"the rainy Sunday," and
"the stately Pantheon," and "the beatific druggist" of 1804? Even so.
And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how
do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies
in the straw, "as well as can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say
the real and simple truth, though, to satisfy the theories of medical
men, I _ought_ to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the
spring of 1812; and I hope sincerely that the quantity of claret, port,
or "particular Madeira," which in all probability you, good reader, have
taken, and design to take for every term of eight years during your
natural life, may as little disorder your health as mine was disordered
by the opium I had taken for eight years, between 1804 and 1812. Hence
you may see again the danger of taking any medical advice from
_Anastasius_; in divinity, for aught I know, or law, he may be a safe
counsellor; but not in medicine. No; it is far better to consult Dr.
Buchan, as I did; for I never forgot that worthy man's excellent
suggestion, and I was "particularly careful not to take above five-and-
twenty ounces of laudanum." To this moderation and temperate use of the
article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least (_i.e_. in
1812), I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium
has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same time, it must
not be forgotten that hitherto I have been only a dilettante eater of
opium; eight years' practice even, with a single precaution of allowing
sufficient intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to
make opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a
different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer
of the year we have just quitted I have suffered much in bodily health
from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This event
being no ways related to the subject now before me, further than through
the bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I
know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a most
appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as that
which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied by a
revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on
which, as respects my own self-