stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by men on the subject of opium.

And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for further
discoveries, stand aside, and allow me to come forward and lecture on
this matter.

First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted, by all who
ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce
intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo perieulo_, that no
quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the tincture of
opium (commonly called laudanum) _that_ might certainly intoxicate if a
man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because it contains so
much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude
opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body
at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol, and not in _degree_
only incapable, but even in _kind_: it is not in the quantity of its
effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The
pleasure given by wine is always mounting and tending to a crisis, after
which it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary
for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from
medicine, is a case of acute--the second, the chronic pleasure; the one
is a flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main
distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental
faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner),
introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and
harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium greatly
invigorates it. Wine unsettles and clouds the judgement, and gives a
preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the
admirations, the loves and the hatreds of the drinker; opium, on the
contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties,