning in the mewling time of the habit. Properly appreciating the fact that, whatever the physiological or psychological effects, they were synchronous with the matin period of the habitude, there will be no difficulty in follow- ing the story to its conclusion. The evils that existed in the ninth were also present in the first year. The opium inquisitor brings out the rack and stretches the victim upon it without delay; but, like Grimalkin, which plays with the mouse before de- stroying it, the stretching and pulling are applied slowly and torturously and continue as long as there is life. There would be little trouble in calling up in their order from the graves of the opium past every spirit of evil and show it in its deformity. So pow- erful is memory that the task would be inconsequen- tial to make a daily record of impressions, dreams, vagaries, incidents and events for the entire period of the addiction. Such a memorandum would, how- ever, be wearisome, as the environment of Sunday was as that of Monday, and so on through the week and every week of the habit. Let it be un- derstood that opium is distinctively sui generis among drugs, and that there were no new creations as the months and years rolled by. Another word of explanation that would seem to be imperative is one of regret that much of the evi- dence communicated to me has been received in confidence that must be sacred as the whispered sentence in the ear of the priest of God. Whatever LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 45 their value might be to science, the spirits that are glad in their release shall not again be made sor- rowful by any act of mine in bringing their person- ality to the public gaze. Because this is so, many of the utterances contained in this volume may ap- pear dogmatic and unproved. The hope is earnestly held, however, that the world will be ready to be- lieve that one who has nerved himself to tear open afresh his own frightful wounds and bare them to universal gaze for the cause of the truth could scarcely afford to utter any statement for which he has not confirmatory evidence in his own life, or in that of other credible witnesses. A single explana- tion more : every person to whom reference has been or will be made was once a slave of the drug- king, but is now perfectly restored to the liberty of health and released from the bondage of that master. It is not an easy matter to enter the shadows of the opium night and pursue each spirit separately, for the reason that one frequently merged into an- other, or many confusedly massed together. That is to say, no single effect was completely isolated ; one would enter or be dependent upon another at times, and there were occasions when a whirlwind of woes, mental and physical, overwhelmed the man. There is not the slightest difficulty in deter- mining the first marked characteristic of the habit. Scarcely had there come a realizing sense of the subjection, when there was present a purpose to take no one into confidence. The physician was 46 DOCTOR JUDAS. urged to secrecy ; the wife who should have been informed was studiously kept in ignorance of the fact. Concealment of the practice became a su- preme object in life and so remained throughout the habit. This necessarily led to deceit and with it lying, for the two are sisters. It is to be doubted if any inward degradation is lower than that which comes of wilful deceit. The man who has lost confidence in himself, who knows, or who thinks he knows, that he is not what the world esteems him, is a despicable wretch in his own eyes. It is not possible to find language to portray the feelings of one, who, reared from infancy to be frank and hon- est with himself, knew that he was constantly play- ing a part. In every step of the habit, through every day of every year, there was an ever abiding horror of detection and an ever present purpose to conceal the detestable appetite at any cost. Had life itself depended upon the confession, even that must have been surrendered before the dread and awful secret that burned in the lacerated breast. Whether upon the street, in the study, or at home, anywhere and everywhere, was the abiding fear, "Be sure your sin will find you out." Did one, though an entire stranger, direct his gaze for an in- stant in my direction, there would come a failing of the heart, and, wretched miserable sinner, the form- ing of a sweeping denial would go quickly on in the perturbed brain, ready to be cast forth the instant an imputation of the truth was made. The fear of detection was ever present, an overpowering- LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 47 gloomy terror, that threatened to come like an un- announced seismic outburst and bring utter ruin with it; yet, after all, this fear was insignificant, as time passed, in comparison with the punishment that came of the continuous, despicable feeling of moral degradation—the pollution of the soul through de- ceit. Here was needed no judge to condemn; the conscience flayed with live scorpions. Worst of all came the final thought : "You cannot forever con- ceal ; the exposure must and will come some day— at your death, if not earlier. Then will your friends and acquaintances know you for a vile dissembler, a Cagliostro without his jugglery, a malingering sol- dier who has failed in his every duty." One day, in the fifth year of the addiction, after passing on the street an acquaintance who was a Frenchman, I distinctly heard these words: " Cest un trompeur"—he is a deceitful man. To be sure the man never uttered them, this being one of the delusions known, as "hearing voices;" but they were genuine enough at the time and followed me for weeks and months afterward, bringing a flush of shame to the cheeks every time they were recalled. Explanation of this overweening fear of detection is found in the fact that the habitue knows the world has no charity cloak to throw about him ; he real- izes fully that he is not understood ; he is an enigma that has been given up as past solution. The drunkard displays pleasurable emotions at times; his neighbors find excuse for him in his goodfellow- ship; but the opium "fiend" is silent, gloomy, and 48 DOCTOR JUDAS. repressive. He makes no noise or shout, is not confined to his bed after a debauch, gives no evi- dence of special disorder, and, in consequence, his friends pronounce him a depraved wretch, to whom mercy would come as a curse. Because he knows this, he cowers lest the world should know and vote the ostracism of utter shame and banishment. The feeling, too, is one that this judgment is not unjust. He reflects upon what he might have been and what he is; what lights once flashed out and brightened the road ahead ; how now all the lamps have gone out and no oil is left to fill them. He knows him- self to be aimless, purposeless, and despairing; accomplishing nothing, expecting nothing, and he sentences himself with far less show of mercy than the world would execute against him. The habit is a sneaking one. The leopard may be tamed but it cannot be taught to get rid of the deceit that was so necessary a part of its life in the wild state. The eye of the creature reveals the craft it employed in creeping upon old world monkeys in their native forests, and nothing will ever rid the beast of that look. So opium is a deceitful, sneaking wretch, who communicates of his spirit to those he has enthralled. Just as the drug is a narcotic, precisely as it leads one into false worlds of phantasmal absurdities and pleasing illusions, only that it may afterwards damn the soul with horrors, so it leads the spirit into self-decep- tion and to desperate attempts at deception of others. The word self-deception is used, because, LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 4q while oftentimes neighbors and friends may not be aware one is in the opium habit, they realize beyond any peradventure that he is in the toils of some inexorable tyrant. The next step in the habit is approached with greatest reluctance; thought of the confession causes the cheeks to tingle with shame. Reared in a community where mendacity is classed with cow- ardice and thievery, it is most painful to admit that for a period of nine years one was tin menteur a triple e'tage—an egregious liar. In Scandinavian literature occurs these lines : " The very first thought to which Loki gave birth, It was a lie, and he bade it descend In a woman's shape to the men of earth." For "Loki" let "opium" be substituted and in place of "woman" read "habitue" and the tale is complete. One is likely to hear in quarters where more reli- able information ought to exist that an opium "fiend" will only lie about matters connected with his habit. Is it possible for one to show the case of one man, in the possession of all his faculties in health, who is entitled to credence in all matters save one ? Liars with such discriminating tenden- cies have no existence. If a man in a normal con- dition cannot do this thing, why should it be thought that one can so divide truth from falsehood who is at no time in a state of moral responsibility ? How can such an one lie like a Cretan about his habit and be veracious in all things else ? There is 4 50 DOCTOR JUDAS. no line that divides his habit from his general life. Again and again will he deceive in some matter having no relation to opium, merely because he fears the subject may lead up to the addiction. Decep- tion and lying are just as positive effects of the opium habit as contraction of the muscles, or dis- order of the vision. Opium eating involves loss of self respect along certain lines, and the man who is deficient in shame cannot be truthful. The cozen- age of evasion inter-connects with everything said and done by the habitue, who is as powerless to resist such a temper as he is to sever the knot that holds him to the tyranny. There was never one who would hesitate to employ subreption in obtaining a supply of the drug; oftentimes, when this shuffling was altogether unnecessary. When a man is drunk he will lie; yet he may be a perfectly truthful person when he is sober. In- ebriates will go without drink for a week, a month, or a year, even, and in all this time of sobriety have jealous regard for what is manly, upright, and truth- ful. When the fury of drink overcomes them once more, they will lie and be unmanly. So it is with the opium habitue, except that the latter never has any period of sobriety; he is forever drunk of the drug, just as is the chloral, cocaine, and hasheesh "fiend." The poppy never suffers a man to get out of its spell for a single moment. To be suddenly snatched away from it is to meet certain death or insanity. He is always under the hellish influence; it enters into every thought, purpose, and plan of LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 51 life ; becomes, in fact, his life and his all. How foolish, then, to accord to so helpless a person so fine a discriminating sense that he will adore truth in every presentation except that which personifies opium. Here is an axiom that is applicable to every class of people upon the face of the earth: He who will lie about one thing, will lie about any thing. Any man who has been cured of the habit will defend the correctness of this position; those who are in it are scarcely competent witnesses. It is not denied, to be sure, that an opium habitue may tell the truth at times, or that he is anxious to tell it at all times ; the writer maintains that the habit is a disease, and one symptom of this disease is that when the victim would tell the truth, he is unable to do it. Because this is so, he is oftentimes indiffer- ent to the charms of truth ; being at some pains to get out of her way. An habitue who may read what is said in this connection cannot fail to be profoundly impressed with its correctness, yet, at the same time, be irresistibly driven to declare to others that the writer is of all men the most men- dacious. Perhaps there is no effect of the habit that is so galling, take it all in all, as this prestidigitation of truth, if it is permitted to coin this term. In all my extended intercourse with habitues (it has been inti- mate, because they court intelligent sympathy from a fellow sufferer, or one who has passed under the yoke and is now free) there is no sin they so bitterly repudiate as this; they will not admit they 52 DOCTOR JUDAS. have so much as touched the hem of the garment of Brummagem. With violent insistence they will deny that there is suggestio falsi aut suppressio veri in their evidence. This all penetrating sensitiveness is born, as has been stated, of the never-lost desire to be continued in the self-respect of their neigh- bors. A charge of Punic faith, an imputation of a chouse of words, is like a knife in the heart. When the mists break away and they see clearly in the sunlight of manhood, this delusion passes ; they then see themselves as they were seen, and as they were. Because of the pain such a charge gives to the suffering, it would seem proper to make cer- tain qualifications and explanations concerning the matter. It is due the habitue to say that he has no purpose to injure another when he masquerades with truth ; it is only his own protection he is after. If that definition of a lie be accepted which declares it to be a wilful attempt to deceive with a view to injuring another in person or property, then the habitue should be forgiven much that has been said concerning this phase of the slavery. Wounded daily in the thought of his soul's humiliation, feeling hourly the bondage of his judgment and will, yet all the time aspiring to maintain his respectability and sustain his merit before men, he deludes himself that he passes among them as stable and reliable. Conscious of his weakness but most unwilling to give over to it he will not confess to himself, even, that he is mendacious; although, strange paradox, he knows it to be so. It must always be borne in LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 53 mind that the poor slave constantly fights to hold his position in society, and the confidence and affection of his friends. Owing to the ravages of the opium distemper this contention may grow weak; yet it is ever present, and the effort is as potent as the strength will permit. He accepts the universal estimate of the liar and despises him as much as the most pure and untainted soul that lives. Admission that he is such a despicable crea- ture is a soul pollution against which he revolts in unutterable loathing. When he yields to the sin, it is to an irresistible impulse, one that sickens his heart and causes groans of anguish to reverberate in the chambers of his conscience. In all the lengths of the habit he never halts for a moment at a point where he can forgive himself for Jesuitry; in this one sin he may not harden his heart or stiffen his neck. Poor fellow! he often finds solace in indignant denial of it to himself and friends. He seeks to deceive that he may protect himself from the shame and reproach of men; he juggles with truth that he may appear before others as his heart desires he actually should be. This is a psycho- logical condition very difficult to portray, and more difficult to be understood by those who have not felt the chastening rod of opium. Lying is a sin the world has properly placed among the greater trans- gressions ; yet in judging sinners, sentence should fall, O, so lightly, upon those who are guilty when they most would be innocent; who are dragged into the horrible pit by the iron hand of an inexor- 54 DOCTOR JUDAS. able master they cannot successfully resist. A potent evidence of this feature of the habit is shown in the infinite loathing of deception and sincere love of truth evidenced by those who have been deliv- ered from its slavery. The memory of the weak- ness and shame of the habit serves as a constant monitor to urge to closer walks in the paths of rec- titude. The binding of the soul ceases with the escape of the body and mind ; the taint of corruptible things is as completely eliminated as though such defilement had never been a part of the eventful life. The experience is uniform that opium habitues do not descend to low practices of any kind ; they are not dishonest; they aim to deport themselves well; they do not harm any save themselves ; they do not fight, or brawl, or commit murder. The de- ceptions they practice are chiefly such as are designed to strengthen their own weakness; still, the fact remains, notwithstanding these mitigating circumstances, that mendacity is a marked feature of the opium habit. What a degrading confession. Think of the record — nine years of effort at self deception ; nine years of deceiving others; nine years a play actor in a degrading part, ashamed to look any man in the face; all the time conscious that the Ananias sin merited the Ananias punish- ment. Again and again did the reflection come during the slavery that Milton or Dante, in their description of hell, might have found greater plagues for sinners than any they described, by depicting LINKS OF LYING AND DECEIT. 