, and as there are many remedies
for insomnia, he tried those which, it seemed to him, were suitable to
his case; but bromide of potassium, in spite of its hypnotic properties,
produced no more effect than the over-working of the brain and body.
When he realized this he replaced it with chloral; but chloral, which
should create a desire to sleep, after several days had no more effect
than the bromide. Then he tried injections of morphine.

It was not without a certain uneasiness that he made this third trial,
the first two having met with so little success; and since it is
acknowledged that chloral produces a calmer sleep than morphine, it
seemed as if the latter would prove as useless as the former. However,
he slept without being tormented by dreams or wakings, and the next day
he still slept.

But he knew too well the effects produced by a prolonged use of these
injections to continue them beyond what was strictly indispensable; he
therefore omitted them, and sleep left him.

He tried them again; then, soon, as the small doses lost their efficacy,
he gradually increased them. At the end of a certain time what he feared
came to pass--his leanness increased; he lost his appetite, his
muscular force, and his moral energy; his pale face began to wear the
characteristic expression of the morphomaniac.

Then he stopped, frightened.

Should he continue, he would become a morphomaniac in a given time, and
the apathy into which he fell prevented him from resisting the desire
to absorb new doses of poison, a desire as imperious, as irresistible
in morphinism as that of alcohol for the alcoholic, and more terrible in
its effects--the perversion of the intellectual faculties, loss of will,
of memory, of judgment, paralysis, or the mania that leads to suicide.

If he did not continue, and these sleepless nights or the agitated
sleep which maddened him should return, and following them, this
over-excitement of the brain in troubling the nutrition of the
encephalic mass, it might be the prelude of some grave cerebral
affection.

On one side the morphine habit; on the other, dementia from the constant
excitement and disorganization of the brain.

Between a fatally certain result and one that was possible he did not
hesitate. He must give up morphine, and this choice forced itself upon
him with so much more strength, because if morphine assured him sleep at
night, it by no means gave him tranquil days--quite the contrary.