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OPIUM EATING.
An Autobiographical Sketch.
by
AN HABITUATE.
Philadelphia.
Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger,
624, 626 & 628 Market Street.
1876.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
J. Fagan & Son,
Stereotype Founders,
Philadelphia.
Selheimer & Moore, Printers.
501 Chestnut Street.
PREFACE.
The following narration of the personal experiences of the writer is
submitted to the reader at the request of numerous friends, who are of
opinion that it will be interesting as well as beneficial to the public.
The reader is forewarned that in the perusal of the succeeding pages, he
will not find the incomparable music of De Quincey's prose, or the
easy-flowing and harmonious graces of his inimitable style, as presented
in the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater;" but a dull and trudging
narrative of solid facts, disarrayed of all flowers of speech, and
delivered by a mind, the faculties of which are bound up and baked hard by
the searing properties of opium--a mind without elasticity or fertility--a
mind prostrate. The only excuse for writing the book in this mental
condition was, and is, that the prospect of ever being able to write under
more favorable circumstances appeared too doubtful to rely upon; I felt
that I had better now do the best I could, lest my mouth be sealed forever
with my message undelivered. The result is before the reader in the
following chapters; his charitable judgment of which I have entreated in
the body of the work. The introductory part of the book, that relating to
my imprisonment, is inserted for my own justification.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
I Enter the Army.--Taken Prisoner.--Sufferings on the Road
to and at Richmond.--Leave Richmond for Danville.--Our
Sojourn at the Latter Place.--The Small-pox.--Removal to
Andersonville 13
CHAPTER II.
Entrance into Andersonville Prison.--Horrible Sights.--The
Belle Islanders.--The Kind of Treatment for first few
Months.--Condition of Things generally during that
Time.--New Prisoners.--Inauguration of Cruel Treatment.--
Going out for Fuel and Shelter Prohibited.--Rations
Diminished.--The Philosophy of Southern Prison
Discipline.--Severities of Climate and Dreadful Suffering 19
CHAPTER III.
The Chickamauga Men.--Personal Experiences and
Sufferings.--Merchandising at Andersonville.--The Plymouth
Men.--A God-send to the Old Residents.--"Popular Prices" 28
CHAPTER IV.
Ravages of the Scurvy among the Chickamauga Prisoners.--Too
long without Fruit and Vegetables.--The Horrors of the
Scurvy.--Certain Death.--Frightful Mortality.--Fortunate
Removal from Andersonville.--Arrival at Charleston, S.
C.--Transferred to Florence, S. C.--Description of the
latter Prison.--Shortest Rations ever Issued.--Certain
Starvation on the Rations.--Efforts for more Food.--
Providential Success.--Three Days without Rations.--
Prison-Keepers Cruel and Inhuman.--Terrible Sufferings
during the Winter.--Unparalleled Mortality.--Raw Rations
and Insufficient Fuel.--Life under Ground.--Swamp
Fever.--Taken with the Fever.--Flight from Florence.--
Wilmington.--Goldsboro'.--Hard Times of a Sick Man.--
Prison Exchange Foolery.--Back to Wilmington 34
CHAPTER V.
Return to Goldsboro'.--Drunk with Fever.--Too Sick to
Walk.--Left Behind.--God Bless the Ladies of
Goldsboro'.--Personal Experiences.--Negotiations for a
Friend.--An Improvised Hospital.--Sick unto
Death.--Semi-Consciousness.--More Kindness from the Ladies
of Goldsboro'.--Paroled.--Passed into our Lines near
Wilmington.--At Wilmington in the Hands of the Blue
Coats.--Friend Lost.--Still very Sick with Fever.--
Determined to go North.--Efforts to get North.--On board
Ship.--Ho, for Annapolis.--Incidents of the Voyage.--
Annapolis.--Getting Better.--Stomach Trouble.--Sent to
Baltimore.--Furloughed Home 44
CHAPTER VI.
At Home.--Nothing but a Skeleton.--A good Imitation of
Lazarus.--A digression upon the Subject of
Sleeplessness.--A well-intended Fraud on a Hospital
Nurse.--Return of Sleep.--Improvement in Health.--Stomach
the only Difficulty.--A Year passes.--Stomach
Worse.--Constant Headache.--Much Debilitated.--Awful
Suffering.--Bodily Agony Debilitates the Mind.--Sufferings
Intolerable.--Physicians and Remedies Tried without
Avail.--Forlorn Hope and Last Resort.--Better.--Doubts as
to Treatment.--Suspicions Confirmed.--Uncomplimentary
Remarks concerning an M. D.--Uncomfortable Discoveries and
Reflections 50
CHAPTER VII.