55 the self-confessed liar of quickened conscience, doomed to pass eternity in repeating lies against which his soul constantly revolted. In this feature of the habit, as in everything else, the thrall is help- less and hopeless. He merits the ministration of the dear angel of compassion, yet he receives the cuts of the cruel whips of scorn and contempt. One must needs believe in God and an after world of recompense for human misery such as this. CHAPTER IV. WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. And the touched needle trembles to the pole. Pope — Temple of Fame. Greater prominence is given to the psycholog- ical effects of the drug, because herein is the mortal agony of the wretched slave. No habitue is free from bodily ills, while in nearly every case there is intense physical suffering, that, in advanced stages, opium but serves to intensify ; yet these pains and penalties are insignificant in comparison with the cankering sores that infest the soul and mind. Closely allied to the weaknesses already described is another distressing result, that for want of a more comprehensive word may be termed sensitiveness, which applies not only to the addiction itself but to the entire man—his habits, thoughts, feelings, and associations. Sending out grateful perfume from graceful and delicate pink-and-white fringed flowers, the mimosa, a favorite among the trees of the South- land, is the most sensitive and modest of all the plants that grow in that region. As the shadows come in from the west and begin to settle about her, she closes her leaves as if in dread of the even- tide zephyr, and with the coming of the cooler night 56 WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 57 air they shrink painfully within themselves. Not less sensitive is the opium habitue, who constantly shrinks and seeks to conceal himself from the imag- inary breaths of reproach and contumely. In evi- dence of the insanity of this symptom it may not be amiss to enter somewhat fully into particulars touching this phase of the disorder. Subterfuges of every imaginable kind are resorted to in order to cast off suspicion. During seven years of the addiction a single drug store supplied the greater portion of the laudanum that I consumed. It now appears most ridiculous indeed, that, although visits were made there thrice weekly, I should have deemed it prudential to assure the proprietor, over and over again, that the toxic was to be used exter- nally, adding a minute description of the symptoms of the suppositious malady. In the eagerness to convince the apothecary that such was the use to which the drug was to be applied, I would inveigh vigorously against poor fools who suffered them- selves to get into the opium habit, vowing that no possible temptation could ever induce me to taste the dangerous narcotic. Oft repeating made most familiar this fiction, which must have been also just as well learned by the druggist, whose interests, as well as courtesy, did not permit him by word or manner to cast a doubt upon its absolute veracious- ness. A state law demanded that a "caution" label should be pasted upon all packages and parcels of opium; but he readily agreed to dispense with this requirement, when told that no other hands could 58 DOCTOR JUDAS. possibly reach the bottle, save his who then re- ceived it. The label was rejected because one or two of the bottles had fallen into the hands of a wife whose solicitude would not accept inane pal- terings for reliable explanations, although her con- siderate affection might lead her to bear in silence the weight of grief the knowledge brought. The purpose was that if the bottles, filled or empty, again fell into her hands, there might be insistence that the contents were some harmless medicine or other. This foolish precaution was taken at a time when, through the offense, the good woman had learned the odor of the vile stuff and could not pos- sibly be deceived. Yet again and again afterward, when, going home in an opium debauch utterly unconscious, the vial would be found containing a greater or less quantity of the poison, there would be given the most vehement denial on the following morning, after the stupor had passed off. There is no eye so acute as that which sees in the light of love. She had observed the evidences in the pupil- less eyes, swollen hands and feet, semi-paretic speech, will-less life, and other outward signs that completed the tale of slavery. The most extreme precautions were observed when the drug was taken. Carefully locking the door of the room, the shades were lowered, search was made beneath and behind the various articles of furniture, and sometimes the eye was applied to the keyhole; all being done that was possible to deter- mine that no profane eyes could be in evidence WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 59 against the act about to be performed. Neverthe- less the body trembled with apprehension, lest some person might be peering through an unknown crevice or the keyhole. After the imbibition there would be the most careful avoidance of closer contact with persons, lest the fumes of the drug should reach their nos- trils. Never at any time during the habit was the drug taken in the presence of any person, exception being made as to the physician who fastened the addiction, and the few days next preceding treat- ment for cure, when confession was made to my wife, who then assumed charge of the administra- tion of it. To no human being until this last-named confession was the admission made that the habit existed; although sometimes I was charged with having it by intimate friends. In the latter case there would follow solemn and tearful denials, that would have been sworn to if requested. Without any reason suspicion was excited against the druggist. It became an irresistible impression that he was betraying the secret to everyone; yet it is doubtful if he knew one of my acquaintances or friends. It was resolved to transfer patronage else- where ; very carefully and with great circumspection was this task undertaken. One store after another in the various parts of the great city was visited; but more than a hundred failed, for one reason or another, to meet the requirements of the case. Here a bright-eyed youth repelled, because his sunny smile seemed to mock the calamity of the 60 DOCTOR JUDAS. poor wretch who suffered; there the proprietor was lacking in proper courtesy. This place was too liberally patronized, and that one appeared to have no customers. After two weeks of fretful, disquiet- ing effort a store was selected, which remained the base of supplies until the end. It was several miles from home and very inconveniently located, but seemed to meet the requirements of privacy and discretion. The salesman who served the drug appeared to be simple and incapable of suspicion. He listened with great patience to a lengthy expla- nation concerning the need and use of the drug, affecting to believe that it was really designed to be used outwardly. This sensitiveness was ever present and extended beyond the habit itself, leading sometimes to extremes in resentment. In the fourth year of the addiction a big fellow applied a most offensive epi- thet to me; yet, such is the cowardice which the drug inspires, it was passed unresented. A moment later, however, when he hissed the taunt, "opium fiend," he received a knock-down blow and was not permitted to proceed on his way until he had received a sound pummeling. The fear was ever present that some one might introduce the subject of opium and lead it up to the wretched defilement. When the word was named in the most innocent manner, without any possible personal application, excessive nervous agitation would result, and excuse was quickly made for leav- ing the presence of the speaker. Upon such occa- WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 6\ sions perspiration would start from every pore, the heart would palpitate violently, and the hands trem- ble with excitement. Suspicion is an inevitable accompaniment of over-sensitiveness and the latter may lead to the most silly resentment. An innocent look from a friend sometimes resulted in his conversion into an enemy. More than once I sprang in wrath from a fast-moving cable car under the delusion that the conductor had found out the sin and was about to denounce it to his passengers. A police- man was nearly shocked into arresting me for shak- ing my fist in his face, because he, mistaking me for an acquaintance, had nodded pleasantly in passing. A good-natured and honest Greek fruit-seller will never know that he lost a good customer who made purchases almost daily for three years, merely because he seemed one evening to be smiling at the rueful visage of the buyer; Acquaintances of years were dropped because it was decided they had de- tected evidences of the habit; certain office buildings were carefully avoided, for the reason that the ele- vator boys seemed to stare the knowledge from their inquisitive eyes. A thoughtless, carelessly spoken and meaning- less word sometimes caused pain for a month after- ward. The magnet is not quicker in response to the presence of iron than was the wretched habitue to putative slights of any kind ; while a word of censure, however delicately expressed, set the brain literally on fire with wrath. 62 DOCTOR JUDAS. The opium habitue may well adopt for his motto the words, noli me tangere—do not touch me. He is in a state of incessant fidgets, a sort of moral St. Vitus' dance, which shows itself in an intolerance of restraint, restlessness under all conditions, and in paroxysms of resentment over fancied slights. The latter, however, owing to the cowardice superin- duced by the drug, rarely finds vent in outward acts. This sensitiveness extended to everything. A friendly suggestion from a superior in the editorial rooms would be magnified into a downright insult ; advice was regarded as impertinent ; correction made in " copy " was an offense which could not be forgiven. It may be explained that in newspaper offices there are assistants to the editor whose duty requires them to carefully revise all manuscript, most of which is necessarily written in great haste ; to alter, amend, and correct the same to meet the standard. Such work is a kindness to the writers and sensible ones always so accept it ; but the opium habitue, carried away by the frenzy of his imagin- ings, not only refused to recognize the necessity in his case, but upon more than one occasion took his protest to the head of the journal, with the insist- ence that such corrections were an imputation on his literary reputation. Not content with magnifying every mole-hill of a grievance into a mountain of insult, the poor fool coerced his addled brain into making these moun- tains rise where no mole-hills stood in the way. -A most persistent cause of offense was the illusion WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 63 that men were thinking evil or designing injury against me, and this impression was active even when the imaginary offenders were distant. When, at the club, some member would look in my direc- tion, I would become very nervous, move restlessly about, and, if the glance was repeated, rise suddenly and leave the room in a white heat of anger. One June da}-, during the eighth year of the addiction, the impression became so strong that a very dear friend was hatching mischief, that a journey of ten miles was made to find him and make inquiry as to the cause of his dislike. His honest denial of any evil thought or purpose did not serve in the slightest to allay the disagreeable impression, which remained until some more potent influence of evil over- shadowed it. The opium habitue is a hotch-potch of vagaries and contradictions and a very Janus in purpose. A striking feature, which prevails universally, is that of boasting, with its opposite, humility; both some- times present in pitiful and ostentatious contrast. There is present a conceit that one is, or should be, superior to those with whom he is conversing, and any narrative which recites heroic exploits is sure to be followed by a similar venture of the "fiend," in which he is hero in degree excelling the virtue extolled. Whatever the theme under discussion, he always professes intimate knowledge and superior intelligence ; often to a degree that excites ridicule, if not downright contempt. Yet, strange paradox, if defects or transgressions of any 64 DOCTOR JUDAS. kind be the theme of conversation, the protean "opium fiend" eclipses all in his affectation of iniquitous practices. Alas! after his swaggering stultiloquy he retires, to enter the deepest shadows of the valley of humiliation because of his inept conduct. "Thoughts" were "variable as the winds and as uncertain " at times. At one moment there was unutterable grief because all friends had become lost, and in a trice there was sure conviction that not an enemy existed in all the world. The most inveterate dislike of a stranger would be succeeded by a warm attachment for him. Unfortunately there was a fickleness which could not be corrected by mere caprice ; as when, for no reason in the world, an excellent position would be flung aside ruthlessly, to be tearfully mourned an hour later. An ocean of tears could not restore what was lost in this case. No less than six times during the addiction did the mad folly occur ; while in no in- stance did the shadow of an excuse exist for a step which threatened the comfort and needs of the family. In all periods of life, before and during the addiction, relations with those who employed me were always pleasant ; I was never dismissed or requested to resign from a position. It is true that two or three times during the habit a day or two was lost as a result of the effects of the drug; but this was cheerfully overlooked, because a quickened conscience enforced renewed exertions as compen- sation for lost time. It did not matter that the WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 65 place was congenial and suited in every way to capabilities and endowments ; when the fatuous spell came, prudence was asleep and providence was wool-gathering. Business depression might hang like a pall over everything, and the greatest doubt exist as to securing another place that at the best must be inferior to the one surrendered; the whim- wham brain urged the step and it was taken. It should be understood that the opium habitue is not always in a state of nervous excitement or irritability; that is to say, not to the outward eye; this being one of the striking contradictions of his nature, that, like the great French clown, he may wear smiles upon his face while his heart is torn with anguish. There were times when talking with the greatest abandon of the pleasures of this life, there was unutterable woe in the breast because • death did not suddenly come and put an end to the scene. So perfectly was the part played that there were many friends who had no suspicion that any- thing was wrong and their surprise was great when they learned the facts. In explanation, however, it should be said, that these persons did not come in touch with me during the last two years of the habit, when the hand of opium was heaviest felt. In all stages of the addiction it was possible to simulate; it is a part of the disease, that one seeks to conceal his actual condition. As has been stated elsewhere, the operations of the drug were controlled certainly to a limited extent by the will, and the greatest possible efforts were made to hold things 5 66 DOCTOR JUDAS. level when friends and acquaintances were encoun- tered. This frequently was accomplished only by the most extraordinary struggles, which were paid for in after depression and pain. The Gethsemane Garden was solitude. The roar of the thunder never reached the ears of others; the lightning flashes were for the eyes of the habitue alone. Many of these moods were inexplicable, as they were uncontrollable. Nothing could equal the earnestness with which I would precipitate an acri- monious religious discussion, when no theme could possibly be more disagreeable. Physical exercise was a painful proceeding; yet an impulse would urge the feet to the most protracted exertions, in walking, until exhausting fatigue compelled a rest. The street car was an abomination; yet the demon would compel extended excursions upon one line of road after another, many hours being spent contin- uously in this mode of locomotion; yet in every moment of the time there was a spirit of resistance which, though strong, was unable to overcome the other. Sometimes these escapades were projected into the night; in fact, until the cars ceased to run. Now and then this was most inconvenient, as the latter event was just as likely to happen at the end of the line most remote from home, compelling the seeking of lodgment in a strange place, or aimless wandering about until morning. As with all men of letters, there is present in me strong preferences for certain authors, with just as decided indifference, at least for others; yet the demon of contradiction WHIMSIES RULE THE SLAVE. 