"Two ravenous vultures, furious for their food, Scream o'er the fiend, and riot in his blood; Incessant gore the liver in his breast; The immortal liver grows, and gives the immortal feast." Its hatred of the laws of health is undying, and is only equalled by its power and facility of destruction; its cruel, persistent, and merciless warfare on the human system, and its eternal antagonism to, and annihilation of, human happiness. CHAPTER XI. LATTER STAGES.--THE OPIUM APPETITE.--CIRCEAN POWER OF OPIUM.--AS A MEDICINE.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONDITION OF VICTIM IN PRIMARY AND SECONDARY STAGES. I am no physician, and not learned in physiology, therefore I cannot enter into a learned analysis of the opium appetite. Neither have I read any books upon the subject. I know nothing about the matter save from my own observation or experience. But whether I know _why this_ is true, or _that_ is _so_, or not, one fact I am entirely conscious of, and that is, that in this appetite abides the enslaving power of opium. The influences of opium in the latter stages would not have such an attraction for the habituate but that he could easily forego them; but the appetite comes in and makes him feel that he _must_ have opium if he has existence, and there is an end to all resistance. Here dwell the Circean spells of opium. Should one become accustomed to large doses, or rather a large quantity per diem, it is almost impossible to induce the mind to take less, for fear of falling to pieces, going into naught, etc. It seems in such a state that existence would be insupportable were a reduction made. An intense fear of being plunged into an abyss of darkness and despair besets the mind. Hence the opium eater goes on ever increasing until his final doom. Opium as a medicine is a grand and powerful remedy, and without a substitute, though as imperfectly understood in its complex action and far-reaching consequences by the mass of the medical profession as by the people at large. Its abstruser mysteries and remoter effects are yet to be discovered and developed by the science of physic. When the true nature of opium becomes generally known (and by the word nature I mean all the possibilities for good and evil embraced in the medical properties of the drug), the poor victim of its terrors will be taken by the hand and sympathized with by his fellow-man, instead of being ostracized from society, and treated with contempt and reprehension, as he now is.