in the year 1813 he had become a confirmed opium-eater, "of whom to
ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart
fulfilled its functions;" that in the year 1821 he had published his
"Confessions," in which, while leading the unobservant reader to think
that he had mastered the habit, he had in truth only so far succeeded
as to reduce his daily allowance from a quantity varying from fifty or
sixty to one hundred and fifty grains, down to one varying from seven
to twelve grains; that in the year 1822 an appendix was added to the
"Confessions" which contained a tabular statement of his further
progress toward an absolute abandonment of the drug, and indicating
his gradual descent, day by day, for thirty-five days, when the reader
is naturally led to suppose that the experiment was triumphantly
closed by his entire disuse of opium.

I had failed, however, to observe that a few pages preceding this
detailed statement the writer had given a faint intimation that the
experiment had been a more protracted one than was indicated by the
table. I had also failed to notice the fact that no real progress had
been made during the first four weeks of the attempt: the average
quantity of laudanum daily consumed for the first week being one
hundred and three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the
third, one hundred and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred
and thirty-eight drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of
more than three days had been rewarded with the indulgence of three
hundred drops on the fourth. A careful comparison of this kind,
showing that in an entire month the average of the first week had been
but one hundred and three drops, while the average of the last had
been one hundred and thirty-eight drops, and that in the fifth week a
frantic effort to abstain wholly for three days had obliged him to use