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 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 By ABIEL abbot LIVERMORE. 
 
 WITH 
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 By rev. RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER. 
 
 AND 
 
 ON THE USE OF TOBACCO. 
 
 By G. F. witter, M.D. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1883.
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 (JTambrttige : 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHK WILSON AND SON, 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 HV 
 
 ^ 
 
 TC L ^j 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Anti-Tobacco 7 
 
 A Lecture on Tobacco 37 
 
 Tobacco and its Effects 'j2> 
 
 Appendix 115 
 
 550096
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 By ABIEL abbot LIVERMORE, 
 
 THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE 
 MEADVILLE TEMPERANCE UNION^ 
 
 January 29, 1882.
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 3j<KC 
 
 T T is a legal proverb that " Possession is nine points in 
 -'- the law." Judging by this standard, he must be a 
 daring innovator who would venture to attack the well- 
 nigh universal habit of using tobacco, by chewing, smoking, 
 or snuffing. We have only to pass through the streets of 
 our cities and villages, and see the numerous shops devoted 
 to the traffic, or witness the smokers of pipes, cigars, or 
 cigarettes in public places, and on the routes of travel, — 
 the uncleanliness of cars and steamers, — to be assured 
 that if universality is a sufficient proof of the merit of 
 any habit or practice, the use of the weed is estabhshed 
 beyond the possibility of overthrow. 
 
 But, on the other hand, in this age, — which tests every- 
 thing, however settled in the usages or opinions of society, 
 or supported by popular favor, and rejects whatever con- 
 flicts with truth and the welfare of mankind, — we are 
 encouraged to submit even this widespread custom to the 
 criterion of science and common-sense, not to say of 
 moral principle. 
 
 One of the most marvellous chapters of human history 
 is that which relates how tobacco has been introduced
 
 8 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 among the articles of trade and commerce, and has sub- 
 sidized both savage and civilized nations and tribes to its 
 indulgence, and is still extending its triumphs. 
 
 To attack it seems as idle as to assault Gibraltar with a 
 flight of Indian arrows. But we remember that most of 
 the gigantic evils that have afflicted humanity — such as 
 human sacrifices, idolatry, torture of witnesses and crimi- 
 nals, the persecution of witches, intemperance, polygamy, 
 slavery and the slave-trade, or war — could, with equal or 
 greater assurance, claim exemption from criticism or re- 
 buke on the ground of their antiquity and their univer- 
 sality. Yet all these abominations now lie more or less 
 under the condemnation of the enlightened sentiment of 
 Christendom, and their dark shadows are passing away 
 before the rising light of a nobler and purer civilization. 
 
 Derivation of the Word. 
 
 The origin of the word tobacco is doubtful. Some 
 trace it to a Carib term, tabacos, signifying a pipe; others 
 to Tabacco, a province of Yucatan ; others to Tabagos, an 
 island in the Caribbean Sea, or to Tabasco, one in the 
 Gulf of Florida. 
 
 Customs of its Use, 
 
 The plant, as grown in different countries and climates, 
 has several species or varieties, though it possesses com- 
 mon properties. In Asia it appears to have been used 
 from a remote antiquity, if we may judge by the ancient 
 sculptured pipes, similar to those still employed in China. 
 In America its use is traced back to the mound-builders,
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 whoever they were, and other prehistoric races, as is 
 demonstrated by their remains and monuments. When 
 Columbus, in 1492, discovered America, or the adjacent 
 islands, he found the natives puffing tobacco-smoke from 
 their mouths and nostrils, and inhaling snuft' through 
 hollow canes. The depravity of chewing appears to have 
 been reserved to the refinement of a later age, and a 
 people boasting of its superior intelligence and civiliza- 
 tion. Probably the sailors of the great discoverer carried 
 home the habit to Southern Europe. While Sir "W^alter 
 Raleigh, at a later period, has the questionable honor of 
 introducing it into England. 
 
 Commerce in Tobacco. 
 
 Thus getting a foothold in Europe, the spread and ex- 
 tent of the growth and employment of tobacco, as a luxury 
 and as an article of trade, have gone on with astonishing 
 rapidity. King Tobacco rivals the other royal powers of 
 cotton, corn, wheat, hemp, and sugar, as one of the lead- 
 ing products of the earth, and one of the main staples of 
 trade and commerce. 
 
 Six hundred thousand acres in the United States are 
 devoted to the cultivation of tobacco. The " Pall Mall 
 Gazette," of June 16, 187 1, reports the increase of the con- 
 sumption in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, from 
 1841 to 1878, to be 25,642,469 pounds weight, or an in- 
 crease of from thirteen and three fourths ounces to one 
 pound and seven ounces to each person of the popula- 
 tion. The " Dublin University Magazine " estimates the 
 tobacco bill of Great Britain at ;^ 14,000,000 sterling, or 
 ;? 70,000,000.
 
 I O ANTI- TOBA CCO. 
 
 In 1867 a German statistician estimated the production 
 of tobacco to be in 
 
 Kilogrammes. 
 
 Asia • 155,000,000 
 
 Europe 141,000,000 
 
 America 124,000,000 
 
 Africa 12,000,000 
 
 Australia 400,000 
 
 M. Barral, who officially reported on the specimens ex- 
 hibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1866, thus estimates the 
 amount grown : — 
 
 Kilogrammes. 
 
 In America 75,000,000 
 
 " Turkey 45,000,000 
 
 " Cuba 32,000,000 
 
 " Austria 29,000,000 
 
 " France 22,802,000 
 
 *' Germany 18,000,000 
 
 " Russia 14,000,000 
 
 '* Brazil 8,000,000 
 
 " Roumania 2,000,000 
 
 " Algeria 1,600,000 
 
 " Italy 1,500,000 
 
 " Belgium 1,500,000 
 
 M. Barral adds : " The enormous figures, which have 
 passed before the reader's eye, testify to the facility with 
 which people fall into excessive expense, for the gratifica- 
 tion of a pleasure which has for its principal aim to kill 
 time, and stupefy the mind." 
 
