of that drug
in all that region very prevalent; more common, I should think, than
alcoholic drunkenness in the most intemperate localities of which I have
known anything. A frightful endemic demoralization betrays itself in the
frequency with which the haggard features and drooping shoulders of the
opium-drunkards are met with in the streets.

The next proposition I would ask you to consider is this: The
presumption always is that every noxious agent, including medicines
proper, which hurts a well man, hurts a sick one. [ Note B.]

Let me illustrate this proposition before you decide upon it. If it were
known that a prize-fighter were to have a drastic purgative administered
two or three days before a contest, or a large blister applied to his
back, no one will question that it would affect the betting on his side
unfavorably; we will say to the amount of five per cent. Now the drain
upon the resources of the system produced in such a case must be at its
minimum, for the subject is a powerful man, in the prime of life, and
in admirable condition. If the drug or the blister takes five per cent.
from his force of resistance, it will take at least as large a fraction
from any invalid. But this invalid has to fight a champion who strikes
hard but cannot be hit in return, who will press him sharply for breath,
but will never pant himself while the wind can whistle through his
fleshless ribs. The suffering combatant is liable to want all his
stamina, and five per cent. may lose him the battle.

All noxious agents, all appliances which are not natural food or
stimuli, all medicines proper, cost a patient, on the average, five
per cent. of his vital force, let us say. Twenty times as much waste of
force produced by any of them, that is, would exactly kill him, nothing
less than kill him, and nothing more. If this, or something like this,
is true, then all these medications are, prima facie, injurious.

In the game of Life-or-Death, Rouge et Noir, as played between the
Doctor and the Sexton, this five per cent., this certain small injury
entering into the chances is clearly the sexton's perquisite for keeping
the green table, over which the game is played, and where he hoards
up his gains. Suppose a blister to diminish a man's pain, effusion or
dyspnoea to the saving of twenty per cent. in vital force; his profit
from it is fifteen, in that case, for it always hurts him five to begin
with, according to our previous assumption