67 would so coerce the will that those books which were despised became a necessity ; although the consciousness of their disagreeableness existed throughout the reading. With equal perversity, a rage would come to write upon offensively unpleas- ant topics; especially those that had been assidu- ously avoided in the past. This cross purpose would extend itself in every direction. When a restaurant was entered, this spirit would suggest the ordering of food that was most disliked and that could not possibly be eaten after it had been served. If there were two ways of reaching a given point, the devil drug would be sure to lead to it by the more devious and undesir- able journey. For months the ride from the city to the suburban home was made by the slowest of several routes; although there was present, in all cases, a consciousness of its folly, with a desire to take the most expeditious line. It became necessary to leave all money at home, because any that was available would be expended for worthless and undesirable objects ; even while a persistent mental protest was entered against such extravagance. A determined purpose to go directly from the office to the home would be checked by a blind escapade through the streets for many hours; each minute of which would be filled with vain regrets over the tyranny that throttled the will. Thus it was the master, Beelzebub opium, led his imp a devil dance constantly. CHAPTER V. FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. Membra reformidant mollem quoque saucia tactum Vanaque sollicitas incutit umbra metum. Ovid. Introspection of the life under the dread thrall reveals an army of spectres, whose seeming serves to distress the soul that is long freed from their ravages. One of the oppressive shadows of that dark night was the ever abiding consciousness that self-mastery was utterly lost. Again and again, O, so often, in the valleys of that land of tristful shades, rang with terrible force the words of St. Paul: " But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Unlike the great apostle I could find no deliverer; in the infinite shame of the weakness and the degradation it en- tailed, the soul in its travail could only repeat in mournful accents the simple refrain, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, peccavi." How often when bowed under the dispensation there came the earnest exhortation, "To thyself be true," while scalding tears would follow in the reflec- 68 FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 69 tion that in all the evermore these words would haunt me as chiding skeletons of ironic fate. Flesh-eating animals revel in blood-thirstiness without venom, because they are not conscious of their evil doing. The habitual criminal has never felt the sting of a quickened conscience; the only offense he recog- nizes being that of detection. But the slave of the drug never for a moment loses the sense of his accountability or fails to measure the extent of his shortcomings. He is ever eager to accomplish something that will atone in part, at least, for his many peccancies ; hence, he plans and plans again; but, alas, he never executes. " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," was the gauge of Reuben's character by the patriarch Jacob. That sentence might righteously rest upon every weary serf of the opium czar. The purpose of to-day was the forgotten scheme of the morrow ; the surest promise never attained fruition. A wide acquaintance among business men and a fair knowl- edge of business methods, with a tact and shrewd- ness in devising speculative adventures, made me a desirable associate in certain lines, and during the fifth and sixth years of the habit I made several thousand dollars in this way. The investments were profitable in every case and the prestige thus won should have been followed up, as the operations did not interfere in any way with professional work. Indeed the profit might have been increased ten- fold, if only the most ordinary exertions had been put forth ; but instability made burdensome any 70 DOCTOR JUDAS. task, and what was finally accomplished came of the efforts of others, as I withdrew altogether when chances were best for greatest profit. Schemes and plans were constantly being devised, however ; at a time, even, when those in hand were renounced ; yet these went no further than bare mention to those who might easily have been persuaded into execut- ing them to successful issue. As De Quincey truly says, in speaking of poor Coleridge, " Opium eaters never complete any work," a sad example of which is afforded in his own brilliant but erratic life. Equal indecision was shown in literary work. Love of reading and study continued unabated throughout the habit ; indeed, the tendency to iso- lation of self led to increase of desire for books, although many were begun that were never com- pleted. Still the number of the latter was not so great because of a marvelous faculty for quick grasp of the contents of any volume. Nor was the relish for writing greatly abated ; there were periods when amazing amounts of " copy " were turned out, as associates will testify ; especially during the fifth and sixth years of the addiction. The evil lay in the utter inability to pursue extended and connected labor. The spur of conscience drove to rapid work and a great variety of it ; yet no article contained more than three thousand or four thousand words ; in most cases much less. Previous to the habit several tasks had been performed, the least of them extending to eighty thousand words, while one FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 71 reached to one hundred and thirty thousand words ; during the myth days of opium the most extended single labor was but seven thousand words. The unrestful mind could not fix itself for long upon any one object, but constantly sought diversion and variety. At no period in life, however, was there greater activity in planning literary enterprises ; now a plot would be suggested for a stirring romance ; then the idea of a great universal history. Here would be begun work upon a statistical gazetteer of the world ; there a scientific book, that was designed to overthrow the accepted theories of the tides, aurora borealis, natural selection, and gravity. Extended critiques upon men and measures absorbed the mind for a day ; a life of Christ was pursued nearly a week and a history of the Jews exercised the brain at intervals for a month. One after another these projects became pale members of the hosts of the dead that were not. " Unstable as water." Such was the sentence of friends ; yet, silly fool, the devious paths were fol- lowed in the delusion that some day there should be discovered a prize that would bring imperishable renown to the finder, so as to make atonement for the doom of the enslavement. "The evil that men do lives after them " is strongly exemplified in the cases of De Quincey and Coleridge, whose enviable distinction in the world of letters has deterred thousands from seeking to throw off the chains. Errant sufferers and blind, not to know that these 72 DOCTOR JUDAS. men were illustrious, not through the habit but despite that hinderance. In the depths of opium despair the voice of hope came up out of the night and whispered that as these two had acquired dis- tinction while in the habit, so was it possible for others to achieve immortality. The opium wretch never loses his respect for the opinion of others; he burns to do what will efface the shame of the habit from neighbors and friends. Alas, and alas! the days came and the nights pushed them into the resurrectionless pit of the past, while my spirit fit- fully did nothing, its variableness and shadow of turning being as rapid as the jerky vibrations of a weather vane on a gusty March day. The fickleness was strongly and painfully appar- ent in friendships. People who had been known and esteemed for years grew into indifferent crea- tures, to be carefully avoided. All correspondence by mail was broken off early in the habit ; after the second year no power could persuade me to break the seal of any letter, however important might be its contents or urgent the action it demanded. The solitariness of the habit discouraged companion- ship ; and when the society of others became an imputed necessity, new faces were sought rather than the old ones ; yet these new ones soon became unpleasant fancies, passing with others into the night and abode of shadows. It must not be understood that the affections or friendships of a lifetime were broken or discarded. On the contrary there were times when the soul FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 73 yearned for sympathy, as the thirsty hart after the limpid waters of the running brook. As far as the disturbed and perverted mentality would permit they were esteemed and cherished, save as suspicion or other hateful spectres entered the soul to taint it. Still they were avoided, doubtless for the same rea- son as that which prompted the keeping away from church, the theatre, and public gatherings of all kinds; the principal cause being conscious guilt with fear of detection. Degrading confession ! Such is the motive that impels the criminal to dodge the light of day and the places frequented by honest men. The moods were always uncertain ; there were occasions when the feeling was strong that one had need to wish like Job to be delivered from his friends. Conjugal and paternal affection remained fixed ; yet the wretched habit caused self- ish and sometimes cruel neglect of duty towards those who had a right to demand deepest solicitude and most earnest support in all conditions and trials. Verily the mastery of opium is complete ; the semi-moribund slave is made coward of all cowards. The eater of the poppy gum is afraid of his fellow- man. He dare not meet him face to face and assert his rights. In his periods of mental disorder he will suffer himself to be robbed of money and prop- erty by designing knaves and afterward dare not demand restitution. Confessions of this kind are doubly painful in that before the coming of the cure, those who did the wrong had passed beyond reach of 74 DOCTOR JUDAS. a restored healthy brain and vigorous body. Suffer- ing in the sixth year from most iniquitous injustice at the hands of unscrupulous men and smarting keenly under the wrong, an effort was made again and again to go before the sinners to compel an adjustment of the matter. As many as a score of times the door of the place of business was reached; but in every instance the faint and trembling heart there failed; finally, the opportunity for redress was lost forever. The fear of death was a waking nightmare, hid- eous as the dreams that come in the sleep of opium. It was indeed "a horrible shape," as Milton terms it. The physical agony of the transition brought no terrors, because all that man "can know, or feel, or fear" of that torture had been undergone so often that no bodily pain could daunt or terrify ; but it was the thought of the unfathomableness of that infinite sea of eternity, which has no shores ; the incomprehensible change from mortal to immor- tal ; the loss of that entity whereby one knows and is known, and the putting on of that which is the mystery of all mysteries to humanity. The awful- ness of futurity beyond time was above power of expression; while with it was the conviction that the opium taint must be and abide forever ; that father, mother, brothers, sister, and children in the illimitable realm would see and recognize the curse blot, which there as here would hold me in corrupt- ing fold. This fear sometimes came as a mighty rush of waters, roaring in the ears, blurring and FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 75 blinding the vision ; then, blessedly, for a few mo- ments at least, deadening the senses. The suicidal impulse is very strong, at times almost irresistible, notwithstanding the fear of death ; so mutable is the fancy and the passion of the slave. A friend in Southern Missouri had the madness, nearly at stated times (the only instance of its kind that has come to my notice), in all cases within an hour of taking an increased quantity of morphine. His safety was in his ignorance. The daily allotment of the drug was so enormous that its power to take life had passed with him. Not knowing this he would supplement his increased dose with three or four times what had been already swallowed; then with a mental farewell to the world he would lie down upon his couch. He confessed to infinite surprise when he awoke upon earth; but, as the mania had passed for the time, he did not worry over the matter. His earnestness of purpose, he declared, was fixed in each of the dozen or more attempts he made; yet such was his delusion, it never occurred to him to resort to other means. Or, if he thought at all of previous failures, he ascribed them to lack of strength in the drug he was then using, or mistake as to the quan- tity swallowed. A personal experience (the only instance in which the desire really approached consummation) in the eighth year of the addiction was a peculiar one, whose impression remained most vivid throughout the remainder of the habit. Overcome 76 DOCTOR JUDAS. of burdens and sorrows ; made desperate by finan- cial straits, a resolve came to defy death. With this object in view a quantity of strychnine was purchased and placed in a vest pocket, where it remained three days ; during which time sleep was banished and mental distress was violent. Infinite agony finally placed selfishness above every other consideration; family and religious obligations were put out of sight and the shadows of the hereafter began to gather. It was the evening of the third day and I was walking along State street between Madison and Monroe, in Chicago. A half hour before the usual dose of laudanum had been swallowed ; but in the then disturbed mental condi- tion had produced no effect. With the set purpose came a numbness, an insensibility to suffering, and an absolute indifferentism to everything. A knowledge of the effects of strychnine led to the consciousness that physical pain would attend the act, but this was a mere passing thought. Utter weariness of life and complete hopelessness of recovery made the step seem imperative ; so that the little parcel was taken out with a measurably firm hand. Just then an acquaintance came along and it really seemed he read the criminal purpose in the distracted face before him. He stopped for a moment, appearing to wish to find out what was concealed in the closed hand. Directly he passed the paper was hastily torn and the toxic drug was half-way to the lips, when the arm was arrested by some unseen but irresistible force ; while at the same FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 77 time there appeared in life-like realism the form of my sainted mother, who looked pityingly, yet with •reproachful eyes. Startled by this apparition (which was awful in its realism, the appearance being as in the flesh and as she was but a year or so before her death) I cried aloud in affright, threw the powder upon the pavement, the contents scattering far and wide, and then ran madly down the street, to the astonishment of passers by; pro- tracting the exercise until physical exhaustion enforced a halt, two miles away. The vision was doubtless one of the many hallucinations which opium presented in those days, but its realism remains fresh to this hour. What a spirit was this that burdened the slave; afraid of life and afraid of death ! Danger lurked upon the street; fear suggested burglars in every noise of the night. The pestilence that stalks at noonday and the dangers that infest the sick room were monsters of horrid mien. There was fear of the brilliant aurora borealis; of the tailed comet. The flashing meteor in the summer night suggested the judgment of the last day ; every dark cloud por- tended a death-dealing tornado. A rumor of an earthquake anywhere in the world brought to the quaking soul thoughts of a cataclysm more deadly than that which once befell Lisbon. Thus pusillan- imity coined signs in the sun, moon, and stars and filled all nature with evidences of impending deso- lation. In these hours of fear and indecision it some- 78 DOCTOR JUDAS. times seemed that the devils of craven fear would have disappeared if there had been a David at hand to exorcise the malign spirits by the divine touch of his harp, as he banished the fiend of melancholy from the breast of Saul. Alas! though, music had lost its power to charm ; there came, so often, the thought that like Judah by the waters of Babylon, the songs could not be sung in a strange land. Previous to the addiction, music was a divine, loved art; when the habit came, the voice of richest cadence became as the dissonance of rumbling wheels, the sweetest tones of a grand cathedral organ as the unmelodious cry of an angry peacock. All opium habitues do not manifest a repugnance or indifference to music, but irregular contraction of the vocal cords is inseparable from the addiction; this, with inevitable huskiness of the throat, playing serious tricks with the voice of him who would sing. Musical sounds were distasteful and usually offen- sive in the highest degree; the soul brooded in measureless, profound silence, cowering in the shadows and hiding from what was not and could not be. What sorrow overwhelmed me because the trouble might not be confided to some one; what starvation was there of the soul for a morsel of sympathy. Unlike most habitues, there was no disposition to confess the sin to a fellow-mortal in the shackles. Knowing the utter inability of such an afflicted one to be sincere, there could have been no credence given to what he might say and no solace FEARS ENCOMPASS HIM. 7g in burdening him with troubles of another, when he already had more of his own than he could bear. Religious doubts had long disappeared, but the gates of heaven refused to open to the piteous en- treaties of him who had sold his soul to the opium devil. The coward, faltering and undecided, was alone in the mighty crowd and the mightier universe ; shut off by his frightful habit from every sentient being, — the living and the dead. It was a desolation so complete that it turned day into night, and the night into blackness of gloom and despair. CHAPTER VI. LOQUACITY AND OBSTRUCTED MEMORY. Fie, fie, how frantically I square my talk! Shakespeare. That Harpocrates never tasted opium is certain; else had he lost his distinction as " god of silence." An intelligent physician, who lives in Iowa, after his release from the spell, said: "The drug ought to be introduced in deaf-and-dumb asylums ; for in a week's time it would have every inmate talking as glibly as a two-year old child." Cocaine, whisky, and hasheesh each have a ten- dency to lubricate the hinges of the tongue, but all of them are "outclassed," as the sporting characters would express it, by the King of Loquacity. This effect is never lost, even in the last stages of the addiction, although the brightness and sparkle of the first days gradually go into eclipse and the speech at the latter end is nearly as meaningless as the chatter of a magpie. This characteristic is dis- tinctly recalled from out the fevered period of the first months of the servitude, and many friends are able to testify to the truth that it remained as long as the habit endured. It should be explained that in all stages the measure of the talkativeness is the 80 LOQUACITY AND OBSTRUCTED MEMORY. 