 Since 1841 the population of Great Britain has increased 
 25 per cent, but the consumption of tobacco, 43 per cent. 
 More than a quarter of a million of sovereigns are spent 
 every week on this narcotic, and that principally by one 
 sex.
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. II 
 
 In the chief tobacco-raising countries — England, Ger- 
 many, Holland, the United States, and France — more 
 money is devoted to this luxury than pays the bread bill. 
 
 According to a calculation made by the American Con- 
 sul at Havana, and embodied in a report to the Secretary 
 of State, it is computed that in the island of Cuba alone 
 1,460,000,000 of cigars, or ten a day for each person of 
 the population, are annually consumed by the inhabitants 
 and residents of that island. 
 
 Chemical Properties. 
 
 There are about forty species or varieties of tobacco, 
 belonging to the genus Nicotia?ia, in the order Solanaccea, 
 Chemically analyzed, tobacco contains no less than three 
 distinct and active poisons, nicotine, nicotianine, and em- 
 pyreumatic oil, besides certain minute portions of alkaloids 
 and acids. 
 
 I. Nicotine, or nicotia, is a colorless, or nearly colorless, 
 fluid, when extracted from tobacco, having an exceedingly 
 acrid, burning taste, even when largely diluted, and very 
 irritating to the nostrils. The "United States Dispensa- 
 tory," the great authority with physicians and druggists of 
 all schools of practice, says : " Nicotine, in its action on the 
 animal system, is one of the most virulent poisons known. 
 A drop of it, in the state of concentrated solution, was suf- 
 ficient to destroy a dog, and small birds perished at the 
 approach of a tube containing it. In man it is said to de- 
 stroy life, in poisonous doses, in from two to five minutes." 
 The " New American Cyclopedia" says : " Its vapor is so 
 irritating that it is difficult to breathe in a room in which a 
 single drop has been evaporated." Dr. Drysdale, Fellow
 
 1 2 ANTI- TOBA CCO. 
 
 of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and Senior 
 Physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, says (" To- 
 bacco, and the Diseases it produces," London, 1880) : 
 " The species of tobacco are closely related to henbane 
 {hyoscyamus) , to atropa belladonna, and to stramonium — 
 poisonous plants used in medicine. Tobacco alone, of all 
 the four, is scarcely ever employed medicinally at the 
 present day, except, perhaps, occasionally, in combination 
 with stramonium, in spasmodic asthma. Its use as an in- 
 jection has been abandoned, as too dangerous to life. It is 
 largely used by some farmers for destroying vermin infest- 
 ing sheep, and commonly also by gardeners for kilHng the 
 insects upon their plants. Indeed, tobacco is one of the 
 most virulent of all vegetable poisons." He further says : 
 " The constituent part of tobacco, which makes it at once 
 so agreeable and so dangerous to health, is nicotine, C^g 
 Hj^ Ng, a liquid alkaloid discovered, so recently as 1809, 
 by a French chemist. So deadly a poison is nicotine, that 
 one tenth of a grain of it will kill a middle-sized dog in 
 three minutes ; and as the percentage of nicotine in dry 
 tobacco varies, from two per cent in Havana to about seven 
 per cent in Virginia tobacco, it has been calculated that in 
 a single cigar there is enough nicotine, if given pure, to kill 
 two men ; and in about a quarter of an ounce of tobacco, 
 there may be as much as two grains of this very dangerous 
 poison. A smuggler, mentioned by Namias to the Aca- 
 demic des Sciences, was dangerously poisoned by covering 
 his naked skin with tobacco leaves, in order to escape 
 paying duty. The great danger of chewing tobacco is 
 thus at once evident. Taylor (" On Poisons," p. 749) men- 
 tions that the volatile vapor of tobacco, given off in the 
 process of manufacture, has been shown to have an injuri-
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 13 
 
 ous effect on tobacco operatives. The first results are 
 headache, nausea, languor, loss of appetite, and sleepless- 
 ness, followed by a general disturbance of the health. 
 Melsens, the chemist, said that he had collected 30 
 grammes of nicotine from 4.500 grammes of tobacco 
 smoke, which he conveyed through water. 
 
 2. Nicotianine, the second poisonous component of 
 tobacco, is a fatty substance, having an aromatic and 
 somewhat bitter taste, and is probably the principle which 
 gives the article its strong odor. The "Dispensatory" 
 says : " It produces sneezing when applied to the nostrils, 
 and a grain of it, swallowed by Hermstadt, occasioned gid- 
 diness and nausea." The "New American Cyclopedia" 
 says : " When taken internally, it gives rise to giddiness, 
 nausea, and an inclination to vomit." The "Scientific 
 American " speaks of tobacco-camphor, or nicotianine, as 
 " a substance about which not much is known, — a bitter 
 extractive matter." 
 
 3. Empyreiimatic oil is the third substance which is 
 produced during the burning of the tobacco in the pipe. 
 This is one of the most active poisons known to chemis- 
 try. Sir Benjamin Brodie (" London Lancet ") says : " The 
 empyreumatic oil of tobacco is produced by distillation 
 of that herb at a temperature above that of boiling water. 
 One or two drops of this oil (according to the size of the 
 animal), placed on the tongue, will kill a cat in the course 
 of a few minutes ; A certain quantity of this oil must 
 always be circulating in the blood of an habitual smoker, 
 and we cannot suppose that the effects of it on the system 
 can be merely negative." "A single drop," says the same 
 authority, " injected into the rectum of a cat, occasioned 
 death in about five minutes; and double the quantity.
 
 14 
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 administered in the same manner to a dog, was followed 
 by the same result." 
 
