Page:Confessions of an English opium-eater (IA confessionsofeng00dequrich).pdf/103

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ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.
93

lies! lies! I remember once, in passing a book-stall, to have caught these words from a page of some satiric author:—"By this time I became convinced that the London newspapers spoke truth at least twice a week, viz. on Tuesday and Saturday, and might safely be depended upon for ——— the list of bankrupts," In like manner, I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered to the world in regard to opium: thus it has been repeatedly affirmed by the learned, that opium is a dusky brown in colour; and this, take notice, I grant: secondly, that it is rather dear; which also I grant: for in my time, East-India opium has been three guineas a pound, and Turkey eight: and, thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most probably you must ——— do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. die[1]. These weighty propositions are, all

  1. Of this, however, the learned appear latterly to have doubted: for in a pirated edition of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, which I once saw in the hands of a farmer's wife who was studying it for the benefit of her health, the doctor was made to say—'Be particularly