generally aware how easily this habit is acquired, nor with what
difficulty it is relinquished, especially by persons of nervous
temperament and enfeebled health. The number of cases, I suspect, is
small in which the use of opium has become a necessity, where the
direction of a physician may not be pleaded as justifying its original
employment.

The object I have in view is not, however, so much to make suggestions
to medical men as it is to awaken in the victims of opium the feeling
that they can master the tyrant by such acts of resolution, patience,
and self-control as most men are fully capable of exhibiting. Certain
conditions, however, seem to be the almost indispensable preliminaries
to success in relinquishing opium by those who have been _long_
habituated to its use. The first and most important of these is a firm
conviction on the part of the patient that the task can be
accomplished. Without this he can do nothing. The narratives given in
this volume show its entire practicability. In addition to this, it
should be remembered that these experiments were most of them made in
the absence of any sufficient guidance, from the experience of others,
as to the method and alleviations with which the task can be
accomplished. A second condition necessary to success, is sufficient
physical health, with sufficient firmness of character to undergo, as
a matter of course, the inevitable suffering of the body, and to
resist the equally inevitable temptation to the mind to give up the
strife under some paroxysm of impatience, or in some moment of dark
despondency. With a very moderate share of vigor of constitution, and
with a will, capable under other circumstances of strenuous and
sustained exertion, there is no occasion to anticipate a failure
here. Even in cases of impaired health, and with a diminished capacity
for resolute endeavor, success is, I believe, attainable, provided