 Dr. Drysdale reports ("Tobacco, and the Diseases it pro- 
 duces,") that "The analyses made by Eulenberg and Vohl 
 ("Ann. d'Hygiene," April, 1873, from " Vierteljahrsch fur 
 ger. Med.") seem to controvert the old theory that the inju- 
 rious effects of tobacco-smoking are due directly to the pres- 
 ence of nicotine in the smoke. They attribute them rather 
 to the alkaloids produced by its decomposition, and which 
 have many similar physiological properties. The smoke 
 from tobacco, in pipes and cigars, was passed first through 
 a solution of potassic hydrate, and then through one of 
 dilute sulphuric acid. The former solution was found to 
 contain a mixture of carbonic, hydrocyanic, sulphuric, 
 acetic, formic, metacetonic, butyric, valeric, and carbolic 
 acids, creosote, and several hydrocarbons. The acid 
 solution contained rosohc acid, ammonia, traces of ethy- 
 lamine and many of the pyridine bases, to the last of 
 which the injurious action is due. The bases found were 
 pyridine, C 5 H 5 N, which is more abundant in pipe than 
 in cigar smoke ; picoline, C ^ H ^N ; lutidine, C ^H ^N ; col- 
 lidine, C g H ^^ N, which is more abundant in cigar than 
 in pipe smoke ; parvoline, C ^ H ^3 N ; coridine, C ^oH 15 N ; 
 rubidme, C^ H ^^ N ; and a residue corresponding to viri- 
 dine, C12H19N. As will be seen, the most volatile of 
 the bases, as pyridine, were most abundant in pipe-smoke, 
 while the less volatile, as colhdine, were most abundant in 
 cigar- smoke. 
 
 " The physiological action of these bases was not tested 
 separately, but only that of a mixture of those which 
 volatilize under 320° F., and of those which volatilize 
 between 320° F. and 482° F. Both of these sets of bases,
 
 ANTI- TOBA ceo. 1 5 
 
 like nicotine, produced contraction of the pupil, difficult 
 respiration, general convulsions, and death ; and, upon 
 post morte77i examination, the respiratory passages and 
 liings were found congested. They do not act as rapidly 
 as nicotine. Those volatile at a low temperature were 
 more active than those which were only volatile at a high 
 temperature, which explains the fact that more tobacco 
 can be smoked in the form of cigars than in a pipe. 
 
 " The alkaloids are soluble in the mucus of the mouth 
 and air-passages ; and thus smoke condensed and min- 
 gled with water is easily taken into the blood. Hence, 
 when cigars or pipes are smoked, even out-of-doors, a 
 notable quantity of poison is taken into the system. But, 
 when smoking takes place in a small room, the air taken 
 into the lungs also adds its poison to the fluids of the air- 
 passages ; and persons who remain in smoking-rooms, 
 even if not themselves smoking, cannot escape a certain 
 amount of poisoning. Women who wait in public bar- 
 rooms and smoking-saloons, though not themselves smok- 
 ing, cannot avoid the poisoning caused by inhaling smoke 
 continually. Surely gallantry, if not common honesty, 
 should suggest the practical inference from this fact." 
 
 General Effects of the use of Tobacco. 
 
 The results of the use of the weed, armed as all 
 chemists agree with some of the most powerful and poi- 
 sonous agents known to the vegetable world, have been 
 set down in all medical literature in fearful array. But in 
 vain has been the warning. The habit of using tobacco, 
 in some form, becomes even stronger in its enslaving 
 power than that of the indulgence in spirituous liquors, to
 
 1 6 A NTI- TOBA ceo. 
 
 which it is closely allied. Thick-set, as the path of the 
 victim is, with dangers on the right and on the left, he 
 rushes on regardless of consequences, and gratifies the 
 unnatural and purely artificial appetite, in spite of all 
 the remonstrances of an outraged constitution, and the 
 pangs of distress felt in every vital organ. He sophisti- 
 cates his reason and common-sense with the deceitful 
 pleas that the use of tobacco is a quietus to the agitated 
 nerves, a relief from fatigue, prevents the waste of 
 tissues, and that many smokers and chewers round out a 
 good old age of eighty or ninety years. It is true that 
 the human system is so wonderfully constituted, by the 
 wisdom and mercy of the Creator, that it can stand a 
 great deal of abuse before it finally succumbs. Ironclad, 
 tobacco-proof, and alcohol-proof — some persons seem 
 to carry a charmed life, that defies sickness and death. 
 But these are the exceptions that confirm the general 
 rule. Let no man, however stalwart, presume too much 
 on the native strength of his constitution. To every one 
 the day of reckoning, though long delayed, comes at last, 
 when all the items that have been registered in the day- 
 book are transferred to the ledger, and summarized in 
 one fatal bill. A lawyer and statesman of New York, just 
 deceased, adds another vivid illustration to this statement. 
 He prided himself on his ability to endure, freely exposed 
 himself on all occasions, never wore an overcoat in the 
 coldest weather, always slept with a window open, but at last 
 dropped off suddenly with Bright's disease of the kidneys. 
 But, haply, it is not always death which is the result of 
 our numerous and often unconscious violations of the 
 laws of health. It is the abridgment and diminution of 
 life. It is the gradual and almost imperceptible depres-
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 1 7 
 
 sion of the vital energies. It is the taking on, one after 
 another, of the ills flesh is heir to, until a man lives only a 
 half life, or a quarter life, where God intended he should 
 live a whole life. One of the most melancholy of all spec- 
 tacles is a chronic invalid, — one who can neither live nor 
 die, and whose prayer might well be that of the Apostle 
 who exclaimed, " Who shall deliver me from the body of 
 this death?" 
 
 A man in the cityj vexed and worried by business, or 
 one worn down in the country by hard manual labor, may 
 feel a temporary quieting of the nerves, or a gentle stim- 
 ulus to the mental and physical energies, by his pipe or 
 his glass ; but all, and more than all, that is gained in one 
 direction is lost in another. Temporary relief is pur- 
 chased at the fearful cost of a lasting blow to the nervous 
 system. The chief reason why men in the press and wear 
 of society find their nerves so unstrung and shattered, is 
 because they have early resorted to stimulants and 
 narcotics, in place of the appropriate rest and nutrition 
 which nature demands. They have so far perverted the 
 instincts of nature that they cannot get along except by 
 re-enforcing themselves by artificial and injurious stimu- 
 lants and substitutes, and thus maintaining a kind of 
 counterfeit strength. A victim of daily doses of rum and 
 tobacco often cannot write his name straight, until he has 
 steadied his trembling hand by a glass of liquor or a 
 cigar. He is simply a sick man, and does not know it-j 
 but the day is not far distant when he will know it. 
 
 Particular Diseases Caused, by the Use of Tobacco, 
 
 Professor Miller, of Edinburgh, says ("Tobacco, and the 
 Diseases it produces ") : " As medical men, we know that
 
 1 8 ANTI- TOBA ceo. 
 
 smoking injures the whole organism, puts a man's stomach 
 and whole frame out of order ; but it acts mainly, as all 
 other poisons do, on the nervous system. Not only is the 
 physical effect most debilitating; it tends, in plain lan- 
 guage, to paralysis ; for the cases are not a few in which 
 there is not only an approach to paralysis in the trembling 
 of the hand, but in the lower extremities, from no cause 
 on earth but inveterate smoking. If you get a medical 
 opinion in favor of a pipe, it is the opinion of the man 
 who indulges in it. An unbiased and unprejudiced opin- 
 ion in favor of tobacco is yet to come. The effects of 
 narcotics, mental and bodily, I can fairly testify are nothing 
 but evil. I stand in a position of giving an experienced, 
 as well as an impartial observation. I am standing on 
 unassailable ground, when I say that every man, woman, 
 and child who uses tobacco unnecessarily, to any appreci- 
 able extent, is thereby injuring himself, or herself, morally, 
 mentally, and physically, more or less." 
 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie, F. R. S., from the result of ex- 
 periments upon animals, tells us that the poison acts by 
 destroying the functions of the brain. Many observers 
 on the Continent have noticed the inferior attainments of 
 students who smoke. Thus, Dr. Bertillon — the most 
 eminent writer of the day on medical statistics — ^ found in 
 1855, that, of the pupils then at the Polytechnic School 
 of Paris, one hundred and eight smoked and fifty-two 
 did not smoke. The non-smokers stood higher, intel- 
 lectually, than the smokers. He furthermore found that 
 the mean rank of the smokers, as compared with the non- 
 smokers, deteriorated, from their entering to their leaving 
 the school. 
 
 The " British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,"
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 1 9 
 
 for January, 1861, says : " We see with satisfaction that the 
 Minister of Pubhc Instruction of France has issued a 
 circular, addressed to the directors of colleges and 
 schools, forbidding the use of tobacco and cigars to 
 students." 
 
 Physiological experiments have shown (Ed. Smith, 
 British Association, 1864, &c.) that smoking makes the 
 heart beat more rapidly, from the paralyzing effects of 
 nicotine on minute vessels of the system, which no longer 
 offer their usual resistance to the force-pump of the 
 circulation. Nicotine, as for convenience the poisoning 
 principle of tobacco is called, enters the body by the 
 stomach, the lungs, and by the skin; and its effects are 
 uniform by whatever gate it enters. Dr. Edward Smith 
 found that when his pulse was 74 per minute before 
 smoking, it rose, after smoking eleven minutes, to 112. 
 ^^ The effect produced by tobacco on the heart is caused by 
 its paralyzing effect on the minute vessels of the capilla- 
 ries. These being relaxed can no longer offer effectual 
 resistance ; and the heart, freed from this control, in- 
 creases the rapidity of its strokes. This increase of the 
 heart's action results pardy also from the paralyzing effect 
 of the drug upon the pneumogastric nerve, which supplies 
 the stomach and lungs with neive power. 
 
 Dr. Drysdale (" Tobacco, and the Diseases it pro- 
 duces ") says: ^'The influence of tobacco upon the 
 eyesight is well known. One of the symptoms produced 
 in acute poisoning by tobacco is blindness ; and chronic 
 poisoning gives rise to similar symptoms. Mackenzie, of 
 Glasgow, first noticed that male patients affected with one 
 species of amaurosis were mostly great lovers of tobacco 
 in some form.
 
 20 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 " Sichel, of Paris, found some cases of blindness easily 
 cured by cessation from the use of tobacco. Hutchinson 
 narrated, before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society 
 of London, thirty-seven cases of a species of amaurosis, 
 where twenty-three of the patients were great smokers; 
 and Wordsworth has confirmed these views of Mackenzie 
 and Hutchinson. In one week I saw, in 1874, at the 
 Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, two cases of tobacco 
 amaurosis in young men, neither of whom had attained 
 the age of thirty. The first had chewed continually ; and 
 the other smoked the enormous quantity of one ounce of 
 shag tobacco daily. Both were completely and irretrievably 
 blind, from this dangerous habit. But weak sight is also 
 commonly caused by snuffing, as well as by smoking and 
 chewing. Tobacco amaurosis is much commoner now 
 than it used to be." . 
 
 Mr. John Couper, of the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, 
 says that " patients with tobacco amaurosis describe them- 
 selves as always living in a dim light even at noonday." 
 Mr. George Critchett, the great London authority on 
 diseases of the eye, tells me that he is constantly consulted 
 by gentlemen for commencing blindness, caused solely by 
 great smoking. He accordingly condemns smoking in 
 most unqualified terms, as most dangerous to human 
 health. 
 
 Dr. Kostral, physician to the Royal Factory of Tobacco 
 at Iglau ("Ann. d'Hygiene," published in 1871), brought 
 before the Medical Society at Vienna, in 18 71, some sta- 
 tistics relating to the workers in that government tobacco- 
 factory. '' There were 1,942 of these workers, of ages from 
 thirteen to fifty-six. They are only taken into the factory 
 if they are likely to live there for twenty years. The
 
 ANTI- TOBA ceo. 2 1 
 
 workshops are well arranged and ventilated ; but during 
 their ten hours of work the operatives are exposed to an 
 atmosphere charged with the dust of tobacco and the vapor 
 of nicotine. This is found to be especially noxious to young 
 workers recently entering, or to those convalescent from 
 sickness. Thus the majority of deaths among the children 
 and work-girls in the first month is attributed to narcotic 
 poisoning. 
 
