in it, it did not become me to question it; but the defence set up I must
demur to. He proceeded to discuss the matter, and to lay down his
reasons; but it seemed to me so impolite to pursue an argument which must
have presumed a man mistaken in a point belonging to his own profession,
that I did not press him even when his course of argument seemed open to
objection; not to mention that a man who talks nonsense, even though
"with no view to profit," is not altogether the most agreeable partner in
a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent. I confess, however, that
the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may seem
a weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my experience,
which was greater than his greatest by 7,000 drops a-day; and though it
was not possible to suppose a medical man unacquainted with the
characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication, it yet struck me that he
might proceed on a logical error of using the word intoxication with too
great latitude, and extending it generically to all modes of nervous
excitement, instead of restricting it as the expression for a specific
sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have
maintained in my hearing that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a
medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have
reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day that a patient in
recovering from an illness had got drunk on a beef-steak.

Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium,
I shall notice very briefly a second and a third, which are, that the
elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a
proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate
consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The
first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying;
assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at
intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this