The experienced reader will observe, from the attending phenomena which I have so far described, that I was not very deep into it at the period now referred to.
Generally, during the day (to recur to the subject in hand), did my stomach feel like a straight and bottomless pipe, but when I attempted to eat or drink I felt as though it incorporated a volcano; and every time I thought of food its whirling, surging contents threatened an eruption and overflow. Everything eaten seemed perfectly insipid and tasteless, and to fall flat upon the very bottom of my bowels. The region "round about" my epigastrium was in a state of communistic insurrection and rebellion. Nothing digested during this time, or if anything, digestion was very imperfect. Nothing remained in me long enough to pass through a complete process of digestion. I did not become hungry. To eat a meal of victuals was precisely like taking a dose of physic, only much more quick in operation. I experienced constant flushes of heat and cold (hot flushes predominating), and was in a continual perspiration, all the secretions being thrown wide open. My flesh seemed stretched tightly after the third day, and at night my limbs pained me,--principally my legs below the knees. I could do, and did, nothing but stand and gaze vacantly; too nerveless and shattered to attempt any mental labor.
My voice was hollow and weak, and sometimes almost inarticulate. After the fifth day my remorseful and melancholy thoughts and feelings gave way, to some extent, to more cheerful ones. I continued ten days without touching morphia, or anything of the kind. By that time my diarrhoea had ceased, and my stomach about the region of the epigastrium seemed drawn together as tightly as if tied in a knot. I had some appetite for food, though not much, and poor digestion. Everything was still quite tasteless to me. I craved something eternally which seemed absolutely necessary to make up the proper constitution of my stomach:--and of my happiness, also, I should add, for this is the whole truth.
The appetite for morphia, which while I was suffering I was able to control, grew much sharper after I had reached the tenth day, and my pains and physical difficulties had subsided, as it were. This is a point which I have ever observed in my case, namely, that, while undergoing severe pain or suffering, I have had power to resist appetite and carry out my purposes against the habit, but so soon as the pain or strain upon me departed, it left me collapsed in my will and powerless. But, in the instance under consideration, while my stomach was in a disorganized condition, the appetite was not near so strong as when I regained a more natural state, when it returned with an irresistible vigor. I believe the appetite destroys the will as firmly as I do that God exists.