writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of Opium"
(published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not
been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c., of this
drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms ([Greek text]):
"Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made
common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would
take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their
experiencing the extensive power of this drug, _for there are many
properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and
make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves_; the result
of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove a general misfortune." In the
necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that
point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions,
where I shall present the reader with the _moral_ of my narrative.




PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS


These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful
adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of
opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
three several reasons:

1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a