Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/204

 which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines the stomach; whence I believe are explained the inflammatory appearances about the nostrils of dram-drinkers. The sudden restoration of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose, in this way. It is remarkable also that, during the whole period of years through which I had taken opium, I had never once caught cold (as the phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. But now a violent cold attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a letter begun about this time to I find these words: "You ask me to write the  . Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher's play of Thierry and Theodoret? There you will see my case as to sleep: nor is it much of an exaggeration in other features.—I protest to you that I have a greater influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been frozen up for a decad of years by opium, had now according to the old fable been thawed at once—