81 time of the taking of the drug; being greatest just after and least immediately before that period. This unfortunate trait is only controlled by isola- tion, or absorption in reading or contemplation. Given a companion and the flood-gates are instantly opened, the stream pouring forth steadily in such volume that there is suggestion of Niagara, the damming of which might be as easy a task as that of checking the verbal torrent. There has been great exaggeration concerning the brilliancy of ideas and the copiousness and beauty of language engendered by the drug. Writers upon this aspect of the case are accustomed to cite De Quincey in evidence; this is anything but fair, because he was a superb genius and a genius is not bounded by any wall. It would be as absurd to seek to hold Patti to defined principles in vocalization as to circumscribe the great master of language or to make him dependent upon any extraneous influence for his sublime style. He thought great ideas and wrote ineffable English, not because he took opium but despite the baneful influence of the drug. De Quincey gave strength to this error because of his extravagant praise of the narcotic. In one of his bursts of enthusiasm he declares, "Whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium on the con- trary (if taken in a proper manner) introduces the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium sus- tains and reinforces it." How utterly he misappre- hended the office of the drug is shown in the fact, 6 82 DOCTOR JUDAS. emphasized elsewhere, that though in some sense a stimulant, it is a narcotic, a stupefier, and not an excitant to intelligent, nervous energy. Evidences of my literary work through the vari- ous stages of the habit lie before me as I write, and it is earnestly declared that not one of these printed articles contains any proof of drug inspiration. Not a single one is above the average product of the mind, while many of them are rubbish. These articles comprehend the entire period of the habit, every year of it; those in the first year are as those in the last; some reasonably good and many unrea- sonably bad. Did opium "introduce order, legisla- tion, and harmony," they should be manifest in excelling measure in the first months, at least, of the habit; but such is not the case. There should be one production that suggests special inspiration from the muse of opium. In sober truth it may be said of the drug, as of magpies, parrots, and many public speakers, "sound and sound only." It assuredly does release the tongue and set free a tire- less and tiresome flow of words that run along down unfettered into the sea of oblivion. Looking backward, amazement is the only word that will convey any idea of the feelings in contem- plation of the patience and forbearance shown by friends and acquaintances during the long addiction. Their consideration transcends bounds, else had they banished forever from their presence one who was in such a frame that he mistook empty nothings for utterances of wisdom. Strange, indeed, would LOQUACITY AND OBSTRUCTED MEMORY. 83 it be if there were not, occasionally accidental bursts of agreeable inanitions—a now-and-then meteor flash out of the night's sky ; but was there ever a crank or an insane person, who failed now and then to void himself of a vigorous sentiment or a new idea ? Life, however, is not long enough to suffer a man to squander hours upon a rush of gibberish, merely for the chance of seizing at long intervals a stray thought that is worth remembering. Pains is taken to dwell upon this feature of the opium habit and to emphasize what is said, for the reason that the error is a common one. Nearly every person who has attempted to write upon the effects of a single dose or two is fairly sure to des- cant upon the sublime thoughts that were born in his brain and the e-ea -Krepoe^ra—winged words, that floated in cadenced sweetness from his inspired lips while under the subtle influence. Can reason permit such shallow stuff to pass as truth ? Opium is a narcotic that has a tendency to befog the brain ; it does not specially stimulate, but its physiological effect in single doses as in the habit is to subdue the activity of the functions of the brain as well as of all the bodily parts. There is a word, not so much now in use as in former years, that aptly expresses the condition of the mind under the opium spell, and that is "obfuscation." Besides subduing the ordinary operations it tends to disorder ; reason inter- fered with there are ebullient, contradictory, evanes- cent, unreliable, and illogical thoughts, which find expression in an irrepressible outflow of words 84 DOCTOR JUDAS. which, perhaps, are mistaken for brilliancy because of their seeming spontaneity. No agent should be pronounced a creator of effusive ideas and classic English that sends out thought in words that tumble over one another in their mad chase for outer air. Directing the memory backward, with instructions to carefully search every chamber, closet, and hall of the opium temple, she returns empty-handed with the positive message that in them all she failed to discover one idea, the giving out of which to the world would make it any the brighter or better for the knowledge. The inquiry has been made of scores of habitues now cured and the unvarying answer was a direct contradiction of the great writer who has been quoted. They all had effusiveness but never effectiveness. A bright newspaper man long associated with the writer often deprecated the fact that truth was an essential to the record he made of current hap- penings: " Ah! " he said regretfully one day in a burst of confidence, "what sublime work I could do, what magnificent climaxes I would reach, were it not for that matter-of-fact, plain-faced old lady, who is constantly poking in her nose and spoiling a good story, by her insistence that things shall be told just as they transpired." Now the opium habitue is not handicapped in this way, because the fecundity of thought and rapidity of expression afford no time for reflection upon the reliability of his utterances. Still, of all the opium "fiends" that now live, of all those LOQUACITY AND OBSTRUCTED MEMORY. 85 who have lived, what record have they made of the perfervidly luminous thoughts they have fulmin- ated? If garrulity were brilliancy and a jumble of words were eloquence, then all habitues would be orators and rhetoricians of matchless fame. The "uninterrupted flow" of words and "re- pose of thought" may be most seriously interfered with, as an unhappy personal recollection vividly suggests ; the occasion being the last in which I appeared as a public speaker during the remaining period of the addiction. Previous to the habit there had been a long and wide experience as an off-hand talker, as well as lecturer ; hence the rostrum was mounted with confidence, a fair quantity of the drug having been swallowed previous to entering the hall. This was in the sixth month of the addiction. The subject was music as an educator. The words flowed easily and gracefully, and, as the audience knew little or nothing about the theme, I was getting along nicely enough until suddenly I found myself hesitating for a word. This shocked me greatly, because it was an entirely novel experience. In youth I had read and heartily en- dorsed the sentiment of Jean Paul Richter, " The poet who hesitates whether he will say, yes or no, to the devil with him." I had never as a speaker or a writer faltered for the appreciable part of a second over a thought or a word, whatever its merit might be. The suggestions of caution, prudence, reserve, etc., often make sad havoc with the energy of a sentence ; exquisitely thought-out sentiments 86 DOCTOR JUDAS. have been made most commonplace through the same fear of saying too much. Mr. Beecher de- clared that he gave over revising his sermons after their delivery, because he discovered that what he gained in elegance he more than lost in force. With this experience and faith I was not only at a loss to understand why my vocabulary should sud- denly give out, but also inexpressibly shocked to find that there should be any deficiency in the memory faculty. My face, flushed, but rallying quickly I substituted another word for the one lost. The pause was awkward and the word ridiculous, as I saw by the puzzled, quizzical look upon the faces of several of the more intelligent members of the audience. Hastening forward in the theme I had carried all my hearers beyond all recollection of the break, when, in the middle of a complex sen- tence, I came to an irremediable halt. Had life depended upon it I could not have recalled what I proposed to say. All that could be done was to leave it unsaid and proceed to another thought and to the conclusion of the address, being all the time in terror lest there should occur another' break. After that experience nothing could have in- duced me to again appear before an audience. Throughout the remainder of the habit the inability to recall words, even the most familiar ones, was a marked feature of literary work ; sometimes I would spend several minutes in effort to bring one to LOQUACITY AND OBSTRUCTED MEMORY. 87 recollection. I would be utterly unable at times to remember the names of intimate friends, those even of a lifetime. This was carried so far on some occasions that I could not recall the name of wife or children. This embarrassed me greatly in conver- sation, for while I talked glibly enough, the needed word would often be wanting; the hesitation con- fused me and annoyed the hearer. Worse punish- ment was this, that knowing the failing I was most reluctant to talk, but the demon drug would inex- orably demand it and I durst not disobey. Some- times it demanded the utmost politeness on the part of those compelled to listen torefrain from smiling at the words I was constrained to use; there were times when I was so overwhelmed that I would walk suddenly away without offering any excuse for the rudeness. This is all the more remarkable for the reason that memory was extraordinary in its development in childhood, just as it now is; the power of recall- ing any fact, incident, word, or sentiment — any- thing read, seen, or heard, has always been instanta- neous in its action, except of course, during the continuance of the opium habit. Here is positive evidence of the immediate and direct effect of the drug upon this faculty, since it was completely restored just as soon as the poison was eliminated from the brain cells. There never was beautiful maiden who was not conscious of her charms; so there was never man possessed of some mental 88 DOCTOR JUDAS. attribute excelling that of his associates, who did not feel elevated somewhat in consequence, even though that quality be no more than the simple one of memory. Pride went utterly out as I realized that all knowledge availed nothing, since it was not subject to order or control. CHAPTER VII. IMPAIRMENT OF MEMORY. Like a dull actor, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace. Shakespeare — Coriolanus. Martin Farquhar Tupper sang well upon the theme, mens mihi regnum est, and were a poet's genius mine, the Muse would be invoked to sound the praises of the brain, that wonderful organ which bears all things, endures all things, and suffers all things; then in forgiveness effectually blots out the offenses that have been committed against its majesty. " Behold I am fearfully and wonderfully made," said the Psalmist, and the laudation pertains chiefly to this chamber of thought. The higher animals closely resemble man in bodily structure, while in brain development there is a difference so wide that no bridge of theories can ever span the two creations. The gorilla, first among the brutes, is irremediably lower than the Australian, himself probably the most degraded of all humanity. Whatever may have been God's plan in the creation of brutes, when He had ended that work, He said in the words of the inspired writer, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them 89 go DOCTOR JUDAS. have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creep- ing thing that creepeth upon the earth. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." This dominion, this power, and this strength lie in the dome of thought which inspires to aim and deed. Intricate as its workmanship, and infinitely as its fibre and its proportional size raises its owner above all the other creatures, these qualities are surpassed by its powers of endurance. During a period of nine years my brain was clogged with opium ; the effete matter was not thrown off, but remained to dull the activity of the cells and cloud the sky of reason; yet, despite all this perversion and abuse, day after day, in the first months of the restoration, I was filled with unutterable amazement at the Pan- dora gifts that came out of this marvelous store- house. Valuables of whose presence there was no cognizance, facts, events, incidents, scenes, thoughts, plans, faces, anything and everything, were brought out in all the brightness of novelty, and God's name was blessed that it was so. The days of earliest childhood, the most minute details of mature years, the life of young and mature manhood — all the things of life were brought up by memory and paraded as the triumph march of a conquering king upon his return from battle. It was as though dear, precious Memory had said: "Though you have despised my gifts and sought to compass my IMPAIRMENT OF MEMORY. 9i destruction; though you have introduced an enemy who has fought for my dethronement, still I remain intact, secure in my dominion and forgiving towards your transgressions." Ah ! generous and great and beauteous Memory, while supposed to be absent, or dead, or sleeping, just as busily as ever were the deft fingers pushing the stylus and recording all possible impressions throughout the entire period of the habit; so that in the day following the night of opium there might easily be read the record of all things that transpired in the time of cloud and thick darkness. Not only were the hazy and indistinct happenings of the foggy period made clear, but also those events that chanced in the times of stupefaction, when there was seeming utter oblivion. Thus it is possible to call up almost in the order of their hap- pening all the dramas and tragedies of the slavery days and compare them in the light of a perfect restoration. Oftentimes the forgotten and unknown were resurrected in the flash of an eye; again they unfolded gradually with the passage of time, until within six months of the cure the mental man was complete in every part and exulted in the knowl- edge. No effort whatsoever was required; there was no special meditation upon them ; but, on the contrary, it was as though Memory forced herself to the front for recognition and would not suffer any thwarting of her purpose to resume a sway that had been marvelously potential until opium 92 DOCTOR JUDAS. wrested power from her hands. On the crowded street, in the cars, at home, she brought up out of her treasure house the inestimable riches and laid them at my feet, and I trembled with a joy that thrilled in the consciousness of possession. On and on they came, one after the other, as a steady flowing crystal stream, until the whole soul was satiate and the strong man was ready to cry, "It is enough." In order to a proper comprehension of this miraculous restoration of memory, it is fit that some reference be made with circumstantiality of detail to certain features of the habit not previously noted; or, at best, but hinted at. Without enter- ing into the metaphysical aspects of the case or dis- cussing the physiological theory of brain impressions it may be said that under no condition does the brain lose its power of holding such facts, truths, or ideas as are transmitted to it by the proper channels — ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and touch ; or such as may be created within itself by reason of the knowledge that is thus conveyed. The latter property may be dormant during the periods of mental unconscious- ness ; but the former may go right along, whether the Ego is in a state of partial unconsciousness, or the world is to him a blank and he walks in shadows which he does not see. The memory is constantly assailed in the opium slavery. Love of reading and study was not lost, but there was inability to continue for any length of time in a proper frame to follow any author, IMPAIRMENT OF MEMORY. 93 however agreeable his style or precious his facts. What operated against persistence was the abiding impression that what was read was valueless, be- cause the mind could not retain it. As in every- thing else, there seemed to be a great sea of oblivion in the brain, into which everything was plunged to be never again brought to the surface by the angry waves that beat tempestuously against the resisting walls. The names of books and authors would soon get into confusion, the facts would jumble together, and then all pass out of life and being. This was equally true of human faces, human forms, and human names ; equally true of what was heard and seen and felt and known. True, there were excep- tions, some of the impressions being more persistent than others, presenting themselves after many days ; yet, as a general proposition, they existed like the ephemera but for an hour or a day and then passed out into the everlasting shades. One of the gloomiest thoughts connected with the earlier days following the cure was that the throne of memory could never be restored. During the first sixty days that followed the breaking, of the bonds there was more or less confusion of ideas ; what came out of the past was dim and ill- defined, while the capacity to give out strength and vigor of thought was greatly abridged. Soon, however, in fact, with the taking on of bodily strength, light grew brighter and more far-reaching, until it stretched back in one unbroken stream to the earliest periods of existence, showing not a 94 DOCTOR JUDAS. single break in the continuity. Strange and passing strange that power of the drug in the habit, and equally so the complete surrender when manhood conquers and reason returns. All persons who have been cured of the opium habit do not refer with equal enthusiasm to the potency of memory's return after the slavery. Ex- planation of this may be found in the varying power of this faculty in individuals. In the writer it is remarkably developed and has been potentially exercised throughout life. Nothing that has once come under observation is forgotten, while the power to recall is instantaneous. The text-books of the school room, the romances and solid reading of childhood and youth, and, in fact, anything and everything that has excited attention or been given an opportunity to find its way to the brain, remains there indelibly. Men who are not thus endowed are scarcely liable to be so profoundly impressed with a full return of memory after long repression. When it is not a marked characteristic, there would be less, of course, to recall, and, naturally, less value would be attached to the acquisition. Still, the fact remains that opium plays havoc with the mem- ory; just as truly, it leaves that faculty absolutely unimpaired, once its yoke is cast off and its former victim is free. It must be understood that this testimony is sub- ject to the qualification that where brain lesions exist as a result of the habit, there may be vestiges, greater or less, of impairment of this faculty, as IMPAIRMENT OF MEMORY. 