Had such not been the case, everything would have been revealed at first, and the terrible consequences averted; but, as it was, any suspicion of the effect of the medicine--that is, immediate effect or _influence_--had been forestalled in my mind by my having read, previous to this treatment, that there were other drugs of similar effect; but when I noticed the unmistakable evidences of the habit forming, I was troubled about it. My fears were confirmed some time after by my coming in upon the doctor whilst he was preparing the solution, and thus detecting him. I exclaimed: "Ah ha, doctor, you have been giving me morphia." "Yes," he replied, "a little; but the main part was _cannabis indicus_" (Indian hemp). I don't know that he ever gave me a particle of _cannabis indicus_, for I know that some time after, and from _that_ period on, he did not disguise the fact that he was giving me the unadulterated sulphate of morphia. The doctor soon found he had an elephant on his hands,--saw that I was in the habit; became tired of my regular calls for hypodermical injections, and endeavored to shake me off. After giving him fully to understand his culpability in the matter, we parted. Knowing, then, that I was simply an opium eater, I purchased my own morphia at the drug-stores, and took it per mouth instead of by a hypodermic syringe. Thus was I, as the notorious fly, invited into the parlor of the deceitful spider, and met with something like the same sad fate. Tripped up by an ignoramus who had hung about me for six months to allow him to treat my case; who had brought me medicine which I threw behind my desk, and never tasted; who had told me he had "taken a fancy to me;" who used every persuasive art within his command to get me to his office, and under his professional care, only for the purpose of giving me bare morphia by way of a syringe!--while I, well duped and deceived, gave his treatment all the credit which the iron I was taking should have received for building up my broken-down health. His treatment in _conjunction_ with the iron did me good; the morphia killed the pain, and the iron built me up; one might not have done without the other. I might have died but for the opium; but this fact does not exonerate this blundering and perjured empiricist from the charge of malpractice. He did my case, as he had done others before, and no doubt has done many since, and will go on doing until Divine Justice calls him to account, and sinks his abhorred countenance out of the sight of man. I soon realized that I had experienced all the good results to be obtained from the treatment, and that to go on longer would be injurious. So I endeavored to discontinue the morphia, but found myself in the fangs of a monster more terrible than the Hydra of Lake Lerna, and whose protean powers it is not man's to know till it is too late to escape.