It is scarcely necessary to premise that no such thing as a
succedaneum for opium is comprehended in the list of these agents. Any
drug which would so nearly accomplish for the opium-eater what opium
accomplishes that he would not miss the latter, must be nowise
preferable to opium itself. Such a drug must be able to prevent the
decompositions which cause the suffering; to continue that
semi-paralysis of the organic functions in which opium's greatest
fascination exists, a paralysis leaving the cerebral man free to
exhaust all the vitality of the system in pleasant feelings, lofty
imaginings, and aerial dreams, without a protest from the gauglionic
man who lies a mere stupefied beggar without any share in the funds of
the partnership wherewith to carry on the business of the stomach and
bowels and heart, the kidneys and lungs and liver. It must be a drug
that can prevent the re-awakening ol the nutritive and excretory
processes--for it is these whose waking, seeing how late in the day
it is, clamoring at the confusion in which they find affairs and at
the immense quantity of behind-hand work suddenly thrown on them,
together with that re-sharpening of long-dulled sensation by which the
clamor comes into consciousness loud as the world must be to a totally
deaf man suddenly presented with his hearing, which constitute the
series of phenomena which we call pain. No! there is no such thing as
a substitute for opium, save--more opium or death. And I do not know
that I need say "_or_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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