Summoning his entire array of vital forces, our patient leaps, and smites his breast, kicks, whirls his arms, and little by little feels his heart tick again. By the time a feeble and sickly but regular pulse is re-established he has gone through enough agony to punish the worst enemy, my dear Sir, that you or I ever had. The vague, overpowering fear of death which during such an attack afflicts even the man who by grace or nature is at all other times most exempt from it is one of this period's most terrible symptoms. This passes with the return of breath and circulation. But the clammy sweat continues--pouring from every point of the surface--saturating the garments next the skin as if they had been dipped in a tub of water. Presently our patient begins to suffer an intolerable thirst, and runs to the ice-pitcher to quench it. In vain. He can not retain a mouthful. The instant it is swallowed it seems to strike a trap and is rejected with one jerk. He seeks the sedative which up to this hour has allayed his worst gastric irritations. Now, if never before, opium in every form produces nausea. Laudanum instantly follows the example of the water, and even a dry dose of morphia, swallowed with no moisture but saliva, casts itself back after agonizing retchings. To liquor his rebellious stomach proves yet more intolerant--food is almost as irritating as liquor. In a horror he discovers that even pounded ice will not stay down--and he is parching like Dives. His anguish becomes nearly suicidal as the fact stares him in the face that he has come to the place where he can not take opium any more--though to be without it is hell--that food, drink, medicine, are all denied him. A merciful, death-like apathy ensues. He lies down, and with his brain full of delirious visions, appalling, grotesque, meaningless, beautiful, torturing by turns, still manages to catch an occasional minute of unconsciousness. He hears his name called--tries to rise and answer--but his voice faints in his throat and he falls back upon his bed. Friends enter his bed-chamber--in an agony of alarm rouse him--lift him to his feet--but he has not the strength of an infant, and he falls again. In this condition he may continue for a day or two, then sink into absolute coma, and die of nervous exhaustion, or his constitution may rally as the effects of the last overdose pass off, and the man, after a fortnight's utter prostration, come gradually back to such a state of tolerable health and comfort as he enjoyed before he overtaxed himself.