When these substances, which are powerful stimulants, have been taken for some time, they bring on a state of the system so torpid, that the usual exciting powers, and the usual occurrences, which in general produce pleasant sensations, do not occasion a sufficient degree of excitement, in those whose excitability is thus exhausted. They therefore feel continual languor and listlessness, unless when under the influence of the stimulus which brought on the exhaustion. Every scene, however beautiful, is beheld with indifference by such patients, and the degree of ennui they feel is insupportable: this makes them have recourse to the stimulus which has exhausted their excitability, which in some degree removes this languor for a time; but it returns with redoubled strength, and redoubled horror, when the stimulant effect is over: and as this repetition exhausts the excitability more and more, the stimulus is repeated in greater quantity, and thus the disease increases to a most alarming degree. There is no way of curing this state of nervous torpor, but by leaving off the stimuli which caused the exhaustion; and if the patient have resolution to do this for a few weeks, though, at first, he will, no doubt, find his spirits a little depressed, he will ultimately overcome the habit, and will be rewarded by alacrity of spirits, such as he never experiences under the most powerful action of artificial stimulants. I must not, however, forget to notice, that there is a nervous state, or ennui, originating from a wrong direction of mental exertion, which exhausts the excitability to a great degree, and brings on a state of depression scarcely to be born. When a person has by habit made his mind constantly dependent on dissipation, on gaming, and on frivolous, but not inactive pursuits, in order to produce pleasurable sensations, and at the same time neglected that culture of the understanding which will enable him to retire into himself with pleasure, and receive more enjoyment from the exercise of this cultivated understanding than he does in the most noisy, or fashionable circle of dissipation: I say, when there is this vacancy of mind, whenever it is not engaged in such pursuits as I have mentioned, a languor and weariness is experienced, which is intolerable, and which prompts the person so circumstanced, to fly continually to the only scenes which interest his mind. Hence, the passion for gaming, in which the anxiety attending it causes an interest in the mind, which takes off the dreadful languor experienced, when it is not thus employed.