 " Of a hundred boys, from twelve to sixteen, who entered 
 the works, seventy-two fell sick in the first six months. 
 Their sickness lasted from two to t\venty-eight days, and 
 consisted especially in congestion of the brain, different 
 nervous affections, pains in the region of the heart, palpi- 
 tation, pallor, inflammation of the stomach, intestines, and 
 lining membrane of the eyelids, with fever, lassitude, cold 
 sweats, want of appetite and sleeplessness." 
 
 Dr. B. W. Richardson, F. R. S., says "that smoking 
 produces disturbances in the blood, causing undue fluidity 
 and change in the red corpuscles ; in the stomach, giving 
 rise to debility, nausea, and sickness ; on the heart, caus- 
 ing debihty of the organ and irregular action ; on the 
 organs of sense, causing confusion of vision, bright lines, 
 luminous specks, and long retention of images on the 
 retina ; with analogous symptoms in the ear, such as ina- 
 bility to sharply define sounds, and the annoyance of a 
 sharp ringing sound, like a whistle or a bell ; on the mu- 
 cous membrane of the mouth, causing enlargement and 
 soreness of the tonsils, — 'smoker's sore-throat,' — red- 
 ness, dryness, and occasional peeling off of the membrane, 
 and either unnatural fineness and contraction, or spongi- 
 ness of the gums." 
 
 Dr. Jolly (Association Frangaise contre I'Abus du Tabac)
 
 2 2 ANTI- TOBA CCO. 
 
 mentions the strange coincidence of the increase of paraly- 
 sis and insanity with the ascending figure of the simulta- 
 neous consumption of tobacco and alcohol in France. 
 With regard to insanity, Jolly alleges that French statistics 
 show that tobacco is a great cause of that disease. Thus, 
 in 1830, when the amount of tobacco sold by the French 
 government was about 11,000,000 kilogrammes, there 
 were 8,000 lunatics in France; and in 1862, when 
 28,000,000 kilogrammes were sold, there were no less 
 than 44,000 lunatics in French asylums. " It is to be 
 remembered," says Dr. Jolly, " that the tobaccos used by 
 the Germans and other northern nations are very poor in 
 nicotine, as is also the case with the tobacco of Turkey. 
 French tobacco, such as that grown in Lot-et-Garonne, 
 contains sometimes eight per cent of nicotine, and its use 
 causes deafness, anosmia (loss of smell), amaurosis, weak 
 sight, and progressive palsy. Virginia tobacco (shag, re- 
 turns, &c.) is very strong, and contains about seven per 
 cent of nicotine. The English and French working-classes, 
 therefore, consume very dangerous kinds of tobacco." 
 
 M. Decaise ("Comptes Rendus," /^;;z^ 58, p. 1017), 
 struck by the large number of boys, aged from nine to 
 fifteen years, who smoked, inquired into tlie connection of 
 tliis habit with the impairment of the general health. His 
 observations were made on thirty-eight boys ; and in 
 twenty-seven of them there were more or less distinct 
 symptoms. Thus, in twenty-two there were various dis- 
 orders of the circulation, anemic murmurs in the neck, 
 palpitation, dyspepsia, weakening of intellect, and more 
 or less increased desire for strong drink. In three, the 
 pulse was intermittent. Ten of the boys had disturbed 
 sleep, and four suffered from ulceration of the mouth.
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 23 
 
 Eight of the boys were of ages from nine to twelve ; nine- 
 teen of them from tweke to fifteen. 
 
 Professor Kirk (" Nen-es and Narcotics ") says that "nar- 
 cotics, such as tobacco, are used because of the delicious 
 sense of relief which, even upon the motor nerves being 
 relaxed, steals over the smoker. You see a man who is 
 restless and yet wear}^ Though careworn or toihvorn, he 
 seems as if he could not be still, but must be moving in 
 one way or another. There is a state of uncomfortable 
 irritation in his muscular system, or in the motor nerves 
 that supply it. 
 
 " By means of a narcotic, such as tobacco, this irrita- 
 tion is subdued. The supply of vital force from the 
 organic centres to the motor nen-es is so much lessened 
 that the irritating movement in them ceases. This gives 
 a sense of relief to the person affected, and he fancies 
 himself immensely benefited. He is not aware that the 
 benefit is purchased at a very serious cost. He has not 
 only lessened the supply of vital force for the time being, 
 but has done a very consideral^le amount of injury to his 
 vital system. He has, in fact, poisoned the springs of life 
 within him. These will not afterwards give out their sup- 
 ply of force, as they would have done, had the poisonous 
 influence been withheld. 
 
 " As soon as these organic nen-es rally from the damp- 
 ing effect of the narcotic, the irritation in the motor 
 system returns, and the narcotic is called for anew. Fresh 
 injury is now inflicted for the sake of the relaxed and 
 easy condition desired. This goes on till the vital cen- 
 tres, if at all delicate, totally fail to give supply to the 
 motor ner\''es, and the sore experience of paralysis begins. 
 The passing sense of ease and tranquillity produced by
 
 24 
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 the poisonous substance is, however, so great that, even 
 when a man knows he is bringing slowly upon himself such 
 a calamity as this, he will go on indulging m the so-called 
 luxury of the narcotic." 
 
 Indictment One. 
 
 The first indictment, therefore, against tobacco is, that 
 it is a poison. It is not food, and can furnish no nutriment 
 to build up the tissues of the system, or make amends 
 for its waste, or permanently energize its motive-power. 
 It is not a medicine that is safe to use, except in a few 
 critical cases, and that only under experienced medical 
 skill. As an emetic, a decoction of tobacco might expel 
 some active poisons from the system. I knew of one 
 instance in which it was successfully employed to relax 
 the muscles in lockjaw. Habitual tobacco-users, under 
 whatever form, must, therefore, be classed with opium, 
 hasheesh, absinthe, and alcohol users, as those who, to 
 a greater or less extent, and in proportion to the strength 
 or weakness of their constitution, abridge the duration of 
 life, and diminish its volume and capacity, by the intro- 
 duction of a potent enemy, an active poison, into the very 
 citadel of life. 
 
