Nor are the torments of day much less than those of the night. The stomach rebels; nausea is persistent and distressing; saliva gathers in the mouth; there is sinking at the pit of the stomach; severe cramps of the intestines; the lips and throat are dry and parched; the tongue swollen. A dry, irritating cough sets in. Pains girdle the body and shoot with agonizing intensity down the limbs and into the face. The muscular system fails; locomotion is attended with difficulty; the sufferer staggers like a drunkard; the muscles of the face and eyelids twitch; the hands shake so that a glass falls from them, and it is impossible to pick up a small object. The circulation is affected; flushing and chilliness alternate; the eyes are dry, and feel as though filled with sand. The mind wanders; delirium supervenes; diarrhœa and vomiting set in, and sometimes collapse, and a more pitiable object can nowhere be found. It is at this time that the sufferer, tortured beyond all power of endurance, would sell body, soul, _anything_, to obtain that drug which, while it gives no fresh pleasure, removes these ill effects, as if by magic. A dose is taken. A pleasant sense of warmth pervades the body; the mind clears, the hands become steady, the gait natural, the pains vanish, the nausea and diarrhœa cease, and existence becomes again bearable. Each dose must be a little larger than the preceding, in order to obtain the desired effect. In some cases the increase is very slow, but these are rare exceptions. Rarer still are those instances where no increase is necessary. I have here portrayed the suffering of one who has been using the drug for a considerable time, or for a shorter time in large doses. The chains, though not at first galling, are nevertheless there, and each succeeding dose rivets them tighter. There are certain rare cases where opium seems, instead of doing harm, to be of positive benefit to the person using it. Dr. Joseph Parrish, a veteran observer of these cases, wrote me that he had known of several. One is related by Dr. Golding Bird.[1] A lady, probably hysterical, took morphia for the relief of paroxysmal pain in the loins. She had been taking it for several years. For the past two years she had increased the dose to ten grains, taken three times daily. There were no obvious ill effects; functions were properly carried on, the appetite was good, and there was no known organic disease. The therapeutics of any epoch is strictly in conformity with the most prominent disease or symptom of the people upon whom the physicians practice. This is true of whole countries and sections of countries as well as of times.