Essays on hypochondriasis and other nervous affections by John Reid M.D. 1921 : [Review].

Date:
[1822]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on hypochondriasis and other nervous affections by John Reid M.D. 1921 : [Review]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    leave off strong liquors by degrees. “ By degrees ! (exclaimed the other with indignation,) if you should unhappily fall into the fire, would you caution your servants to pull you out by degrees Y” But there are topers of opium as well as wine. A late fashion- able physician used to carry in his pocket a gold box of quarter grain opium pills, which he would offer to a nervous person as we offer our snuff-box. Those who take opium without medical ad- vice, and who are more numerous than is commonly believed, consist of several classes:—1st. Nervous invalids, who habitually, at least frequently, resort to it to quiet that tremulous susceptibi- lity, which so distresses them. 2dly. The poor, who employ it as a cheap mode of producing intoxication. 3dly. Men who have to perform intellectual tasks before public audiences; as barristers, parliamentary speakers, preachers, lecturers, and college students going in for their examination, and who take it, like Turks before battle, to procure the composure necessary for intellectual war- fare. The attention of the public has lately been drawn towards this subject by the singular narrative of an anonymous but powerful writer. It is long since W'e have passed an evening of such en- chaining interest as that which we owe to 1 the confessions of an English Opium Eater/ In this narrative, however, the pleasures of opium seem so much more tempting than the pains deterring, that the impression left on the mind is rather favourable to the practice. This depends partly on the circumstance, that pleasure naturally arrays itself in more impressive expressions than pain ; the glittering strikes more than the gloomy ; but there is another cause, which both the writer and his readers ought to know'. Whatever wretchedness this habit may have inflicted on him, it has caused him less of suffering and more of enjoyment than it does to most persons. He seems to have been one of a happy minority on whom the first effects of opium are agreeable, and w ho are long before they reach the deadly dregs. Most persons must serve an apprenticeship of head-aches and sicknesses before they master the art of deriving enjoyment from this drug. We, too, have taken opium, and its effects are these :—1st. Relief from suffering, tran- quillity, and then sound sleep. 2dly. A long day of sickness, as after a brutal debauch. At length this subsides, and leaves, 3dly. A state of composure and power, in which the intellect seems equal to any thing, and the feelings are lifted above tlie ills of life, -—a pleasurable state, yet not unmingled with occasional repeti- tions of the past day’s wretchedness; a poor compensation for the suffering which preceded it. This we know', from ample expe- rience, is a more accurate representation of the effect of opium on most persons than that w hich it produced on the c English Opium Eater/ Compared with pain or nervous irritability, the tranquil-