Produced by David Maddock, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE OPIUM HABIT, WITH SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE REMEDY. "After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified narrative of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful example."--COLERIDGE. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER" OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE WILLIAM BLAIR OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED? OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE INTRODUCTION. This volume has been compiled chiefly for the benefit of opium-eaters. Its subject is one indeed which might be made alike attractive to medical men who have a fancy for books that are professional only in an accidental way; to general readers who would like to see gathered into a single volume the scattered records of the consequences attendant upon the indulgence of a pernicious habit; and to moralists and philanthropists to whom its sad stories of infirmity and suffering might be suggestive of new themes and new objects upon which to bestow their reflections or their sympathies. But for none of these classes of readers has the book been prepared. In strictness of language little medical information is communicated by it. Incidentally, indeed, facts are stated which a thoughtful physician may easily turn to professional account. The literary man will naturally feel how much more attractive the book might have been made had these separate and sometimes disjoined threads of mournful personal histories been woven into a more coherent whole; but the book has not been made for literary men. The philanthropist, whether a theoretical or a practical one, will find in its pages little preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the danger of opium-eating. Possibly, as he peruses these various records, he may do much preaching for himself, but he will not find a great deal furnished to his hand, always excepting the rather inopportune reflections of Mr. Joseph Cottle over the case of his unhappy friend Coleridge. The book has been compiled for opium-eaters, and to their notice it is urgently commended. Sufferers from protracted and apparently hopeless disorders profit little by scientific information as to the nature of their complaints, yet they listen with profound interest to the experience of fellow-sufferers, even when this experience is unprofessionally and unconnectedly told. Medical empirics understand this and profit by it. In place of the general statements of the educated practitioner of medicine, the empiric encourages the drooping hopes of his patient by narrating in detail the minute particulars of analagous cases in which his skill has brought relief.