34 
ON TIIE HABITUAL usk av OPIUM 
always seemed to stand open, now at last barred against my retreat, 
and hung with funeral crape.” 
I cannot but think that after these extracts, the reader will enter¬ 
tain not a doubt, that once the use of Opium is commenced It can* 
not be broken off willingly, by the individual. 
I will now proceed to the next part of the chapter, which is a 
comparative view of the eves induced by diunkenness, or the abuse of 
intoxicating fluids, and the habitual use of Opium. 
To place clearly before the reader’s eye, the arguments in favour 
of the use of Opium, I cannot do better than give the verbatim, but 
suppositious dialogue, betwixt De Quincy the English Opium eater 
and Me. Nish the author of the Anatomy of Drunkenness. 
Qpmm Eater . I believe Doctor that the use of Opium is fre¬ 
quent among the working classes in manufacturing towns. 
Modern Pythagorean, It is Sir. 
Opium Eater . Do you approve of it P 
Modern Pythagorean, I should wish to speak with diffidence, 
with deference in the presence of a man of distinguished genius who 
Is himself a living and illustrious proof that Opium even taken in 
quantities, that before the publication of the confessions would have 
seemed to physicians in the country at least incredible, of the effects 
from the dist Hat’on of the poppy. Yet that these effects are always 
pernicious and often fatal when the use of Opium has been carried to 
any excess, is, I speak humbly, in my opinion the general rule, not 
weakened perhaps by one splendid exception. There are in the 
human constitution such extraordinary idiosyncracies that no physi¬ 
cian will be so rash as to expect that some there may not be, and 
one such allow me to say must be yours, with which Opium takes 
kindly, and acts so as to induce over the mi id, not weakness and 
obfuscation, but strength and brightness of all the intellectual powers. 
I should assuredly think so, reasoning either a priori, if indeed such 
reasoning can be applied pure in medical science, or from induc¬ 
tion. 