 Indictment 2wo. 
 
 The next indictment against tobacco is, that it is a 
 needless expense. The financial question is always a moral 
 question. Money is a trust to be used or abused. Morals, 
 as well as health and Ufe, are involved in the use of the lux- 
 uries and indulgences of society. While the habitual use
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 25 
 
 of tobacco does no good permanently, either to mind or 
 body. — but, on the contrary, a great amount of evil, — it 
 drains the purse, empties the larder and wardrobe, pauper- 
 izes the home of comforts and pleasures and luxuries 
 which are innocent, to feed one monstrous appetite, which 
 is deadly in its effects. The national debt of the United 
 States could be swept away in four years by turning upon 
 it this gulf-stream of criminal self-indulgence and need- 
 less luxury. The money expended for tobacco in the 
 United States would discharge all the expenses of the 
 religious and educational institutions. While the latter 
 are engaged in building up the life of man and the 
 national character, the former is sapping both with an 
 unfailing drain. Do we wonder that children go ragged, 
 houses unpainted, windows broken, animals left to shift 
 for themselves in the winter's cold, shops bankrupt, farms 
 and dwellings mortgaged, tramps and paupers swelling 
 the list in this fair and prosperous land of ours? It is 
 due, in no small part, to the tremendous wastes which we 
 tolerate, and even excuse, as if they were the necessities 
 and blessings of life, instead of its cancers — the waste by 
 tobacco, the waste by alcohol, the waste by gambling, the 
 waste by fire, the waste by war, by the social evil, by crime 
 and ignorance. 
 
 Indict7ne7tt Three. 
 
 f 
 
 The use of tobacco leads directly to drinking spiritu- 
 ous liquors. Tobacco is prime minister to alcohol. The 
 pipe is first-cousin to the mug. To take away the cup 
 which is in a man's right hand, while he still holds his 
 cigar in his left hand, is to leave the work of reform half- 
 done. Chewing or smoking necessitates salivation ; saHva-
 
 26 A NTI- TOBA CCO. 
 
 vation, thrist ; thrist, drinking ; drinking, the dram, — a log- 
 ical chain of iron, where every link draws his fellow. A 
 burning cigar or pipe heats the lips, dries the mouth, in- 
 flames the mucous membrane, parches the throat, and 
 demands relief by drinking. Not to supply the drain upon 
 the fluids of the system would cause intolerable dis- 
 tress. But for this want and craving, water, tea or coffee, 
 or soda would be but a vapid drink. It must be some- 
 thing more strong and piquant — rum, gin, brandy, or 
 whiskey, or at all events wine, beer, ale, or cider. As a 
 well-nigh universal rule, when a boy begins to smoke or 
 chew, he begins to drink liquors of some kind. Nor is 
 the social habit without its effect here. While one treats 
 his boon-companion to a cigar, his companion returns the 
 compliment by treating him to a glass at the bar. Cigars 
 and liquors are sold and used off the same counter, that 
 where one is used, the other may likewise be used, and 
 probably by the same parties. Such is the adroit foresight 
 of the dram-seller. 
 
 Indictment Four. 
 
 The use of tobacco is an indignity to the female sex, and 
 an outrage iipoji the cofnmon laws and usages of politeness. 
 I shall not discuss here the question whether a man can 
 be a gentleman, and smoke or chew. Suffice it to say 
 that every person conversant in society knows full well 
 that the customs of a truly polite and refined community 
 are often set at defiance ; that the offensive spittoon 
 corrupts the air of the sitting-room and parlor ; that, worse 
 still, the floors of churches, court-houses, cars, and 
 steamers reek with the filthy expectorations of the chewer 
 or smoker ; that the sweet air of heaven, in which all have
 
 ANTI- TOBA ceo. 2 / 
 
 a common right and interest, is blighted by the trail of 
 smoke which the cigar or pipe leaves behind it ; that the 
 dinner-tables of college commencements or private fes- 
 tivity are enveloped in clouds of poisonous and acrid 
 smoke, painful to every sense, except to those whose 
 senses have by long usage been dragooned into calling 
 bitter sweet, and sweet bitter. Even the sacred haunts of 
 the Muses, the libraries of the learned, the parlors of 
 elegant life, as well as the exchanges of business, and the 
 offices of trade and finance, are blasted by these fumes of 
 the weed, which are bad enough when fresh from the 
 lighted cigar, but which, grown stale, are the very opposite 
 to airs from Araby the blest. 
 
 It is true some w^omen of old smoked their pipes, and 
 some still use the more dangerous cigarette ; but as a 
 general custom women are exempt from the evil. They 
 detest and loathe it in their fathers, husbands, and sons, as 
 a general thing, though some may be so weak when the 
 point-blank question is put to them, whether they like the 
 smoke of a cigar or not, as to say, contrary to their real 
 feeling, that they do, while at heart they hate it. How 
 can pure and refined women endure the presence of 
 men, such as we meet with every day in the streets and 
 cars and stores, whose breath is a stench, whose lips are 
 coated over with the remains of the quid, and whose 
 clothing exhales the stale effluvia of countless dead cigars ! 
 Yet such are the companions which King Tobacco furnishes 
 to the scenes of private life — to the parlor, the table, the 
 bridal-chamber, the sick-room ; and to the public assembly 
 — the church, the sociable, the ball-room, and the concert- 
 hall ! Can we think it strange that some of the most 
 eloquent voices lifted up against this widespread social
 
 28 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 abuse should be those of noble women, whose senses 
 have been outraged, whose health has been undermined 
 whose children have been born with a degenerated 
 constitution, because the lords of creation have been 
 pleased to indulge from boyhood in an unhealthful and 
 repulsive habit? 
 
