restricting it as the expression for a specific
sort of excitement connected with certain diagnostics. Some people have
maintained in my hearing that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a
medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have
reason to feel great respect, assured me the other day that a patient in
recovering from an illness had got drunk on a beef-steak.

Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium,
I shall notice very briefly a second and a third, which are, that the
elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a
proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate
consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The
first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying;
assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at
intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this
luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.

With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to
credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany the
practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly opium is classed
under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the
end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest
degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its
action always lasted with me, during my noviciate, for upwards of eight
hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he does
not so time his exhibition of the dose (to speak medically) as that the
whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep.
Turkish opium-eaters, it seems, are absurd enough to sit, like so many
equestrian statues, on logs of wood as stupid as themselves. But that
the reader may judge of the degree in which opium is likely to stupefy
the faculties of an Englishman, I shall (by way of treating the question
illustratively, rather than argumentatively) describe the way in which I
myself often passed an opium evening in London during the period between
1804-1812. It will be seen that at least opium did not move me to seek
solitude, and much less to seek inactivity, or the torpid state of self-
involution ascribed to the Turks. I give this account at the risk of
being pronounced a crazy enthusiast or visionary; but I regard _that_
little. I must desire my reader t