Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/110

 acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its intoxicating power, such as staggered my own incredulity: for he was a surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized _ for him, by suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not primâ facie, and of necessity, an absurd one: but the defence is, To my surprise, however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the right: "I will maintain," said he, "that I do talk nonsense; and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply, said he, solely and simply,—solely and simply, (repeating it three times over), because I am drunk with opium; and that daily." I replied that, as to the allegation of his enemies, as it seemed to be established upon such respectable testimony, seeing that the three parties concerned all agreed