PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM. 85 



and gin. It is, however, succeeded by a collapse or reaction, 

 which developes itself in imbecility, a loathing of food, and a 

 repugnance to all the ordinary occupations of life. At the 

 Opium-shops in Constantinople, the drug is rolled up in pills 

 by the marchand, who knows his customers so well, that he can 

 vary the size of the pill to meet their respective appetites. The 

 patient reclines on a sofa, takes a glass of water to wash down 

 the pill, and in a few moments those ecstatic dreams and chi- 

 merical scenes to which they are accustomed ensue. Some- 

 times the person makes his way home, assuming various gro- 

 tesque attitudes, being followed by shouts of derision by the 

 boys, or he recites elegant passages of poetry, and generally 

 becomes very eloquent. The excitement having subsided, a 



ours 



is attended by a gnawing pain in the stomach, but none of that 

 nausea consequent on the use of vinous or alcoholic drinks. 

 The intoxication of this drug produces an utter listlessness and 

 dislike to everything around the individual, who cannot be 

 happy or easy until he returns to the poison again. At length 

 the appetite is destroyed; the mind becomes incapable of pursu- 

 ing any study; there is a kind of delirium tremens; the 

 muscles become flaccid, and almost incapable of obeying volition; 

 the body becomes deformed, distortions take place ; and at last 

 death puts an end to the miserable existence of the Opium- 



eater. 



99 



The requisite dose of Opium to cause death must necessarily 

 vary with circumstances. ■ Pyl relates a case where sixty grains 

 caused rapid death ; another with thirty-six grains. Wildberg 

 (Practic. Handbuch fur Phys., iii. 329) states that half an 

 ounce of the tincture has proved fatal. Dr. Paris thinks that 

 four grains may prove fatal. Habit has, of course, much to do 

 with the dose necessary to prove fatal. In the Confessions of an 

 English Opium-eater, the author declares that he took as much 

 as eight thousand drops, or about nine ounces of Laudanum, 

 daily. In 1848, a young woman was brought into the Uni- 



