Volume 1

Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1903-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    devotee of the drug for nine years. His love of roaming over the hills and valleys was kept up at Oxford, but despite this, and also notwithstanding the opium, which indeed masked and relieved but could not cure the symptoms, least of all their cause, he again could not endure systematic and continuous study—he, par excellence, a born student and lover of books and study! He soon left Oxford and spent several years in objectless travel or wandering about, settling at last in 1809, aged 24, at Grasmere. Here were kept up the constant exercise, the long walks, the interest in sport, and the seemingly morbid solitary walks in the darkness of the night. Despite these things, in 1812 there was a suddenly appearing and as suddenly dis¬ appearing five months’ attack of “ nervous horror ” and in 1813 such an increased intensity of the “ irritation of the stomach ” that for relief he increased the inter¬ mittent doses of opium he had been taking since 1804, until he was soon taking as much as 340 grains a day. He would not marry while taking so much, and by 1816 he had so far conquered the habit that he felt justified in marrying. This period of 1813-1816 was his first one of excess, but immediately after marriage his suf¬ fering became more unendurable and for a year he relapsed. His heroism in 1821 in again fighting and winning the battle was only rewarded by great suffer¬ ing, dejection, “ derangement of the liver,” etc., and there followed another relapse into excess from 1824
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