checked and controlled by a judicious use of calomel.

The condition of the digestive organs is less impaired than I should
have supposed possible, judging from the experience of others. A
moderate degree of attention to the quality of what is eaten, with
proper care to avoid what is not easily digested, with the exercise of
habitual self-control in respect to quantity, suffices to prevent, for
the most part, all unendurable feelings of discomfort in this part of
the system. Whether the habitually febrile condition of the mouth,
and the swollen state of the tongue, is referable to a disturbed
action of the stomach or of the liver I can not say. It is certain
that none of the effects of opium-eating are more marked or more
obstinately tenacious in their hold upon the system than these. I
barely advert to the frequent impossibility of retaining some kinds of
food upon the stomach, which has been one unpleasant part of my
experience, because I doubt whether this return of a difficulty which
began in childhood has any necessary connection with the use of
opium. For many years before I knew any thing of the drug I had been a
daily sufferer from this cause. Indeed the use of opium seemed to
control this tendency, and it was only when the remedy was abandoned
that the old annoyance returned. For a few months the stomach rejected
every kind of food; but in less than a year, and subsequently to the
present time, this has been of only occasional ocurrence.

I am also at a loss how far to connect the disuse of opium with the
lancinating pains which have troubled me since the time to which I
refer. These pains began long before I had recourse to opium, they did
not cease their frequent attacks while opium was used, nor have they
failed to make their potency felt since opium was abandoned. While it
is not improbable that the neuralgic difficulties of my childhood