The War Begins.--Struggles to Renounce Opium.--Physical
Phenomena Observed in attempting to Leave Off the
Drug.--Difficulty in Abjuring the Fiend.--I Fail
Absolutely.--Some Difference with De Quincey regarding the
Effects of Opium.--A Preliminary Foresight into the Horrors
of Opium 61
CHAPTER VIII.
De Quincey's Life rather than his Writings the Best
Evidence of the Effect of Opium upon Him.--Disapproval of
his Manner of Treatment of the Subject in His
"Confessions."--From First to Last the Effect of Opium is
to Produce Unhappiness.--The Difference between the Effect
of the Drug taken Hypodermically and Otherwise,
Explained.--The various Effects of Opium, Stimulative and
Narcotic, Described.--The Effect of my First Dose at the
beginning of Habit.--Remarks of De Quincey on his First
Dose.--My own Remarks as to First Dose.--Difference between
Opium and Liquor.--Stimulation is followed by Collapse.--
Melancholy from the Beginning.--Nervousness and Distraction
of the Intellectual Powers.--Sleeplessness.--Different and
Peculiar Influences of the Drug Detailed.--Pressure upon
the Brain from Excessive Use of Opium.--Distress in the
Epigastrium.--The Working of the Brain Impeded 70
CHAPTER IX.
De Quincey _versus_ Coleridge.--Stimulation and Collapse
Considered.--The Use of Opium always to be Condemned.--
Coleridge Defended.--Wretched State of the Opium Eater.--An
Explanatory Remark 77
CHAPTER X.
The Delusions and Miseries of the First Stages of Opium
Eating 82
CHAPTER XI.
Later Stages.--The Opium Appetite.--Circean Power of
Opium.--As a Medicine.--Difference between Condition of
Victim in Primary and Secondary Stages 91
CHAPTER XII.
The Address of the Opium Eater.--How he Occupies his
Time.--The Refuge of Solitude and Silence.--Indifference to
Society or Company.--Disposition, Predilections, and
General Conduct 96
CHAPTER XIII.
On Energy and Ambition as Affected by the Opium Habit 98
CHAPTER XIV.
Opium _versus_ Sleep.--Manner of Taking Opium.--Different
Considerations Relating to the Habit.--A Prophetic Warning 105
CHAPTER XV.
Difficulties of Writing this Book.--An Attempt to Renounce
Opium in the Later Stages of the Habit Described.--
Coleridge and De Quincey.--Animadversions upon De Quincey's
"Confessions" 115
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion 129
APPENDIX.
NOTE NO. 1.--Coleridge and the Critics 131
" " 2.--Coleridge and Plagiarism 132
" " 3.--A Mare's Nest 134
" " 4.--Second note on Coleridge and Plagiarism 136
" " 5.--On De Quincey's Style of Writing 138
" " 6.--Third Note on Coleridge and Plagiarism 140
OPIUM EATING.
CHAPTER I.
I ENTER THE ARMY.--TAKEN PRISONER.--SUFFERINGS ON THE ROAD TO AND AT
RICHMOND.--LEAVE RICHMOND FOR DANVILLE.--OUR SOJOURN AT THE LATTER
PLACE.--THE SMALL-POX.--REMOVAL TO ANDERSONVILLE.
In the year 1861, a well and hearty boy of sixteen, I enlisted in the army
as a drummer. This was my only possibility of entering the service, as I
was too young to be accepted as a private soldier. Though but a drummer, I
fought with a gun in all the battles in which our regiment was engaged. It
generally so happened that I had no drum about the time of a battle, and
being too small to carry off the wounded, and feeling that I was not
fulfilling my duty to my country unless I did "the State some service," I
participated in the battle of Stone River, and doing tolerably well there,
when the battle of Chickamauga drew nigh, the colonel of our regiment told
me, casually, that he would like to see me along; and I did not fail him.
He did not command me; he had no authority to do that; it was not
necessary; I would have been on hand without his referring to the matter
at all, as such was my intention. As it was, I took a sick man's gun and
accoutrements and marched with my company. On the first day of the
battle--the 19th of September, 1863--I was captured. Not being wounded, I
was taken with about five thousand other prisoners to Richmond, Va., and
confined there in the tobacco-factory prisons. On the way to Richmond we
had but little to eat, and suffered considerably. At Richmond, our
allowance of food was so small, that during the two and one-half months we
were there we became miserably weak, and suffered terribly. It is no doubt
a fact, that although hard enough to bear at any time, gradual starvation
sets harder upon a man at first than when he has become somewhat
accustomed to it. Perhaps this is reasonable enough; the stomach and body
being stronger at first, the pangs are more fierce and exhausting.
