Let us see what the effects of opium are. A writer on the subject says, “A small dose not unfrequently acts as a stimulant: there is a feeling of vigour, a capability of severe exertion, and an endurance of labour without fatigue. A large dose often exerts a calming influence with a dreamy state in which images and ideas pass rapidly before the mind without fatigue, and often in disorder, and without apparent sequence. Time seems to be shortened as one state of consciousness quickly succeeds another, and there is a pleasant feeling of grateful rest. This is succeeded by sleep which, according to the strength of the dose, and the idiosyncrasy of the person, may be light and dreamy, or like normal profound sleep, or deep and heavy, passing into stupor or coma. From this a person may awaken with a feeling of depression, or langour, or wretchedness, often associated with sickness, headache, or vomiting.” I have verified these statements by questioning numerous consumers of opium, and, in substance, their descriptions tallied exactly with that I have quoted. How the opium habit is first contracted is a matter which deserves investigation, but it would seem that the most fertile cause is its injudicious administration in its character of an anodyne. De Quincey, in his “_Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_” tells us that he first took opium for a severe toothache. The poet Coleridge, who, like De Quincey, was a confirmed opium-eater, “began in rheumatic pains”; and if a census of consumers was taken, it would not be surprising to find that eighty _per cent._ of them were first introduced to this “dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain” by its being given them for a stomachache, toothache, or some such wrecker of the peace of their mind. The other twenty _per cent._ are the victims of curiosity. The Burman is said to get the taste for opium when he is drugged with it while young, when he is, according to Burmese custom, tattoed from the waist to above his knees.