95 there may be of other properties of the brain. Else- where attention is invited to the disturbing effects of other drugs in connection with opium, and when the habitue uses cocaine in excess with his narcotic he is especially likely to show mental impairment. The object of this writing is to encourage those in the various habits to look for redemption; it would, therefore, be improper to suggest what might tend to obscure hope. Still, it is necessary to the cause of truth and a proper understanding of this most important subject to state that the effects herein described have reference to a single habit — that of opium. If their portrayal varies from the expe- rience of others, it will be found upon investigation that extraneous influences cause differentiations. Since more than one-half of the opium habitues of the United States have at least one added addiction, and sometimes two or more, it is highly important that where any experience of theirs may appear to differ from this record, inquiry should be made as to the resultant action of the other drug or drugs. Thus, cocaine's action is directly upon the brain ; it is an excitant, while opium is sedative. Three months' excessive use of it, either with or without opium, would inevitably result in brain lesions that would be likely to be permanent after a cure, and as likely to be revealed in impairment of memory as of any other faculty, Stress is laid upon this point because of the in- finite pleasure afforded in the return of recollection after so long a disturbance of memory — an expe- 96 DOCTOR JUDAS. rience that is positive and radical in its completeness. Where it fails to be striking the fault lies, as stated, in a natural deficiency in this quality or in perma- nent injury to the brain by some other agent. Excessive use of opium often begets insanity that is incurable; it might produce in some subjects a per- manent impairment of the memory after restoration. The latter instances, however, would be very rare ; the man now in bondage can confidently look for- ward to perfect restoration of mind and body, if he resolves upon a cure of his habit. Perfect health brings to one so long in bondage to disease strength and confidence that are inspir- ing, indeed, as well as a satisfaction of spirit that nearly leads to contentment; yet far greater is the gratification that arises in the contemplation of the mind, supreme in its realm and the memory, capa- ble of doing and daring all things, precisely as in the former days of elastic and impressionable youth. CHAPTER VIII. PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. In this fool's paradise he drank delight. Crabbe—The Borough Payers. Eskimos have a general belief that the life-giv- ing sun is the most beautiful creature in all the universe, when seen from the front; but that a rear view shows it to be a hideous, naked skeleton, well calculated to inspire disgust and horror. Opium is a divinity of most ravishing attractions when first approached, but in the frigid night of the habit is the most deformed and frightful object in all the world. First doses of the drug afford most pleas- urable sensations, the subject gradually entering into a beatific world in which care has no place. The higher senses are blurred, and consecutive, unified thought is impossible ; but an irresistible impulse leads to loquacity; in many instances the speech is very pretty, although lacking in coher- ency. This state yields, sometimes gradually, but oftentimes quickly, to sleep that is usually so pro- found as to simulate death. When the subject awakes he is somewhat irritable, yet still rather pleasurably exalted for a brief season ; but this state is succeeded by inevitable depression. This 7 97 98 DOCTOR JUDAS. last stage is one that makes so perilous the giving of the enchanting drug. Now it is that the will is enthralled and free license is given to desire. If the physician be not at hand to restrain, the dose is likely to be repeated. Alas! each yielding is but another link in the frightful chain of habit. Usually, in a man free from pain, the first stage of wakeful excitation continues from ten to thirty minutes; the sleep which follows endures from four to ten hours; the third stage, of active, nervous exaltation, governed somewhat by the period of sleep, may endure from thirty minutes to four hours; while in the last frame, that of depression, the suffering may extend over twenty-four hours ; but with decreasing tendencies. So much depends upon the physical and mental condition, the ex- ternal surroundings, the quantity and quality of the drug, and the resistance or tolerance of the individ- ual that it is scarcely possible to give accurate data in these particulars. Invariably the drug operates more reliably by night than by day, and noises or distraction of any kind mitigate its opera- tions. In general terms, it may be said a fair average dose of morphine, hypodermically, is one-eighth of a grain, while double that quantity is given in pow- der by the mouth ; two grains of opium and twenty drops of laudanum, represent, respectively, average prescriptions of these forms of the drug. Physi- cians, however, know that under great pain or intense excitement the quantities named may be PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. 99 more than doubled without danger. Reference has been made to the fact that some individuals have exceptional resistant powers ; instances of this kind having come under personal notice that would seem to positively demand great credulity to accept as trustworthy. In ninety-nine cases in one hundred two grains of morphine taken at one time by one unaccustomed to the drug would result in death ; yet a man in Chicago took six grains without any inconvenience, although he had never before taken an opiate to his knowledge. Two teaspoonfuls of laudanum have proved fatal in numbers of cases ; but an acquaintance swallowed two ounces, six- teen teaspoonfuls, without experiencing any hurtful effects whatsoever. In each instance suicide was the object, and mental disorder may have served to neutralize the effects of the master poison. The exceptions do not affect the rule. The usual doses of the various forms of the drug are as stated ; when thus taken, unless there is great physical suffering, or unconsciousness, the effects are in all cases pleasurable ; not a single exception having been noted in all the examples that have come under observation. The agreeable and beau- tiful phase continues oftentimes for months when the habit is forming, but in decreasing potency. So the universal consensus is that the tendency is to steadily increase the quantity and that once the excitation passes, the spell of the enchanter is broken forever. As the Norse " huldre," the ex- quisite loveliness has given way to utter repulsive- 100 DOCTOR JUDAS. ness. The night comes and grey never again streaks the sky as harbinger of a coming day. Because of the peculiar conditions surrounding my case, which have been faithfully given elsewhere, it is necessary, in order to present some phases of the pleasures of the habit, to draw upon the experi- ences of other credible witnesses. There were, it is true, some periods in the shadowy and murky land of dreams and mental straits of the early days of the habit, in which there appeared forms and faces of opium creation that were not unpleasurable, but they were, after all, like the fancies and illusions that come to the fever-tossed patient. They are floating, uncertain creatures, tossed about here and there upon the waves, bobbing like so many corks, crossing and intermixing, gradually fading from sight only to show up in another place. A physician whose practice was large, so over- worked himself during an epidemic of fever in a malarial district in Missouri that he suffered terri- bly from insomnia. In order to relieve it he had recourse to the hypodermic syringe, injecting one- fifth of a grain of morphine into his arm. The effect of this being barely perceptible, after about twenty minutes he took another; injecting this time about one-third of a grain. The influence was almost instantaneous and he passed at once into a restful and delightful frame of mind, followed by ecstatic visions. " I found myself," said he, " suddenly relieved from the oppression and heaviness that had PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. 101 been upon me for many days and nights ; a very quieting influence crept over me. The blood quickened in the veins ; the pulse beat faster. The skin of the body grew dry and this seemed to ex- tend to the hair, which gave out the impression of crackling, like dry twigs when stepped upon. These changes were followed by a rather agreeable buz- zing in the ears, a quickening of the vision, and a sense of extreme lightness of body. I seemed to have cast off every ounce of superfluous flesh and could float or fly in the air, if I desired. A kind of flickering of light rays went on before the eyes and the joints of the tongue were loosed wonderfully. I talked to my wife, who had entered the room just after the second injection, as if for a wager, until she became alarmed at my animated manner; when I reassured her by telling her what I had done and requested her to leave, that I might sleep. "When alone the speech mania passed and I went into a delirium of intoxication, every detail of which is fresh in my mind, although my head was swimming and thoughts came and went with lightning rapidity. All these impressions were agreeable, delightfully so; yet there was a fitfulness about them, suggestive of the aberrances of a fever. I wandered through palaces of marble, where stately dames danced minuets and lovely girls flitted about hilariously to sensuous music that thrilled my very soul. Then I was transferred to gardens and parks filled with all manner of incensed flowers, fountains and statues ; where birds sang as if inspired and 102 DOCTOR JUDAS. beasts roamed about at pleasure, indifferent to my presence. I visited a thousand places of which I had heard or read; as, the Louvre, the Vatican, St. Peter's, the cathedrals of Milan and Cologne; I whirled along in cabs across the continent of Europe and sailed over oceans; at all times accompanied by agreeable companions, who talked delightfully on the most entertaining subjects. Finally, a state of silent, ineffable bliss ensued, in which the soul seemed to be absorbed in meditation upon chaos. There were the merest suggestions of delightful mists, that dissolved just as they were about to assume agreeable shapes; I heard sounds that were not exactly music, yet most pleasant withal. I could scarcely be said to be thinking or feeling, yet the state was one of cognition — a dreamy, heavenly state, in which indifferentism united with musing upon what is unknowable. " One can form no idea of time in such a frame as this. I was wide awake ; there was consciousness, for the crowing of a Cochin China cock in the yard and the barking of a neighbor's dog told of living things. I was serenely at peace. No thought was given to the many patients, whose varying disorders had so disturbed me ; I gave no heed to the weather, the extreme heat of which had caused me no little an- noyance. Not a single wave of trouble beat against my anchored spirit. Whether it was day or night, or warm or cold, whether at home or abroad, on land or sea, gave me no concern. I was of the world, for I knew where I was and what I had done; PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. 103 but I was not of the world, because there was no thought or care concerning anything upon earth. The various objects in the chamber were plainly seen ; but they were, in a sense, etherealized ; taking on more artistic shape, delicacy of structure, and richness of material. At the same time I felt my- self translated into another realm, in which figures not unfamiliar appeared ; yet I was unable to clearly identify them; it seemed I might do so if I put forth any effort, but effort of any kind was alto- gether out of the question, because I was peacefully contented. " Presently I grew somewhat restless and the buzzing in the ears increased to a mild roar, while mists danced before the eyes; then I passed into sleep and dreams. I say dreams, because there was one after another, and one chased into the other; then they would get mixed up in a queer fashion, but they were all delightful and bewitching. Now, I was in the midst of flowers whose fragrance fairly intoxicated me; then among airy-like structures, whose towers and minarets pierced the crimson and purple cloud islands that floated high in a sky of deepest blue. Forms of enchanting loveliness passed in and out, while music from unseen voices was as the songs of angels. The scene changed rapidly without shock to my highly sensitized nerves; the impossible and unusual became substantial and natural. I stood on an island of emerald green, looking out upon an opalescent sea of sublime tran- quillity, upon which men of stately mien walked as 104 DOCTOR JUDAS. upon dry land; then I was suddenly transferred to a mountain peak, where I saw all the kingdoms of the world, with their pleasures and riches, without a suggestion of the sorrows and afflictions that beset humanity. I saw the faces of loved ones lit up with ineffable happiness as they pleasantly conversed with me; it did not occur to me until after the waking that these were the forms of those who had been called hence during my childhood, youth, and younger manhood. They were living and real ; yet their manner and speech were not those of the liv- ing. These and a thousand other visions floated before the dream eyes of the quickened but dis- ordered brain; but the sensations were in the high- est degree pleasurable and the delirium was one of ever-changing joy. The awaking was terrible. My mouth was parched, the lips dry, my head ached violently, and I cursed morphine as the very devil among all drugs. Yet, think of the folly and the weakness of man! Within two months I was bound hand and foot by the demon and he held me fast for fourteen years." An acquaintance in Michigan, who is a reticent man and slow of speech, was lifted in nubibus on the wings of opium and ridded himself of an Utopian address of great length to a delighted audience of ethereal spirits, the forms of which were agreeable, but whose semblance he had never seen in mortal shape. It may be explained in his case, that while a taciturn man he is reflective and poetic. Insist- ence is made that opium is never creative, but PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. 105 merely repeats thoughts and impressions that had previous place in the brain. On the other hand, its loquacity is boundless and the gentleman from Michigan found that, not only during the first months of the habit, but to the very end, he was garrulous during the period of greatest effect after each dose. In evidence of the contradictoriness and provokingness of opium, he found himself more or less garrulous in all his dreams as well. The pleasurable emotions and rhapsodical dreams dis- appeared in his case, never to return, after the fourth month. A Chicago friend declares that he enjoyed wak- ing periods of verve and dreams of bliss during the first ten months of his habit, but that their declin- ing energy was cognizable at the time. A pecul- iarity in his case was that his dreams in that epoch almost invariably led him into luxurious surround- ings and showed him possessor of great riches. In his hours of somnolence he strolled upon the banks of golden Pactolus, entered the realms of El Dorado, and carried the purse of Fortunatus. Time that was became the present; the dead were resurrected and he became the companion and friend of Dives, Midas, Crcesus, Lucullus, Louis le Grand, and Philip of Spain. The Rothschilds, Hirschs, Vanderbilts, and Astors of this generation courted his favor and he bestowed largesses with generous hand. His was the reward not only to see but also to acquire the world's riches; his opulence made him the observed of all nations. These dreams, to be sure, io6 DOCTOR JUDAS. took on different forms and scenes ; yet in the vari- ous extravaganzas his role was that of a king among the rich; for his treasures were unlimited. Among the many experiences that have been gathered, that of a gentleman in Virginia offers the most extravagant and fertile presentations. His first day disorders were literally dreams and visions of unalloyed amcenitates, in which he lay upon couches of roses ; while his companions were men who had been sanctified through their virtues, or spirits of good that had passed through death unto life. In one of his dreams, he was an angel of mercy, sent to bear tidings of redemption to souls that had sinned; he was thrilled with the infinite joy that was communicated from those he brought out of darkness into light. In his fumes of fancy he would go in and out of the gates of the Celestial City and he held converse with patriarchs and prophets, saints and martyrs of the ages. Often- times, these ecstasies would come upon him before his feet reached slumberland; indeed, he can scarcely divide the sleeping from the waking illu- sions in many of the hours of the happy period of opium delectation. Alas! with him as all other habitues, he was hurled like Lucifer headlong from the empyrean, and spent many weary years among the spirits of the lost and damned forever. The opium neophyte is never, like the victim of hasheesh, led into Phryne worship. Among all the varying moods of rhapsody and the infinite delirium of dreams no houri forms appear. Abominably PLEASURES OF SLAVERY. 107 monstrous and cruel though he be, crafty, devilish, fanciful, and diabolic, opium has only scorn for the lustful. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that in the time when opium offers enchantment in its extended right hand, with its left it thrusts pang and darts of conscious worthlessness. The Jack-o'-lantern sprites are succeeded by devils of querimoniousness, who suggest ills that opium only can heal; each paean of rhapsody is followed by a heart-touching threnody. The day of sunshine and blue sky finally ended with one and all ; the shadows fell, the storm burst, and fear compassed them about. CHAPTER IX. THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 'Gainst which a ship of succor desolate, Doth suffer wreck both of himself and goods. Spenser. Reflecting upon the incalculable harm that has been done by the tergiversations, contradictions, and illusive fascinations that abound in the "Con- fessions of an English Opium Eater," it seems obligatory to point out with emphasis such of the leading errors contained in that work as are not indicated elsewhere in this volume. The master of exquisite English is thus approached with trepi- dant spirit, because the judgment of man has made merit of his offenses through the vicarious atone- ment of his ineffable diction. The world at large has accepted his utterances as the pronouncement of one who spoke with authority and not as the time-serving Scribes; it may net therefore regard with favor any attempt to break in pieces this idol of general worship. I yield to no one in admira- tion of the superb genius of a man, who, despite the befogging clouds and thick darkness of opium thraldom, could yet see the infinite glories of mind and matter, portraying them in beauty of coloring and glow of imagery such as it has been permitted 108 THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. few to equal and none to excel. Of him it may almost be said that he wrote as never man wrote before. Herein, however, lies the danger of his distinguishing work, which Coleridge declares was written "with morbid vanity," and, he truthfully adds, was the "occasion of seducing others into the withering vice through wantonness." The beaute- ous charm of his words is almost as seductive as the baleful drug itself. There is no pleasure in attempting the work of an iconoclast, but the same invincible hand that has thus far led me on will not permit any obstacle to obstruct the path of inexor- able duty. Had De Quincey rested with the first two chapters of the "Confessions," which appeared in the autumn of 1821 ; when, as he boastfully said, he had "untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered" him, then had there been little to criticise; for, although the insufferable vanity of the genius pervades every page and the vaunting ambition to excel, even in weakness and cunning, led him into gross exaggerations, still the elaborate tale of his youth, supplemented with the all-too-brief account of the pleasures and evils of the drug, did serve to point a moral which he who runs might read and learn to his profit and warning. However, as all do know, the master of English was a persistent slave of opium ; the untwisted links soon became twisted again. He boasted as one who had not tested his strength ; for in August of the next year, 1822, followed his third chapter 110 DOCTOR JUDAS. which was supposed to be final, declaratory of his complete subjection to the Satan drug. Confessedly unable to conquer, here he begins his apology for the monster; seeking to persuade men that his shape is not nearly so hideous as he had been led to sup- pose, when he thought he saw a way of escape from his dominion and power. This was bad enough, sad enough, pitiful to weeping, that the strong should display such weakness and the sinner should so unctuously urge to sinning; yet thirty-four years after, in 1856, when he had passed the limit of life named by David, at a time when age should have brought him penitence and contrite sorrow for the evil he had done in persuading others to take the road whose end is the very gate of hell — in this period of reflection and supposed good judg- ment he set about to revise his book, and gave to the world a complete and full denial of the horrors of opium as recited in the original narrative in 1821. Here is what he says in 1856: "What, then, is my final report upon its good and evil results?" Remember this is the ultimate legislation of his mind; these statutes repeal all previous enactments that come in conflict with them. With all the emphasis he can command, De Quin- cey declares: (1) That in the habit there is not a tendency to increased quantities of the drug. (2) That the power and efficiency of the narcotic do not decline with use. (3) That the nervous depression, dire forebod- THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. in ings, and hideous dreams, so graphically described by him in 1821, were not the result of opium but of "sedentariness." (4) That he decreased his daily quantity from 8,000 to 300 drops of laudanum, and later to less than 150 drops (5 to 6 grains of opium, or less than 1 grain of morphine), maintaining the latter quantity, without increase, for many years and until his record was made. (5) That he should have been dead thirty-five years before but for the "beneficent" drug. Readers of this book will observe that the author's experience is positively contrary in every particular to this summary of De Quincey's conclu- sions. There is not an opium habitue in this or any other Christian country, not one anywhere, but that will in his own sad servitude confute the author of the "Confessions." In the various interpolations that are found in the revised edition of 1856 charity may see vanity and senility ; while justice proclaims them downright falsehood and deceit. The illus- trious writer of these amendments confuted himself by his own words at the time he promulgated them. In his Prefatory Notice to the New and Enlarged Edition, he says: "A nervous malady of a very peculiar character, that has attacked me intermit- tingly for the last eleven years, came in on May last, almost concurrently with the commencement of this revision; and so obstinately has the malady pre- served its noiseless and what I may call subterranean siege, since none of the symptoms are externally 112 DOCTOR JUDAS. manifested, that, although pretty nearly dedicating myself to this one solitary labor, and not intermit- ting or relaxing for a single day, I have yet spent, within a very few days, six calendar months upon the recast of this one small volume." This confession of nervous undoing scarcely comports with another of his dogmatical assevera- tions, that "nervous irritation is the secret desolator of human life; and for this there is probably no adequate controlling power but that of opium, taken daily under steady regulation." According to his own positive boast he had taken this drug daily "under steady regulation" through all the "last eleven years," and yet, although the "power and effi- ciency of the drug never decline," he had been afflicted in these years with "a nervous malady of a very peculiar character," which so interfered with literary work that it actually demanded half a year to revise a book that is not so large as this volume. De Quincey might have added what the sober judg- ment of his best friends and sincerest admirers have since declared, that this nervous malady or some other cause conspired to make less alert his brain and less limpid the flow of thought; for by common consent the ♦ literary merit of the Revision falls infinitely short of the original work. Replying to the five allegations in the above synopsis it may be said : (i) The universal consensus points to increased quantities in the addiction. The physiological rea- sons for it are given in Chapter XV, of this book, THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 113 and there is not an intelligent physician anywhere but that will ridicule the assumption of the "Eng- lish Confessor." (2) If the first proposition were true, the second would be axiomatic ; but cell tolerance is an uni- versally admitted law in the scientific world. If this were not true, largely increased doses of any toxic drug would be succeeded by death, sure and certain. The author of the " Count of Monte Cristo " was well informed in this matter, because he saves the members of a household from the devil- ish machinations of a poisoner by habituating her would-be victims to use of a drug employed by her in the execution of her murderous designs. A friend of mine who had the morphine and cocaine habit to excess was likewise a strychnine " fiend," having carried his daily addiction of the latter poison to five grains before his restoration. Were De Quincey's allegation true, this gentleman would have been estopped forever when he reached his first grain of the alkaloid of nux vomica. Study of enslaving drugs has shown me that the bodily cells are the most accommodating substances to be found upon the face of the earth. They may protest, nay, they do usually protest strongly ; but they finally adjust themselves to every vagary of their owner and cheerfully proceed to fit themselves to man's perversity. They despise gluttony in drugs as in nutritious food ; yet whether in food or in toxics, it is unfailingly the same final tolerance. Unless shocked out of life by a sudden and overwhelming 8 n4 DOCTOR JUDAS. dose, they speedily guard against surprises by adjusting themselves to possible future furious assaults. (3) The fact that opium makes liars of all its slaves is fully demonstrated by De Quincey in this subterfuge. Confessing in 1821 to certain disturb- ances that were by no means exactly truthful, his master would give him no rest for thirty-five years until he made a sweeping denial of all. As else- where positively affirmed, the direct and invariable effects of opium are such as he ascribes to " seden- tariness," and De Quincey is the only man dead or living who experienced them from that cause, "sedentariness." The coincidence of his being in the habit and frightfully so, too, at the time of the dreams, phantoms, and visions, he does not regard ; the modest "retirement" of his life accounting to his full satisfaction for the burdens and terrors that made him wish to escape from life by day and to take wings and fly by night. (4) If De Quincey did what he claims, then does he deserve highest place among the eunuchs of the palace of the opium sultan. Instances are of record where men by exercise of the most terrible exertions have maintained for years a stated daily addiction, but no case has come under observation in which that quantity was less than the highest point reached in the habit. Had De Quincey in- sisted that for thirty-five years he had not exceeded eight thousand drops in any single day, his testi- mony might be accepted, since others have accom- THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 115 plished the same feat and it is a desperate feat at that, demanding constant exercise of all the strength and purpose that remain in the man ; but it is tax- ing credulity beyond bounds to accept as true a claim that cell tolerance can be nearly but not quite effaced. Several times during the habit I succeeded for a short time in reducing the quantity lower than the lowest point named by De Quincey ; but the clamoring cells would not be quieted until the usual supply was furnished them. There is no possible adjustment of the cells — it is physiologically im- possible to fit them to conditions thus named by the great opium eater. (5) This position so strenuously maintained by De Quincey for the last forty years of his life has been considered elsewhere ; it is passed here with the simple statement that a drug which suspends the powers of life and so utterly disorganizes the secretions can scarcely be said to promote longevity in a consumptive, or anybody else. Delirious with the riot of his own rich fancy and insanely jealous of men's approval, De Quincey, in- stigated of the Satan drug of prevarication, seems to have been divided between sanctifying opium slavish- ness and apotheosizing his own virtues. The simple, unvarnished truth is that the great author knew the weakness and the sin of the habit ; for in his thirty- sixth year he made a strenuous fight to overcome it. His " Confessions" were first written in the exuber- ance of supposed release ; he was then willing to portray the enchantment and diabolism of the 116 DOCTOR JUDAS. tyrant, because it enabled him to pose as a hero. Doubtless he made subsequent efforts to escape, but the fight of 1821 was the supreme struggle ; those that followed were weakling imitations of a titanic encounter. When he asserts that he renounced the habit altogether upon four separate periods, remain- ing out of the thrall at one time for six months, only to return to it again as the dog to his vomit, he draws highly upon his fancy for his facts. There is no opium "fiend" upon the face of the earth, who, if he had the strength to break the shackles by his own will, could be induced to return to it, so long as memory held a place in the chamber of his mind. Recollection of the horrors of the slavery would make suicide most easy, if choice had to be made between the latter and the former. Nothing that is said here or elsewhere in criti- cism of De Quincey should be interpreted into cen- sure of the essayist. He had a disease which was incurable in his day, a leading effect of which is mis- representation, that he could no more control than the fever-tossed patient can regulate the wild words of delirium that pass his lips. There is profound regret that the disease should have led him into dis- torted utterances which have lured the simple to woe; but there is sympathy and deep distress for the illustrious author who was enchained morally, physically, and mentally, for upwards of half a cen- tury, sometimes it would seem, without being con- scious of the fact. The "Opium Eater," as he termed himself, THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 117 declared that in his fourth deliverance he discov- ered what he regarded a wonderful truth, namely, that increasing doses are by no means necessary to the comfort of the habitue and that the potency of the drug is not diminished. The absurdity of this discovery is only equaled by the added one stumbled upon at the same time, that the solid gum had a growing tendency to demand extending time for the expansion of its effects, "oftentimes not less than four hours;" so that he adhered to laudanum, whose action was always quiet and certain. A tyro in physiology would laugh at this claim, knowing that the only possible difference between the two is that one is gum opium and the other gum opium suspended in alcohol. Naturally the latter, laudanum, would reach the circulation quicker than the former, because the spirit serves as a rapid vehicle of communication; but any cause that would operate to protract the period of diffu- sion in one would have a similar effect upon the "expansion" of the other. It is the universal experience of opium habitues that throughout the habit, though it endure for very many years, and whatever the form in which the opium is taken, there is no appreciable increase in the time required for diffusion of the morphinal particles throughout the bodily cells. Doubtless there is some delay in effects in consequence of the impediments thrown in the way by effete matter, but this added time is not appreciable to the habitue, because it is so slight. If the "Opium Eater" had been a student 118 DOCTOR JUDAS. of physiology or had had any scientific knowledge of the circulation and the nutrition of the body, he would have withheld this statement. Equally unfortunate is his allegation that "the opium eater in a normal state of health feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount — that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity." As well might he have averred that the man with smallpox, who is free of that disease, is in no danger of being pitted. No opium eater is, or was, or ever will be in a normal state of health. The organs cannot perform their several functions properly under the binding offices of the drug, and this is positively true, that the "moral affections" of the habitue are in such a state of chaotic befog- ment that their owner could no better analyze their condition than he could determine the constituents of the atmosphere of a star beyond the visible universe. De Quincey finds oblectation in the thought that opium does not produce drunkenness and in the same breath calls up a witness, a surgeon, to prove that this condition may exist. Now drunkenness is not always easily defined; yet, while it is certain that the opium eater is free from the noisy exhilaration, passionate outbursts, and crazy performances that mark certain stages and individuals in inebriety, it is none the less true that other conditions are com- mon to both, such as stupidity, mental aberration, nervous excitation, etc. There are differences, and marked ones, too, to the credit of the habitue; but THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 119 they do not warrant the exultant outbursts of De Quincey,— the Pharisaic sentiment of gratitude that one is not as the other fellow, while both are slaves. Nothing is more emphatic than his negation that depression follows the exaltation of opium, alleging that during the first ten years of his addiction the day following his "debauch" was invariably one of "unusually good spirits." It is unnecessary to call up the immense army of habitues to confute this statement; nature disproves him everywhere. There is a law of compensation infinitely more immutable than the laws of the Medes and Persians or a ukase of the Czar. As well declare that "a night of it" by drunkards inspires to good spirits in the period that pertains to headache and a general break-up. Every tax and strain upon the system must be paid for in suffering; the greater the shock the more violent the after molecular activity of the cells. The uniqueness of his experience is further set forth in his averment that he would indulge in a debauch precisely at intervals of three weeks, leav- ing the drug alone in the intervening space, and that in 1812, after eight years of the habit, he took it but once a week — on Saturday night. After such an extraordinary and absolutely solitary experience, an experience that is positively opposed to that of every other human being who has had the habit, he adds that in these years he had taken it in such quantities that he "might well have bathed and 120 DOCTOR JUDAS. swam in it." These alleged stated periods of.im- bibition were those in which he had his extraor- dinary "debauches," visited picture galleries, attended the opera and the market, accounts of which have become familiar from their frequent republication by magazines and other periodicals. He was essentially fortunate in retaining a love for music and the crowds, these being features that are absent in other habitues; but he manifestly lost sight of the toxic properties of laudanum, when he would have the public accept his testimony as to long abstinence from the drug and then filling his body with prodigious quantities of it. "Tolerance" comes of persistent use and persistent use only. The man who pursues the "reduction process" for some time is very cautious about giving himself a "shock" upon yielding up the fight; for he returns by successive stages to his former quantity, just as he left it, except that, as a matter of course, the insistence of the craving causes him to drive to it somewhat faster than he left it. Three weeks of total abstinence, if such a thing were possible, in an habitue, would make most perilous to life the imbibition of any considerable quantity of lauda- num. Still, De Quincey maintains this was his practice, and, what is equally extraordinary, declares that in 1812, after the eight years of pounding of his system, he was in perfect health. Attacked with illness in this year, he waited until the next, 1813, to become a regular, daily "soaker." Here he asks his readers to believe that after hold- THE ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. 