After being at Richmond three weeks, we could not rise to our feet without
crawling up gradually by holding to the wall. Any sudden attempt to rise
usually resulted in what is called "blind staggers,"--a fearful, floating,
blinding sensation in the head.
Hunger is the most exasperating and maddening of all human suffering, as I
do know from most wretched experience. It lengthens out time beyond all
calculation, and reduces a man to nothing above a mere savage animal. It
makes him a glaring, raging, ferocious brute, and were it not for the
accompanying weakness and debility, it would rob him of every instinct of
humanity, for the time being. One at length arrives at the conclusion,
that all a reasonable being requires in this life, to make him completely
happy, is enough to eat. No one that has not experienced it can understand
the cruel tedium of hunger, and the eternal war that rages among one's
ferocious inwards, as they struggle to devour and consume themselves; the
everlasting gnaw, gnaw, as though one's stomach were populated with
famished rats. It seems that hunger, long continued, sucks all the
substance out of the very material of a man's stomach, and leaves it dry,
hard, and serviceless; and also so contracted in size as not to answer the
ends of a stomach at all. In short, constant hunger, continued for an
unreasonable length of time, will utterly ruin the stomach.
Although the month was November, I sold my shoes for bread, despite the
weather being so cold that I was forced to rise long before daylight in
the morning, and find, if possible, some warmer place in the house. We had
no stoves; no heat of any kind to keep us warm was supplied by the
Confederates, and up to this time no clothing or blankets had been
furnished by any one. Soon after this, however,--Providence and the good
women of the North be thanked,--the Sanitary Commission of the United
States sent us each a suit of clothes and a blanket. Directly after the
receipt of the clothing, we were removed to Danville, Va. Here we remained
until the following spring.
During the time we were at Danville, we suffered considerably from cold
and close confinement. The small-pox also broke out among us, and attacked
a great many, but in most cases in a mild form. Those afflicted had it as
violently as could be expected under the circumstances, their systems
being in such a depleted condition that the disease had nothing to feed
on. In fear of it, and to prevent it, many were vaccinated. I was
not,--and I thank Providence that I was not, as I knew some to suffer
worse from vaccination than they could have done from the small-pox, even
though it terminated fatally; for it did terminate fatally in the cases of
vaccination, and after more suffering than could possibly have ensued from
the dreaded disease itself. The vaccine virus proved to be poisonous in
some cases. I knew a man whose left arm was eaten to the bone by it, the
bone being visible, and the cavity, which was circular in shape, was as
large in circumference as an ordinary orange. After months of excruciating
pain, the man died. But sometimes vaccination did not even prevent the
small-pox. A man with whom the writer bunked was vaccinated, and it
"took," what would be considered immensely well, a very large scab
developing upon each arm. Yet this man took the small-pox, and badly,
while the writer,--to take another view of the case,--although he had not
been vaccinated for about thirteen years, and yet had been exposed to the
disease in almost every way, and had slept with this man while he was
taking it, and after he returned from the small-pox hospital with his
sores but partially healed up, remained perfectly free of it.
I thought if I must have it, I must, and there was an end of the matter;
there being no way of avoiding it that I could see; and I do not know but
the late vaccination, while the disease was already thickly scattered
about the house, increased the danger of contagion by throwing the blood
into a fever of the same kind; while by leaving the blood undisturbed, if
the disease was not intercepted, the chances of taking it were at least
not augmented.
We left Danville in April, 1864, having been confined there about five
months. Although confined very closely, and our liberties few, upon the
whole, Danville was the best-provided prison I was in; the rations of food
being larger and more wholesome than at any other prison. It is true that
the buckets of pea-soup swam with bugs, but that was a peculiarity of that
savory dish at all the prisons of the South. We became accustomed to
drinking the soup, bugs and all, without any compunctions of delicacy
about it, and our only and sincere wish was for more of the same kind.
Many a time did I pick these bugs from between my teeth without any
commotion in my stomach whatever,--save of hunger. A man becomes
accustomed to this way of living, and loses all sense of delicacy
regarding his food. Quantity is the only question to be considered,
quality being an object so unimportant as to be entirely lost sight of.
We arrived at Andersonville, Ga., five days after leaving Danville. We had
a very uncomfortable journey, being penned up in freight cars,
seventy-five in a car, and not allowed to get out but once during the
whole journey. We changed cars once on the route, and this was the only
opportunity we had of stretching our limbs during the entire trip.
I now ask the reader to allow me to pause a few moments to take breath and
gather strength and courage for the task before me.