Opium: How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World by John H. Halpern & David Blistein

Author:John H. Halpern & David Blistein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-08-12T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

The Agony and the Ecstasy

Of all the remedies it has pleased almighty God to give man to relieve his suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.1

—Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689)

Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: Its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.2

—Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)

Conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state, as it is possible for a good man to have. In the one crime of opium, what crime have I not made myself guilty of!—Ingratitude to my Maker! and to my benefactors—injustice! and unnatural cruelty to my poor children!—self-contempt for my repeated promise—breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood! After my death, I earnestly entreat, that a full and unqualified narration of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made public, that at least, some little good may be effected by the direful example…3

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

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