121 ing the drug down for eight years, first to a once- in-three-weeks and then to a once-in-one-week addiction, he should suddenly plunge into irremedi- able and colossal quotidian use of the narcotic. The man who could convince himself that he could persuade the public to credit such allegations is probably not to be reprobated for bursting into that oft-quoted rhapsody of the drug, closing with the words, 'v au>%erai rats zXtzmti— if it were not for hope the heart would break. The 155 156 DOCTOR JUDAS. Greeks were wise, but they knew nothing of the woes of the opium slave or that sentiment had not been repeated. Hope died in conscious helpless- ness and the memory of her voice was lost. There was protest, just as the ryot might revolt against his vassalage ; but the repeated and desperate ef- forts to throw off the bonds were but the despairing throes of a soul moved of revenge for suffering endured. So potent was its sway and so intelligent was its action that it seemed to have a personality, and there was a disposition to treat it as an individ- ual having corporeity, who might be reached and made to suffer for his tyranny. The mortiferous effects of the drug were never more horrible than in the spectacle of the complete- ness with which the time damnee was held. It was absolutely impossible to get away from the opiate. When vows were sincerest that the voice of Aspasia should never more allure, then, even while the words were being uttered, she was clasped firmest by the hand and her power was the most supreme. There are times when the drunkard becomes so utterly disgusted with alcohol that the smell of it is rank, and he cannot if he would place it again to his lips. He may be totally abstinent for a week, a month, a year or more, but with a suggestion of a desire now and then. He feels his liberty as a young horse that is set free in a green pasture after long confine- ment in a close stable. He rejoices as a strong man entered for the race and vaunts himself that he has come out more than conqueror through the po- THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. 157 tency of his master will. Alas! for the opium helot, the inexorable Spartan drug exacts continual ser- vice. A physician of central Illinois who was cured of an addiction of ten years' duration once said to the writer: " It is possible to dam Niagara, because engin- eering skill stops at nothing short of the limitation of the money supply, but the opium 'fiend' posi- tively cannot get away from his drug. If his sup- ply is cut abruptly off he will be insane or dead in forty-eight hours. I should demand the most irre- fragable proof to be convinced that any habitue ever left off the drug through his own efforts. Stories we hear concerning opium slaves who are made prisoners and kept away from their supply may be received with many grains of allowance. However low in the scale of society the 'fiend' has his friends who visit him in his confinement and they can smuggle the drug into his cell. Indeed, it is true that the lowest stratum of society shows closer cohesion than the upper. The very necessi- ties of these people beget a mutual sympathy that manifests itself in a division when the occasion demands. Opium 'fiends' may be killed or made mad by incarceration, but cured they are not, ever. They must have their drug or they are lost forever. They cannot and they dare not get away from it." Referring to the practice of smuggling opium into prisons and reformatories I may say that ex- tended observation in Chicago proves the correct- ness of the statement. Poor wretches whose sins 158 DOCTOR JUDAS. threaten arrest almost invariably carry about with them a quantity of the drug to guard against the dread contingency. This is ample for their needs until their associates can be informed of their con- dition. Should there be delay in their coming, offi- cers of the prison, whose experience soon teaches them the unreasonableness and troublesomeness of "fiends" who suffer from abstinence, find it con- venient to supply them, if they have money to pay for it. Courtesans and other miserable creatures thus imprisoned will be supplied by their friends through an incarceration that extends over six or twelve months, or longer, even. Where one is so unhappy as to have no friends, her body is usually found dangling from a bar of the cell; if the news- papers contain any account at all of the affair the public is informed that the wretch took her life frenzied from opium. Ah ! it was not the drug, but the lack of it that destroyed. The tortured unfor- tunate endured a million pangs, every one of which was worse than the thirst of Tantalus, before she was driven into taking that "fearful leap in the dark." The ring of Gyges or the gold of Crcesus could not tempt a "fiend" into getting away from his devil master. The opium habitue can go a step further than Louis XIV. when he said, "I had nearly waited," for he never suffers himself to wait. The drug is as the apple of his eye for preciousness and if choice had to be made between the organ of sight and the opiate, he would speedily be blind. All THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. i5g that he hath will he give for his drug. Accident alone, and accident which may not be guarded against by any ordinary prudence, can separate him from it. He may be and most frequently is indif- ferent to food; negligent of business and callous to the distress and suffering of his family ; but he is keenly alive at all times to the necessity of his drug supply. If he have no money he will resort to any and all kinds of tricks and devices to procure it. Opium does not, like whisky, make criminals, because it is a subduer of all passions and sins; yet if the "fiend" could not obtain a supply in any honest way, he would beyond a doubt resort to crime to reach it. A Wisconsin physician speaking of the inexorable craving said, with great feeling: "Looking back upon the sorrowful days of my habit I do rejoice that my necessities were never such as to lead me into an act of dishonesty. Still, I was a thief at heart, for I then knew, as I now know, that if I could not procure the drug fairly I would have forced window or door to obtain it." No stronger evidence of the abject slavery can be afforded than this, when it is known that opium is a promoter of cowardice, timidity, and self-seclu- sion ; and, apart from the disgrace connected with presence in a court of justice to answer to a crime, the notoriety of being stared at and criticised is a punishment of the most serious nature. It is doubt- ful if, led to commit a crime in order to procure his drug, he would go farther than supplying himself with opium and then only sufficient for a few days' 160 DOCTOR JUDAS. necessities. The opium habitue loathes crime and the criminal, and every tendency of the drug is to draw him away from violence and the violent. It must be understood that the latter statement does not apply to the smoker of opium, for reasons that are set forth in another chapter. He may be and often is a criminal ; this habit being on the in- crease among trulls (who add thieving to their nefarious business), pickpockets, sneak-thieves, and other minor offenders against law and order. Smok- ing of the drug is an Old World habit, which for obvious reasons is not likely to fasten itself upon the better classes of the Saxon or Germanic races, at least; whatever impression it may make upon the Latin races. Opium in the form of morphine is in use very generally among the nymphs of the cities, whose incomes will permit the expense; but with this exception the taking of the drug hypodermically or by the mouth, and the gum or powdered opium, and laudanum addictions are con- fined almost exclusively to what are commonly de- nominated the middle and aristocratic classes of society. The habit is rare among working people ; chiefly because they cannot afford to employ physi- cians except when they are really ill, and also be- cause the habit involves a quotidian expenditure that is not within the limit of wages and that assuredly would not always be forthcoming. Drunk- ards may be fqund everywhere, in palace, in mod- est house, in flat, in tenement and hovel ; but opium "fiends," outside of " pipe hitters," are confined THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. 161 chiefly to the upper walks of life. These people have been trained from childhood to abhor crime, and as the effects of the habit are to subdue all violent impulses, they keep out of mischief. Every opium habitue who reads this book must confess to himself the correctness and conservative- ness of these utterances, because of their confirma- tion by his own experience. Each one of these knows from a memory that is persistent that there is no agony equal to that which comes of sudden and radical deprivation of the drug. A single affliction of this kind provides sufficient warning for the remainder of life, and rather than undergo a second ordeal the habitue would welcome the knout, the test by fire, or boiling in oil. A medical friend in Texas, who "trod the wine- press" of cure with the writer, had some most pain- ful experiences which grew out of deprivation, that was caused by the misdirected but well-meant zeal of his devoted wife. Nearly heartbroken on account of his addiction she sought to effect his cure by cutting off his supplies; in part, at least. It may be explained that, as a rule, those who use mor- phine hypodermically do not get results when they take it by the mouth. There are those who have the addiction in both ways, and some who resort to the syringe express satisfaction with the other mode when they double the usual quantity. The rule, though, is as stated, and the Texan doctor did not make an exception, as his good wife dis- covered ; thenceforward she seemed to make it n 162 DOCTOR JUDAS. the supreme business of her life to destroy every hypodermic syringe that could be found. Ferret was never more diligent in search of rats in an old rambling house than she in her quest for the abom- ination that made desolate her heart. The doctor lived in the country, fourteen miles from a drug- store, and the loss of his syringe became a most serious matter. Omitting his quaint but pleasing dialect his story is as follows: "During twelve years the only pleasure my dear wife had in life was the breaking up of my syr- inges, and I could not bear, being responsible for her otherwise wretchedness, to put a stop to the pastime by raising a storm. So it finally became a game of hide and seek. I hid and, I can assure you, her anxious eye found the object. I dared not have the instrument in my medicine chest for a single moment; to stow it away in a pocket was to entail its certain loss. Her vigilance was unremit- ting by day and by night. The subject was one that was never introduced during the twelve years that the game was played, but each was keenly alive to what was going on. She never interfered with the morphine itself; a pound of it would have given her no concern, because she had learned that the accursed stuff afforded me no relief except as taken under the skin. "I exercised my best wits in efforts to circum- vent her and, as you know, a 'fiend' is not defi- cient in cunning where his habit is involved; some- times I would bury the syringe or sink it in the THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. 163 depths of the well; yet all unavailingly. A good woman's love is bigger than man's inventions, and the destruction proceeded year in and year out. Sometimes she would destroy as many as six in a single month. Her persistence under discourage- ment was admirable. She knew from sad experi- ence that the destruction of one involved the pur- chase of another—in fact, several; yet perseveringly she took a seeming delight in crushing the little glass tubes into millions of atoms. Oftentimes I wept in secret because I was unable to reward her patient effort. " It is scarcely possible to tell you how much agony of pain that devoted little woman caused me by this practice. Upon one occasion, when doubled up with rheumatism, she had purloined the syringe from beneath the feather bed during my sleep and I actually crawled upon my belly to the stable, after hours of untold suffering, with the intention of mounting my horse — I am sure the task would have been impossible — when, to my infinite joy, I saw the instrument upon the ground. The needle had been broken off and with it a portion of the neck ; but I seized it with delighted satisfaction, and, returning to my chamber, hastily dissolved a couple of tablets ; after which I opened my knife and made an incision into the living flesh of the leg, inserting the uneven surface of the glass ; repeating the operation until my blood was saturated with the morphine solution." Upon another occasion he strapped himself to 164 DOCTOR JUDAS. his horse because of physical weakness and rode at the fullest speed of the animal to the distant village, in one of the darkest of prairie nights, utterly in- different to " chuckholes" and other inequalities, pursued by the phantoms of opium and fearing lest his strength should fail before he could reach his goal. A very intelligent young man in Michigan lost both his legs in a railroad accident and during his long stay at the hospital had the morphine habit fastened upon him by his attendant physician. After his return home a brother, thinking to break him of his slavery by deprivation of the drug, for- bade the one druggist and the physicians of the vil- lage to supply him with the opiate ; a cruelty the intensity of which could not be equaled by the in- vention of a North American Indian. The poor cripple tearfully implored a removal of the inter- dict ; but he might as well have cried to the winds to cease their fury. Ignorance is ever right in its own judgment ; it knows no quality of mercy. After enduring inexpressible torture, this poor wretch actually swung: himself a distance of six blocks upon his hands to find the druggist and beg for pity. Finding him inexorable he dragged himself to the doctor's office ; from which he was ruthlessly turned away. Racked by thousands of invisible fiends he then, still upon his hands, made his way to the depot, where, after some hours, which in his mortal agony seemed ages, a train arrived, and he traveled 250 miles before he found relief. Finally THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. 165 reaching the city where he found a sympathetic friend, he was happily in a state of semi-uncon- sciousness. The remembrance of that inquisition will haunt that young man forever. Vividly recalling the pains and penalties of de- privation, if I ever show want of tenderest pity for creatures in such a strait, may God withhold mercy from me in the day of judgment. It is and always shall be a duty and pleasure to succor any one who is encountered in this state of suffering ; even though (as sometimes has happened) it be one of those unfortunates from whom self-respecting persons naturally turn away in disgust and loathing. Of all the pains that are and may be, in this world cr the next, it seems impossible that any can equal those endured when every bodily cell is in a rage because it is emerging from the stupefying drunk- enness of opium. It is a bodily crucifixion that tongue cannot portray or pencil depict. The heart that is callous to such suffering has, after all, most need of pity. It may be mentioned that the habitual users of opium experience much suffering from the qualita- tive differences in the drug. Gum opium varies greatly in morphinal strength, the standard being 6.7 grains of dry opium for each grain of mor- phine ; yet there is much opium that does not con- tain more than one grain of morphine for each 12 or 13 grains of the gum. Many druggists who manufacture their laudanum are ignorant of this fact, or are indifferent to it, and the result is that 166 DOCTOR JUDAS. habitues who use opium or laudanum find them- selves tortured after taking their usual quantity. If test were made of, say, laudanum, bought at six drug stores, no two of the samples would show cor- responding strength. Physicians are interested in this fact, because opium being a toxic, they must exercise care in its administration ; a first dose fail- ing of effect they are slow to repeat it. Govern- mental interference in this direction may be a necessity if the evil continues. Positively I have come into possession of laudanum and gum opium that did not possess more than one-half the re- quired strength, demonstration of the fact being made in most convincing manner. Learning the truth early in the habit much unnecessary pain was escaped (although it involved frequent inconven- ience) through obtaining a supply regularly from the same druggist, as previously stated, who was reliable and most careful to prove the merit of what he sold. As stated, however, this was inconvenient and frequently necessitated somewhat extended jour- neys. For a long time the base of supply was distant no miles and this space was frequently cov- ered for the sole purpose of laying in a stock of the drug. During the last two years of the addiction professional work was prosecuted at home and every possible device was resorted to to find excuse for visiting the drug store. Some of these were so palpably weak that they were easily punctured by the good wife and others had to be substituted. THE DRUG BEFORE ANYTHING. 