336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



patient passes the days and nights of writhing, the sleeplessness, 

 the restlessness, the thirst, and endless vomitings and purgings ; his 

 vain pleadings for liberty, for morphia, for anything which will re- 

 lieve the intolerable anguish ! These clinical notes of Levinstein's, in 

 form cold and terse as a hardware catalogue, are fairly burning with 

 their burden of tragedy. But this treatment he offers as the best 

 known, and its attendant sufferings he evidently believes are inevi- 

 table in any cure ! 



It has happened to me to know, through personal experience, that 

 the unfortunate victim of this " habit " can be freed from his bondage 

 without passing through such an ordeal. 



I had been an habitue ten years, having reached at the end of that 

 period the daily amount of thirty-six grains of gum-opium, taken only 

 into the stomach. The "habit" had been begun by a very small 

 amount, and its increase had been extremely gradual. I knew not 

 where to turn for help in effecting a cure : one thing seemed certain, 

 it could not be done without help. At a venture merely, I called 

 upon the late Dr. George M. Beard, feeling that, at any rate, I should 

 be free from the risk of charlatanism ; and I shall always remember 

 him with gratitude, for it was through his recommendation that I 

 placed myself under the care of another physician, who immediately 

 undertook the treatment of my case. 



The gentleman whom, through the good fortune of Dr. Beard's 

 introduction, I thus came to know, I found to be a young man in the 

 prime of good health and spirits, and one who at once inspired me 

 with that confidence so important in such a case. His residence, it 

 was manifest, was no ordinary "institute" or "asylum." I was sim- 

 ply a courteously received guest in a private family. Here were two 

 bright children quietly pursuing their games when I first entered ; and 

 I was soon introduced to a pleasant circle embracing the cultivated 

 ladies of the doctor's family, as well as the three who were to under- 

 take the new path simultaneously with myself. Among these good 

 fellows, as I soon found them to be, I was a simple layman in a medi- 

 cal " ring " as it were, for my comrades were young physicians, each 

 under the hypodermic spell, doctors though they were, helpless like 

 myself in the well-riveted chains. In this situation it is in no wise 

 easy to follow the injunction, "Physician, heal thyself." 



Placed in these easy and pleasant relations, with every comfort, 

 and a most important material consideration an appetizing table, 

 everything outward was calculated to inspire a feeling of freedom and 

 cheerfulness. I speak particularly of these favorable surroundings, 

 for they seem to me to form a very important accessory of the treat- 

 ment. 



This treatment differed in important respects from preconceived 

 ideas, such as are fostered by almost everything written upon the sub- 

 ject. The patient here, for instance, was under no surveillance and 



