PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 457 



tipple. Swallow a tablespoouful of laudanum or a few grains of ar- 

 senious acid every night : at first your physical conscience protests by 

 every means in its power ; nausea, gripes, gastric spasms, and nervous 

 headaches warn you again and again ; the struggle of the digestive or- 

 gans against the fell intruder convulses your whole system. But you 

 continue the dose, and Nature, true to her highest law to preserve life 

 at any price, finally adapts herself to an abnormal condition adapts 

 your system to the poison at whatever cost of health, strength, and 

 happiness. Your body becomes an opium-machine, an arsenic-mill, a 

 physiological engine moved by poison, and performing its vital func- 

 tions only under the spur of the unnatural stimulus. But by and by 

 the jaded system fails to respond to the spur, your strength gives way, 

 and, alarmed at the symptoms of rapid deliquium, you resolve to rem- 

 edy the evil by removing the cause. You try to renounce stimulation, 

 and rely once more on the unaided strength of the vis vitce. But that 

 strength is almost exhausted. The oil that should have fed the flame 

 of life has been wasted on a health-consuming fire. Before you can 

 regain strength and happiness, your system must readapt itself to the 

 normal condition, and the difficulty of that rearrangement will be pro- 

 portioned to the degree of the present disarrangement ; the further you 

 have strayed from Nature, the longer it will take you to retrace your 

 steps. Still, it is always the best plan to make your way back some- 

 how or other, for, if you resign yourself to your fate, it will soon con- 

 front you with another and greater difficulty. Before long the poison- 

 fiend will demand a larger fee ; you have to increase the dose. The 

 " delightful and exhilarating stimulant " has palled, the quantum has 

 now to be doubled to pay the blue-devils off, and to the majority of 

 their distracted victims that seems the best, because the shortest, road 

 to peace. Restimulation really seems to alleviate the effects of the 

 poison-habit for a time. The anguish always returns, and always with 

 increased strength, as a fire, smothered for a moment with fudy will 

 soon break forth again with a fiercer flame. 



By these symptoms the disease of the poison-habit may be identi- 

 fied in all its disguises, for the self-deception of the poor lady who 

 seeks relief in a cup of the same strong tea that has caused her sick- 

 headache is absolutely analogous to that of the pothouse sot who hopes 

 to drown his care in the source of all his misery, or of the frenzied 

 opium-eater who tries to exorcise a legion of fiends with the aid of Beel- 

 zebub. There are few accessible poisons which are not somewhere 

 abused for the purpose of intoxication : the Guatemala Indians fuddle 

 with hemlock-sap, the Peruvians with coca, the Tartars with fermented 

 mare's milk, the Algerians with hasheesh ; but, wherever men have deal- 

 ings with the " fiend that steals away their brains," there are always 

 Ancient lagos who mistake him for a " good familiar creature," till he 

 steals their health and wealth as well as their wits. Their woes are 

 not the penalty of their persistent blindness, but of their first open- 