 Physicians very generally agree in the opinion that 
 much of the positive illness, and still more of the 
 lingering invalidism of women, are chargeable upon the 
 tobacco pestilence. Their more sensitive frames and 
 dehcate constitutions peculiarly expose them to this 
 noxious influence. While the hardships and deprivations 
 of poverty, — immensely enhanced by the waste of means 
 and money thus engendered, — the curse of the dramshop, 
 the fire-water, and the fire-pipe, inflicted on the mothers, 
 the wives, the daughters, and sisters of the land, are 
 offences that cry to heaven. 
 
 Indictment Five, 
 
 The use of tobacco becomes a7i ejtslaving habit. Like 
 the deadly boa-constrictor, when it once winds its fatal 
 folds around its victim, it can scarcely ever be shaken 
 off; and even when it is, it always lies in wait to steal back 
 and regain its hold upon its subject at the opportune 
 moment. Drunkenness itself is not more a passion than 
 chewing and smoking. He who has once formed the 
 habit is ever after a slave, and has a master who says, 
 " Come," and he cometh, and " Go," and he goeth. The 
 victim has parted with his manly freedom forever. He 
 has a chain, as much as the Algerine captive, round his 
 body and round his soul. The first cry, so jailers say,
 
 A NTI- TOBA ceo. 2 9 
 
 v\^hich arrested criminals utter after their imprisonment, 
 is for tobacco, and the second is for ejuploynufit. 
 How often and painfully the slaves of this degrading 
 habit desire to break their chains, but — alas, in vain ! It 
 has a fascination and compulsion which they cannot 
 resist. They would give worlds to throw off the hateful 
 bondage, and be as free as when they came from their 
 mothers' arms ; but they have sold their birtliright, not 
 even for an honest mess of pottage, but for a smoke, for 
 an unsubstantial puff, for the titillation of a few morbid 
 ner\^es, that yields no nourishment to the system, no 
 strength, no health — but, on the other hand, entails 
 weakness, morbidness, disease, expense, sickness, and 
 haply, death, and, worse than all, opens the door to 
 a throng of temptations. 
 
 Indictment Six. 
 
 The tobacco plague is a perversion of the gifts of God, 
 and turns his blessings into curses. As a medicine, as a 
 poison, it may have, in rare instances, its place and its 
 use, as alcohol, as arsenic and other potent poisons have, — 
 but as an article of daily and universal indulgence, never. 
 Its cultivation exhausts the soil more than almost any 
 other crop. It subsidizes the commerce of the world as 
 opium does, as hquors do, to enslave and impoverish 
 mankind. It absorbs a vast amount of human labor and 
 capital, to load the shoulders of men with new burdens, 
 grievous to be borne, and to implant in the human frame 
 pains and diseases not native to our race. It cultivates 
 selfishness of character, self-indulgence, absorption in 
 one's o^\^l pleasure, and disregard of the feelings and
 
 3 O A NTI- TOE A CCO. 
 
 comfort of others. The finer and nobler qualities of 
 character perish under the predominance of a habit 
 which steadily caters to one's own gratification, regardless 
 of what others think or feel. A civilization given over 
 to tobacco and spirituous liquors, as ours largely is, never 
 can ripen and refine those traits which, when aggregated 
 and multipUed, will constitute the kingdom of God on 
 the earth. 
 
 Ifididment Seven. 
 
 But the evil of evils of this deleterious habit is the 
 deterioration which it causes to the successive generations 
 of the human race. If the habit let go its victim at the 
 grave, and that was the end-all of its malign influence, we 
 could look with more complacency on its evil conse- 
 quences. But that is far from being the fact. The well- 
 nigh unanimous testimony of medical and scientific 
 authorities is, that the children of parents addicted to 
 the use of tobacco inherit a weakened or diseased con- 
 stitution, and are exposed to physical penalties from 
 which other, more favored children are exempt. 
 
 In an article in the " Dublin University Magazine," the 
 authority of Herbert Spencer, Dr. Rumsey, and Dr. Mor- 
 gan is quoted in support of the position that the stamina 
 of the town populations in England has deteriorated ; and 
 among other causes, the present evil is cited. " It would 
 be foolish," says the article, " to attribute this lowering of 
 physical stamina to the sole influence of tobacco. The 
 causes which have produced this result are no doubt 
 manifold and complex ; but for the reasons we shall 
 adduce, we think it would be equally foolish to say that 
 the Indian weed had no share in it. . . . Yet fashion is
 
 A NTI- TOBA ceo. 3 1 
 
 SO strong, that this custom is increasing, and one who 
 walks through the streets of a city may see that it is 
 no longer confined to men, but is daily becoming more 
 common amongst boys." . . . There is not a solitary 
 physician who will contradict the statement, that these 
 young smokers are inflicting irreparable injury upon their 
 constitutions, are poisoning the very springs of life, and 
 will transmit to their descendants weaker bodies and 
 weaker brains. 
 
 " Every medical man will testify that this juvenile smok- 
 ing is an unmixed evil, detrimental alike to body and 
 mind, and pointing inevitably to racial degeneracy." 
 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie (" London Lancet ") asks : "What 
 will be the result if this habit be continued by future gene- 
 rations ? It is but too true that the sins of the fathers are 
 visited upon their children. We may here take warning 
 from the fate of the Red Indians of America. An intelli- 
 gent American physician gives the following explanation 
 of the gradual extinction of this remarkable people. One 
 generation of them became addicted to the use of the 
 fire-water. They have a degenerate and comparatively 
 imbecile progeny, who indulge in the same vicious habit 
 with their parents. Their progeny is still more degene- 
 rate ; and, after a very few generations, the races cease alto- 
 gether. We may also take warning from the history of 
 another nation, who, some few centuries ago, while following 
 the banners of Solyman the Magnificent, were the ter- 
 ror of Christendom, but who since then, having become 
 more addicted to tobacco -smoking than any of the Euro- 
 pean nations, are now the lazy and lethargic Turks, held 
 in contempt by all civilized communities." 
 
