"Even under the direful yoke of the necessity of daily poisoning by narcotics, it is somewhat less horrible through the knowledge that it was not from any craving for pleasurable animal excitement, but from pain, delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity--sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness--that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book has been the occasion of seducing others into this withering vice through wantonness. From this aggravation I have, I humbly trust, been free as far as acts of my freewill and intention are concerned; even to the author of that work I pleaded with flowing tears, and with an agony of forewarning. He utterly denied it, but I fear that I had even then to _deter_, perhaps not to forewarn."
Referring to the character of Coleridge's disorder, Dr. Gilman says: "He had much bodily suffering. The _cause_ of this was the organic change slowly and gradually taking place in the structure of the heart itself. But it was so masked by other sufferings, though at times creating despondency, and was so generally overpowered by the excitement of animated conversation, as to leave its real cause undiscovered." [Footnote: "_My heart, or some part_ about it, seems breaking, as if a weight were suspended from it that stretches it. Such is the _bodily feeling_ as far as I can express it by words."--_Coleridge's letter to Morgan_.]
In a volume entitled "Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. C.," written by an intimate friend, we find the following declaration from Coleridge himself:
"My conscience indeed bears me witness, that from the time I quitted Cambridge no human being was more indifferent to the pleasures of the table than myself, or less needed any stimulation to my spirits; and that, by a most unhappy quackery, after having been almost bedrid for near six months with swollen knees, and other distressing symptoms of disordered digestive functions, and through that most pernicious form of ignorance, medical half-knowledge, I was _seduced_ into the use of narcotics, not secretly, but (such was my ignorance) openly and exultingly, as one who had discovered, and was never weary of recommending, a grand panacea, and saw not the truth till my _body_ had contracted a habit and a necessity; and that, even to the latest, my responsibility is for cowardice and defect of fortitude, not for the least craving after gratification or pleasurable sensation of any sort, but for yielding to pain, terror, and haunting bewilderment. But this I say to _man_ only, who knows only what has been yielded, not what has been resisted; before God I have but one voice--Mercy! mercy! woe is me.