the patient, the length of time which has elapsed since the habit was
formed, and the quantity habitually taken. When the habit is of recent
date, and the daily dose has not been large--say not more than ten or
twelve grains--if the patient has average health, his emancipation
from the evil may be attained in a comparatively short period, though
not without many sharp pangs and many wakeful nights which will call
for the exercise of all his resolution.

The question will naturally suggest itself to others, as it has often
done to myself, whether a less sudden relinquishment of opium would
not be preferable as being attended with less present and less
subsequent suffering. Numerous cases have come under my notice where a
very gradual reduction was attempted, but which resulted in
failure. Only two exceptions are known to me: in one of these the
patient, himself a physician, effected his release by a graduated
reduction extending through five months. The other is the case of
Dr. S., a physician of eminence in Connecticut many years ago. This
gentleman had made so free use of opium to counteract a tendency to
consumption that the habit became established. After several years,
and at the suggestion of his wife, he made a resolution to abandon it,
engaging to take no opium except as it passed through her hands, but
with the understanding that the process of relinquishment was to be
slow and gradual. His allowance at this time was understood to be from
twenty to thirty grains of crude opium daily. At the end of two years
the habit was abandoned, with no very serious suffering during the
time, and so far as his daughter was informed, with no subsequent
inconvenience to himself. He lived many years after his disuse of
opium, in the active discharge of the duties of his profession, and
died at last in the ninetieth year of his age. The hazard of this
course, however, consists in the possibility, not to say with some