{12} 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 careful never to take above five-and-twenty _ounces_ of laudanum at once;" the true reading being probably five-and-twenty _drops_, which are held equal to about one grain of crude opium. {13} Amongst the great herd of travellers, &c., who show sufficiently by their stupidity that they never held any intercourse with opium, I must caution my readers specially against the brilliant author of _Anastasius_. This gentleman, whose wit would lead one to presume him an opium-eater, has made it impossible to consider him in that character, from the grievous misrepresentation which he gives of its effects at pp. 215-17 of vol. i. Upon consideration it must appear such to the author himself, for, waiving the errors I have insisted on in the text, which (and others) are adopted in the fullest manner, he will himself admit that an old gentleman "with a snow-white beard," who eats "ample doses of opium," and is yet able to deliver what is meant and received as very weighty counsel on the bad effects of that practice, is but an indifferent evidence that opium either kills people prematurely or sends them into a madhouse.