Illustrations by Lawrence Chaves for 1932 edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincy (X).
“De Quincey’s fateful ‘resort to opium’ began, according to him, on a cheerless Sunday in 1804, when he swallowed it to relieve rheumatic pain. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, his [1821] autobiographical masterpiece, recasts this routine event and magnifies it into a uniquely personal odyssey of taboo, transgression, divine enjoyment and demonic agony: ‘In an hour, oh! Heavens!’ he recalled. ‘What an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! What an apocalypse of the world within me! … Here was a panacea … for all human woes.’ A few drops of laudanum created reveries of ‘most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony’; his pain vanished, self-possession gathered and all the conflicts, self-recrimination, fears and anxiety that had assailed his life dissolved into visions of beatific calm. [...] Such were the astonishing effects of laudanum, until addiction and terrifying ‘Pains of Opium’ initiated a long farewell to happiness and peace of mind.” (N. Roe, X)
“having read De Quincey's description of his dreams and sensations, [Isa Whitney] had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects.” The Man with the Twisted Lip
