- ness, and, when without her opium, to languor and want of appetite,
but otherwise free of complaint. 22. Mrs. , a plump, hale-looking old lady of seventy, has taken opium for six and twenty years, and for some years to the extent of a drachm daily in two doses. She thinks her health improved by it, and has suffered no inconvenience except merely costiveness, and always aversion to food till she gets her dose. 23. J. B., aged 23, has taken laudanum since she was fourteen, and some time past to the amount of an ounce or ten drachms in three or four doses daily. She has only menstruated twice since first using the laudanum, has bilious vomiting once a month, and looks older than her years, but is otherwise quite healthy, and has two children. 24. Mrs. M'C., a ruddy young-looking woman of forty-two, has taken opium during two years for cough and pain in the stomach, latterly to the extent of ten grains twice a day. She has never menstruated since, but has enjoyed better health, and in particular has a good appetite after her dose, and has got entirely quit of a former tendency to constipation. 25. An army officer's widow, fifty-five years old, healthy and young-looking, although subject to costiveness and rather defective appetite, has taken laudanum for eleven years, and latterly opium to the extent of fifteen grains morning and evening.
These facts tend on the whole rather to show, that the practice of eating opium is not so injurious, and an opium eater's life not so uninsurable, as is commonly thought; and that an insured person, who did not make known this habit, could scarcely be considered guilty of concealment to the effect of voiding his insurance. But I am far from thinking,—as several represent who have quoted this work,—that what has now been stated can with justice be held to establish such important inferences; for there is an obvious reason, why in an inquiry of this kind those instances chiefly should come under notice where the constitution has escaped injury, cases fatal in early life being more apt to be lost sight of, or more likely to be concealed.
Meanwhile, insurance companies and insurance physicians ought to be aware, that not a few persons in the upper ranks of life are confirmed opium-eaters without even their intimate friends knowing it. And the reason is, that at the time the opium-eater is visible to his friends, namely, during the period of excitement, there is frequently nothing in his behaviour or appearance to attract particular attention. From the information I have received, it appears that the British opium-eater is by no means subject to the extraordinary excitement of mind and body described by travellers as the effect of opium-eating in Turkey and Persia; but that the common effect merely is to remove torpor and sluggishness, and make him in the eyes of his friends an active and conversible man. The prevailing notions of the nature of the excitement from eating opium are therefore very much exaggerated. Another singular circumstance I have ascertained is, that constipation is by no means a general effect of the continued use of opium. In some of the cases mentioned above no laxatives have been required; and in others a gentle laxative once a week is sufficient.
In the civil suit regarding Lord Mar's insurances, the insurance
