22 THE BIOLOGY OF DAILY LIFE. 



" Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy ; 

 Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm 

 Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite 

 Fallacious hope." 



Then, in language faithfully descriptive of the 

 physical, and the little-thought-of but far more terrible, 

 mental and moral effects of drugs upon the human body, 

 exhibited most in the process of expulsion ; these foes 



"Bend 



Four ways their flying march, along the banks 



Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge 



Into the burning lake their baleful streams; 



Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate ; 



Sad Acheron, of sorrow black and deep ; 



Cocytus, named of lamentation loud 



Heard on the rueful stream ; fierce Phlegethon 



Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. 



Far off from these, a slow and silent stream 



Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 



Her watery labyrinth." 



Every drug-taker prepares for himself a Tartarus, 

 watered by one or all of these infernal rivers. We 

 have grown so accustomed to disease and pain that we 

 actually think them natural, and then deny that Nature 

 is wise and kind. Or, if religiously and devoutly 

 disposed, we commit the same blasphemy in another 

 form, and attribute them to the will of God.* 



* This is clearly contrary to the teaching of Christ as given 

 in the New Testament. Disease is represented as the work of 

 the adversary, and so, of a case of "Asthenia" we read, "whom 

 Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years." While the inde- 

 pendence as well as the interdependence of physical and moral 

 law is plainly asserted ; God your Father " maketh his sun to 

 rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just 

 and on the unjust." (See Luke xiii., 16, and Mat. v., 45.) 



It is very interesting to remark in this connection the grand 



