AN EXPERIENCE WITH OPIUM. 335 



scattered into the water. None but the haggard young man could, 

 at the moment, comprehend the appalling magnitude of the calamity 

 there, as he was, two hundred miles from the nearest settlement ! 

 He survived the terrible ordeal, but no words could express, he has 

 said, the tortures and agony through which he passed during the suc- 

 ceeding weeks. He was closely watched, else, at times, he would have 

 drowned himself or have beaten his brains out upon the rocks. Months 

 afterward he came back to the world a skeleton, worn and haggard, 

 from his terrible contest. It was an experience to which he could 

 never afterward refer without the most painful emotions. 



Not the least significant point in this veritable account is the fact 

 that the young man always believed that his father had purposely 

 brought about the catastrophe for the sake of bringing matters to a 

 speedy end ! Has the usual treatment of the disease by physicians at 

 this day anything to offer that is much better than this man's sum- 

 mary method? Perhaps no work on the subject has appeared in 

 recent years more careful and thorough in its scientific intention than 

 Dr. Levinstein's "Morbid Craving for Morphia." It is evident that 

 he has brought no common accuracy of observation to bear upon the 

 subject. His clinical notes on a considerable number of cases of the 

 disease treated by him are of absorbing interest to the morphia 

 habitue. 



There is a striking parallel between the method of the Maine lum- 

 berman I have described and that of advanced German science in the 

 treatment of this disease. In both cases the patient suffers from the 

 intense cruelty of ignorance ! The best thing to do for the unfortu- 

 nate victim of morphia, according to this learned work, is to secure 

 him in rooms under charge of a competent keeper or nurse, his person 

 and baggage having been searched, and from the rooms " all opportu- 

 nities for attempting suicide having been removed. Doors and win- 

 dows must not move on hinges, but on pivots ; must have neither 

 handles, nor bolts, nor keys ; being so constructed that the patients 

 can neither open nor shut them. Hooks for looking-glasses, for 

 clothes, and curtains, must be removed." Certainly these are ominous 

 preliminaries to a course of scientific medical treatment ! Within this 

 prison the patient is totally deprived at once of morphia in every 

 form, and here he must struggle through the terrible weeks succeed- 

 ing as best he may. So far as appears, he has but the slightest medical 

 aid. His symptoms are closely watched, however, for the portentous 

 shadow of one special danger looms ever near his bedside that of a 

 sudden collapse of his vital powers. A few moments' delay in such a 

 contingency may prevent all power of resuscitation ; in any case, the 

 situation is very critical. Fortunate will it be if morphia, which is 

 always the immediate resort in such emergencies, have not lost its 

 potency ! 



I will not recount the story of the tortures through which the 