167 By this time the ravages of the drug had become so marked and the inane wanderings and absences were so frequent, that she looked with terror upon a single absence, however brief; her mental distress being great as that of Hilge, "who swam in the dew of sorrow." Still, opium is inexorable, and rivers would have been swum and mountains climbed to reach the goal of inevitable satiation. CHAPTER XIII. HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. Use doth breed a habit in a man ! Shakespeare — Two Gentlemen of Verona. Man is a creature of habit; but he is a slave of habits. Reliable estimates place the number of victims of enslaving drugs, exclusive of alcohol, in the United States at upward of two millions ; the great majority of these being held in the bands of opium. The question, then, is a natural one, why do men yield themselves so readily to the servitude? It is indisputable that no one who is under subjec- tion to the tyrant would remain in his realm one hour if he could escape. There are many drunk- ards, who, like Eskimos and many Indian tribes, find pleasure in dipsomania. They affect, at least, to find delight in the excitation of the ebriate state, which they insist is more than compensation for the after headaches, depleted purse, and lowered moral tone that are inseparable from the habit. A Vir- ginian of superior intellectual endowments and ancient family, who was as great a drunkard as Grantaire in " Les Miserables," once said to the writer, " It is permitted man to seek happiness in his own way, and I find that the royal road to bliss 168 HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. i6g runs through the realm of King Alcohol. The chief satisfaction of living is getting ecstatically drunk." No opium " fiend" ever talked on this wise. De Quincey struggled earnestly to get away from the beak and talons of the opium hawk and it was not until old age brought on a garrulous mental marasmus that he attempted unqualified de- fense of the baleful man destroyer. All that the habitue has he would give for freedom ; he struggles daily against his appetite, even though oft-failure tells him such efforts are as the web of Penelope — what is gained is speedily lost. How is it, then, that men fasten the collar about their necks and become Gurths and Wambas of the opium thane ? There are those who successfully resist it from the outset; their ears being closely shut against the voice of the charmer, though it be melodious as morning song of birds in springtide. These will take it under the direction of a physician for weeks and then cast it aside as an old garment. Others seem to have a close affinity for it, as a man and a woman may meet for the first time and be mutually attracted, so that they are said to " fall in love at first sight." Instances are known where persons of this class have had the habit irrevocably fastened in a week. As the enamored couple referred to, they may be said to have become enslaved at the first meeting. Why some men are as indifferent to opium as they are to arsenic and others fairly rush into the arms of the devil enchantress, is as unknowable as the cell character 170 DOCTOR JUDAS. of the human body. It is definitely known that these little parts that are fractions of the unit Ego have sensibility and sentience and a decidedly dis- criminating taste. They may take kindly to whisky, coffee, tea, tobacco, chocolate, certain foodstuffs, etc., while other stimulants, dainties, etc., they as decidedly refuse. " There is no accounting for tastes," having reference to love, friendship, etc., will apply with equal potency to the cells of the body. It is known that some individuals are so constituted that a single drink of wine or whisky will make them irreclaimable drunkards, while others might be in contact with Bacchus daily for a lifetime without becoming the votary of the reel- ing little god. Some men display an extraordinary tolerance for such toxic drugs as strychnine, bella- donna, stramonium, etc., while very small quantities of these will affect others fatally. Scientific men charge upon heredity the respon- sibility for physical tendencies, especially those that do not reflect credit upon the race. The dodge is an old one of shirking responsibility. Adam found a scape-goat in Eve after the great transgression; the ancient Jews made a poor inno- cent kid perform the same office for the whole people. In the light of present knowledge physicists should be slow to teach children to slander their parents, and parents' parents after this fashion. In the mat- ter of drunkenness, and the same holds good of opium, it is shown that the children of inebriates have measurable immunity from dipsomania through HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. a tolerance acquired by the cells of the sire and directly transmitted to the offspring. The long im- bibition of the father gives him a certain exemption from the toxic effects of the alcohol and this qual- ity of the cells is an inheritance. It is demonstra- ble that children of drunkards are no more liable to yield to the weakness of drink than are the children of total abstainers. All that can be said with confidence concerning the readiness with which men yield to the enslaving drug is that structural differences exist in the cells, which differences are yet to be discovered and ex- plained. Understanding, as they undoubtedly must, the weakness of humanity, it is incomprehensible that physicians should resort to opium with such fre- quency and use it so recklessly. The fact that the habit abounds is evidence that the doctors do not exercise proper caution. Incidentally it may be said that while any candid physician will admit the truth of this, it is next to impossible to find one who will confess that he has such a sin for which to make answer. It is by no means difficult to find a doctor who will declare he knows some other physi- cian who has fastened the habit upon a poor wretch; but as for him, perish the idea that he should be so culpable ! Medical men would denounce as a glaring out- rage upon their rights and an assassination of science any legislative statutes making it a penal offense to use opium in the practice ; yet society 172 DOCTOR JUDAS. must protect itself. The law-makers of one state found it necessary to restrain the indiscriminate use of chloroform in surgical operations. Truth de- mands it should be said that many physicians use the drug in their practice with great circumspection and intelligent understanding of its danger; but there are thousands who dispense it as recklessly as quinine or magnesia, with the most injurious results. Admitting all the beneficent qualities claimed for it the fact remains that there are many cogent reasons why it should be banished from the pharmacopoeia. Men do not fall into the opium addiction of them- selves, as drunkards into their habit. Society does not place the lethal poison on the side table or offer it at the banquet; friend does not invite friend to take a drink of it ; attractive saloons do not in- clude it in the list of their insidious decoctions. Opium is known and accepted everywhere as a rank, if beneficent poison. When a druggist sells it he places a skull and crossbones label upon the parcel, signifying its menace to life. Men, therefore, have not the temptation or the inducement to fall into the habit of themselves. The doctors must assume the responsibility, however disagreeable it may prove. If correction of the evil be not made by them they must not complain if the people through their legislatures take the matter in hand. Opium using is steadily on the increase in this country. This is especially true of the Southern States and of those sections of country that have HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. 173 local option or prohibition. Druggists are close- mouthed people, as a rule, but any respectable man who seeks truth may discover upon inquiry of these dealers that where the saloons have been shut up by law the demand for the drug has increased. This is easy of explanation; the poor drunkards seek a substitute for the alcohol from which they have been forcibly separated, and they think they find it in the extract of poppy. In the great centers of active energy and dissipation, the large cities, de- mand for the drug is fearfully on the increase. It is now a fad among physicians to inject morphine; so that when a business or a professional man awakens in the morning overcome of the excesses of the previous night and finds himself incapable of reaching his office, the physician who is sent for knows that a morphine tablet will restore the equi- librium for a little while and the syringe is put in requisition. These drunkards, once they learn that opium quiets the nerves after a debauch, are not slow to take advantage of the fact; indeed, it is lamentably true that the knowledge tempts them into repeating their drunken outbreaks at pleasure, having the means at hand to patch themselves up. Reference might also be made to the exactions of society and the severe strain to which women are subjected, the depression that follows the excite- ment, and the ready needle which fires the blood with ecstasy of exaltation. Without entering fur- ther into the causes for increase in the number of '74 DOCTOR JUDAS. habitues the fact is emphasized that the condition exists; moralists and physicists must inquire what is to be done about it. No man takes to opium in any form, except the smoking of the drug, unless there is some diseased condition; by disease is meant abnormal condition of the body. If he be in health there is revulsion, positive and absolute, which may not be overcome except by a mighty effort of the will. Opium is a medicine, not a food, and healthy people do not crave medicines. The cells of the body have their likes and dislikes and when in a healthy condition often know what is better for them than their owner, who will be wise if he obey their injunctions. They raise a revolt when strychnine enters their domains; they protest against over-supplies of coffee and breadstuff's of all kinds. Physicians as well as laymen may confound ap- parent health with diseased bodily conditions. There are physical disturbances that are as difficult of determination by the eye, or by diagnosis even, as are certain mental aberrances. Extended ac- quaintance among once opium habitues now cured warrants the position assumed that the habit is formed when the body is diseased; every one of whom inquiry was made declared that physical degeneration antedated his addiction. De Quincey offers positive testimony to sustain this view of the case. He says, "A late under-secretary of state described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. 175 Dean of ------, viz., 'that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stom- ach." The author of the "Confessions " declares that the beginning of his addiction came of "a sud- den, over-mastering impulse derived from bodily an- guish ;" although Coleridge says he "had been faith- fully, and with agony of zeal, warned of the gulf, yet willingly sank into the current!" Coleridge was driven into the habit on account of a malady which medical science declared could not be alleviated in any other way. He ever mourned it and never employed allurements to entice others into the habit. De Quincey testifies that Coleridge was,in no way responsible for his habit. This is true of all persons in the habit (whatever the form of the drug, opium powdered or gum, laudanum, or either addiction of morphine) ; the specific effects are identical, the environment of the slave being considered. This is not true of drunk- ards by any means. The tendency with alcohol is to exaggerate the normal temper or disposition of the individual. Wide experience with hard drinkers shows that whisky affects individual cases similarly; that is to say, the conduct of John Doe is likely to be repeated at each imbibition, and so is that of Richard Roe ; but their actions will not be similar, except as their dispositions and tempers are alike. In general terms alcohol excites to hilarity, mirth, good fellowship, and folly ; but these are only gen- eral conditions and partial stages of intoxication. The old Latins were very close observers of drunk- 176 DOCTOR JUDAS. ards and had magnificent opportunities for study- ing the various effects of wine upon men. The sum of their entire experience was, hi vino Veritas. The hog-like epitaph of Sardanapalus exactly portrayed the beastly character of that monarch when drunk— Eadie, ntve, atppoSiaia^v r alka dz ou6ev — eat, drink, be lustful ("merry," as Rollin charitably puts it); everything else is nothing. Drunkenness abolishes prudence and the true character of the man is dis- closed Not only are the characteristics of drunk- ards largely controlled by their mental and moral traits, but it is easy to arrange them into classes, such as the "drunkard that sleeps," the "fighting" drunkard, the "oblivious" drunkard, the " maudlin" drunkard, the " tramp " drunkard, the " lecherous " drunkard, the " mercenary " drunkard, the "fool" drunkard, the "wise" drunkard, etc., all of these stages or divisions being referable to a point when they have passed out of a condition of moral re- sponsibility for their acts. Thus when conversing with an inebriate who was animated and apparently profoundly interested, he would, quick as a light- ning flash, pass into a state of profound somnolence. So others without any apparent change of manner or speech, at a given period would be utterly ob- livious to what was going on about them and unable afterwards to recall what took place subse- quent to that given period ; it often being the case that memory would end at precisely that portion of a passing remark which was being made at the moment of oblivion. So with the remaining classes; HOW THE TYRANT ENSLAVES. as the drunkard who develops a sudden shrewdness in money matters, being exceedingly sharp in a bargain, which he does not recall afterward. Many drunkards will not gamble except when they reach what may be termed the " avarice " stage, when they will play heavily at faro or poker, or "plunge" at races, sometimes evincing a remarkable degree of shrewdness or "luck," while at others they show asinine stupidity. Now these variations are in no sense peculiar to the opium habitue. It will be understood, of course, that an uneducated man will not see visions nor have dreams of varying intensity like one whose mind is stored with knowledge, as De Quincey has correctly pointed out in his " Confessions." Each opium habitue is likely to be hedged in by his own wall — his fancies, doubts, fears, phantasms, and the million- and-one figments of his brain, because opium is in no sense a creator, or even a suggester of new ideas. It merely exaggerates previous impressions, facts, or knowledge ; distorts visual objects and jumbles fact and fancy into the most incongruous shapes and appearances. But the general effects of opium, whatever the form of the addiction, may be said to be the same in every slave. Thus in the first stages all have delightful periods of excitation, with pleas- urable dreams. With all habitues these delightful visions and pleasurable dreams gradually fade away. All habitues suffer frightfully from depression of spirits, from despondency with suicidal suggestions, are cowardly, errant in thought, uncertain in action, 12 178 DOCTOR JUDAS. vacillating, etc.; so that one may fully know the rationale of the habit as effectually from the experi- ence of one man as from that of a thousand. This is said advisedly, because of an extended experience among those who have had their long nights in opium Gethsemane and walked along with me the doleful road to the Golgotha of final agony and release. Where individuals present divergent ex- periences they have a double or triple addiction, as the chloral or cocaine habit, or both, in connection with their opium desire; when the specific effects of these, which are different from opium, will often present themselves. CHAPTER XIV. ASSAULTS UPON THE BODY. But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience. Milton—Paradise Lost. Although it is by no means within the purpose of this record to enter upon strictly scientific con- sideration of the subject, it seems necessary to a complete understanding of the effects of the drug upon the individual that something be said con- cerning the resultant action upon the body and its functions. De Quincey constantly maintained with an insistence worthy of a better cause that opium is a positive cure for consumption, and his view is endorsed modifiedly by a medical specialist of the greatest eminence, who has carefully studied the effects of opium in the habit upon the physical man. The latter declares that the immortal essay- ist is correct to the extent that the narcotic "puts to sleep" the germs of the disease, so that they remain in a passive state; but he adds that with the withdrawal of the drug the destroying work is resumed. In short he declares that for anyone who is consumptive to receive any benefit from the drug he must "get the habit and continue in it; a con- 179 180 DOCTOR JUDAS. dition a millionfold worse than the disease itself; for whereas the latter can only destroy the body, the former makes a wreck of the mind; while in the end a sad and gloomy death is certain." No knowledge is professed on this head, because it is a subject that pertains to the medical profes- sion and not to a layman. The latter, however, is privileged to speak, to "cry aloud and spare not" in all matters pertaining to opium slavery. Having felt the abrasion of the chains about the ankles, the weary toil at the heavy oars, the lash of the master and partaken of the wretched fare, it is competent to warn others never to do that which will bring them to the opium galley and the 'sea whereon it moves, of storm and cloud and thick darkness. Whether for consumption or any other disease, bet- ter far the sullen hand of cold death than the years of servitude that are filled with unutterable anguish. De Quincey was doubtless honest in his views concerning the efficacy of opium in certain diseases; but he was an enthusiast whose complete devotion to his master led him into the grossest error. The great Englishman was so long a devotee that cus- tom became second nature — ii