Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/199

 and presuppose a pleasurable and genial state of feeling: but, as a case that may by possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of Opium in a further stage of its action than can often have been brought under the notice of professional men, he has judged that it might be acceptable to some readers to have it described more at length. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili is a just rule where there is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise on a large scale; what the benefit may be, will admit of a doubt: but there can be none as to the value of the body: for a more worthless body than his own, the author is free to confess, cannot be: it is his pride to believe—that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system—that hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms and wear-and-tear of life? and indeed, if that were the creditable way of disposing of human bodies, he must own that he should almost be ashamed to bequeath his wretched structure to any respectable dog.—But now to the case;