Teaspoons vary
as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about 100 drops;
so that 8,000 drops are about eighty times a teaspoonful. The reader
sees how much I kept within Dr. Buchan's indulgent allowance.
{17} This, however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of
effect produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A
London magistrate (Harriott's _Struggles through Life_, vol. iii. p. 391,
third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying
laudanum for the gout he took _forty_ drops, the next night _sixty_, and
on the fifth night _eighty_, without any effect whatever; and this at an
advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however, which
sinks Mr. Harriott's case into a trifle; and in my projected medical
treatise on opium, which I will publish provided the College of Surgeons
will pay me for enlightening their benighted understandings upon this
subject, I will relate it; but it is far too good a story to be published
gratis.
{18} See the common accounts in any Eastern traveller or voyager of the
frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium, or are reduced
to desperation by ill-luck at gambling.
{19} The reader must remember what I here mean by _thinking_, because
else this would be a very presumptuous expression.
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