When you can with reason ask a man to aerate his lungs with his head submerged in water--when you can expect him to control the movements of his limb while you apply an electric current to its motor nerve--then, but not till then, speak to a confirmed opium-eater of "exerting his will;" reproach him with want of "determination," and complacently say to him, "Cast it from you and bear the torture for a time." Tell him, too, at the same time, to "do without atmospheric air, to regulate the reflex action of his nervous system and control the pulsations of his heart." Tell the Ethiopian to change his skin, but do not mock the misery and increase the agony of a man who has taken opium for years by talking to him of "will." Let it be understood that after a certain time (varying, of course, according to the capability of physical resistance, mode of life, etc., of the individual) the craving for opium is beyond the domain of the will. So intolerant is the system under a protracted deprivation, that I know of two suicides resulting therefrom. They were cases of Chinese who were under confinement. They were baffled on one occasion in carrying out a previously-successful device for obtaining the drug. The awful mystery of death which they rashly solved had no terrors for them equal to a life without opium, and the morning found them hanging in their cells, glad to get "anywhere, anywhere out of the world." I have seen another tear his hair, dig his nails into his flesh, and, with a ghastly look of despair and a face from which all hope had fled, and which looked like a bit of shrivelled yellow parchment, implore for it as if for more than life. But to return to myself. I attained a daily dose of forty grains, and on more than one occasion I have consumed sixty. It became my bane and antidote; with it I was an _unnatural_--without it, less than man. Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and indescribably yellow. I had then been taking _morphia_ for nearly two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses for the six months already indicated.