such a multitude stream in upon me from all quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability—that, for one which I detain and write down, 50 escape me: in spite of my weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit for 2 minutes together. 'I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.'"
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon, requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came: and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question:—Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus to the digestive organs; and that the present state of suffering in the stomach, which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep, might arise from indigestion? His answer was—No: on the contrary he thought that the suffering was caused by digestion itself—which should naturally go on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible: and the unintermitting
