Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/209

 stage of my bodily wretchedness—(except indeed as an occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever),—I willingly spare my reader all description of it: let it perish to him: and would that I could as easily say, let it perish to my own remembrances: that any future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human misery!

So much for the sequel of my experiment: as to the former stage, in which properly lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I must request my reader not to forget the reasons for which I have recorded it: these were two: 1st, a belief that I might add some trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent: in this I am aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor of mind—pain of body—and extreme disgust to the subject which besieged me whilst writing that part of my paper; which part, being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of latitude), cannot be corrected or improved. But from