As I said in the beginning, I am just home from seeing the result. Mr. A. has fared as special cases always do in places where there is no special provision for them. To speak plainly, he had been badly neglected; and that, undoubtedly, without the slightest intention on the part of the heads of the house to do other than their duty. Six weeks ago I heard from the first physician that my friend was entirely free from opium, and, though still suffering, was steadily on the mend. I had no further news from him till I was called to his bedside by a note which said he feared he was dying, pencilled in a hand as tremulously illegible as the confession of Guy Fawkes. I was with him by the earliest train I could take, after arranging with a neighbor for my practice, and found him in a condition which led him to say, as I myself said at the commencement of this article; "Would to God that every young person could stand for a single hour by this bedside before Life's Responsibilities have become the sentinels and Habit the jailer of the Will!"
I had not been intelligently informed respecting the progress of his case. He had been better at no time when I was told he was so, though his freedom from opium had been of even longer duration than I was advised. _For ninety days he had been without opium in any form_. The scope of so un-technical an article leaves no room to detail what had been done for him as alleviation. His prostration had been so great that he could not correspond with me himself until the moment of his absolute extremity; and only after repeated entreaties to telegraph to myself and his family had been refused on the ground that his condition was not critical, he managed to get off the poor scrawl which brought me to his side.
For the ninety days he had been going without opium he had known nothing like proper sleep. I desire to be understood with mathematical literalness. There had been periods when he had been _semi-conscious;_ when the outline of things in his room grew vaguer and for five minutes he had a dull sensation of not knowing where he was. This temporary numbness was the only state which in all that time simulated sleep. From the hour he first refused his craving, and went to the battle-field of bed, he had endured such agony as I believe no man but the opium-eater has ever known. I am led to believe that the records of fatal lesion, mechanical childbirth, cancerous affection, the stake itself, contain no greater torture than a confirmed opium-eater experiences in getting free. Popularly this suffering is supposed to be purely intellectual--but nothing can be wider of the truth.