undertaken required a clear head and average health, and I had
neither. The sleep was short and imperfect, rarely exceeding two or
three hours. The chest was in a constant heat and very sore, while the
previous bilious difficulties seemed in no way overcome. The mouth was
parched, the tongue swollen, and a low fever seemed to have taken
entire possession of the system, with special and peculiar
exasperations in the muscles of the arms and legs.

The difficulty of thinking to any purpose was only equalled by the
reluctance with which I could bring myself to the task of holding a
pen. For a few weeks, however, the necessity of not wholly disgracing
myself forced me on after a poor fashion; but at the end of two months
I was a used-up man. I would sit for hours looking listlessly upon a
sheet of paper, helpless of originating an idea upon the commonest of
subjects, and with a prevailing sensation of owning a large emptiness
in the brain, which seemed chiefly filled with a stupid wonder when
all this would end.

More than an entire year has now passed, in which I have done little
else than to put the preceding details into shape from brief memoranda
made at the time of the experiment. While the physical agony ceased
almost immediately after the opium was abandoned, the irritation of
the system still continues. I do not know how better to describe my
present state than by the use of language which professional men may
regard as neither scientific nor accurate, but which will express, I
hope, to unprofessional readers the idea I wish to convey, when I say
that the entire system seems to me not merely to have been poisoned,
but saturated with poison. Had some virus been transfused into the
blood, which carried with it to every nerve of sensation a sense of
painful, exasperating unnaturalness, the feeling would not, I imagine,