 The " Dubhn University Magazine," on the Tobacco
 
 32 ANTI-TOBACCO. 
 
 Question, further says : " All medical men agree that all 
 smoking by the young is excess, and is the sure 
 forerunner of dyspeptic horrors. It is probably the 
 greatest source of physical evil that the next generation 
 will have to lament ; for its witcheries are so seductive 
 that the victim is willing to attribute to any cause, rather 
 than the true one, the mischief which it is working on his 
 constitution. The common seqiielce — the shaking hand 
 and palpitating heart, the impaired digestion, the inter- 
 mittent pulse — are complacently ascribed to overwork, to 
 the railway speed at which we live, to the incessant de- 
 mands made upon our powers by a world which is ' too 
 much with us for resistance to importunities that never 
 cease.' Like father like son. The fathers have eaten 
 sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. 
 The indulgence in tobacco by our youth and young men 
 will affect not only themselves, but the future race of Eng- 
 land. Fortunately for us, it is a vice almost entirely mas- 
 culine. If the daughters of England were to commence 
 weakening their vital forces by the use of nicotine, we 
 should find the children of another generation with a 
 hereditary taste for poison, and a diminished power of 
 resisting its inroads ; they would be unhealthy, dyspeptic, 
 and nervous." 
 
 Dr. Richardson says : " I do not hesitate to say that if a 
 community of both sexes, whose progenitors were finely 
 formed and powerful, were to be trained to the early 
 practice of smoking, and if marriage were confined to 
 the smokers, an apparently new and a physically inferior 
 race of men and women would be bred up."
 
 ANTI-TOBACCO. 33 
 
 Condusioft. 
 
 We thus see that the dangers to health and life, to 
 character and prosperity, to happiness and the purposes of 
 human existence, are such that no man can with safety 
 abandon himself to the weed in any of its fashionable 
 forms of use. The testimony of the scientist, the physi- 
 cian, the moralist, and the patriot, is nearly unanimous 
 against smoking and chewing. The tobacco pest has 
 acquired such enormous proportions in all civihzed 
 communities that it has awakened the anxiety of every 
 disinterested lover of his race. Societies are organized 
 in Great Britain and America to stem the growing evil. 
 The medical profession are alarmed at the inroads made 
 by this insidious narcotic upon the stamina of the rising 
 generation. Numerous publications are issued in behalf 
 of reform. And as every other gigantic evil which has 
 threatened the stability and peace of modern civilization 
 has -gone do^vn before the rising intelligence and moral sen- 
 timent of the age, we may rationally hope that this cancer 
 upon the health of the body politic and social will be 
 exterminated. Meantime it becomes the duty of every 
 one, conscious of the truth upon this subject, to bring 
 first his own conduct into harmony with his convictions ; 
 and in the next place to seek to establish the same 
 convictions, and promote the same conduct, in society 
 at large. It is the noble sentiment of Dr. Willard 
 Parker : " I do not place my individual self in opposition 
 to tobacco ; but science, in the form of physiology and 
 hygiene, is opposed to it — and science is the expression 
 of God's will in the government of his work in the 
 universe." 3
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 BY 
 
 RUSSELL LANT CARPENTER, B.A. 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE MAYOR AND PEOPLE 
 OF B RID PORT, ENGLAND.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 Mr. Mayor and Friends : 
 
 T T might seem a trivial subject on which to lecture — 
 -^ a weed. But tobacco claims to be the weed, just as 
 the trade in intoxicants claims to be the trade ; and the 
 weed, like the trade, is of great importance to the public 
 revenue and affects the national character. The customs 
 paid on tobacco, in the year ending March 31, 188 1, 
 amounted to ;^8,658,947; so that, if this luxury is an 
 innocent one, it may be viewed with complacency. The 
 sale of it gave some employment to 303,816 dealers, who 
 paid ;£79,893 for the privilege, — to say nothing of the 
 thousands engaged in 597 manufactories. If, then, it is 
 attacked, there is a great host to defend it. IMuch has 
 been written respecting it ; but I am not aware that either 
 its merits or demerits have met with any systematic 
 examination in Bridport. Like alcohol it is an intoxicant, 
 or poison ; but while Temperance organizations have been 
 active in assailing hquid intoxicants, they have left intoxi- 
 cating fumes pretty much to themselves. In this country, 
 at least, far more poverty and crime are chargeable on 
 drink than on smoke ; and those who think it too much
 
 38 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 to ask that a man should give up two bad habits at once 
 have let the reformed drunkard smoke his pipe in peace. 
 Many even suppose that smokers are less likely to drink, 
 and therefore the habit is often encouraged in Temperance 
 coffee-houses. On this point we may express an opinion 
 by-and-by. 
 
 If there is truth in a quarter of what has been said 
 of the bad effects of tobacco, it seems strange that those 
 whose calling it is to be "watchmen" and to "warn the 
 people," have been so silent respecting it in the pulpit. 
 This reticence may partly arise from our conventional 
 notions. Wi?te, strong drink, drunke7itiess, &c., are 
 " Scripture words." We read denunciations of them in our 
 devotional services ; but those who think more of the 
 letter than of the spirit of the Bible deem it unscriptural 
 and undignified, if not rather profane, to preach about 
 tobacco ! Its triviality is its safeguard ; there is levity in 
 smoke. How can you fight with a cloud or a puff? And 
 if it is treated seriously, what refined language can 
 fully deal with a habit which, in itself or its results, is 
 often so filthy? Many, therefore, avoid the subject 
 because they do not know how to speak upon it without 
 causing more displeasure than benefit ; while others are 
 already slaves to the habit, and have no desire to question 
 its propriety or expose its abuses. 
 
 Meanwhile the weed keeps on growing. While less 
 tobacco is taken in the form of snuff, there has been a 
 great increase of smoking. For this, three reasons may 
 be given, (i) We have had far more intercourse than 
 formerly with smoking nations, especially the Germans. 
 (2) The facilities for outdoor smoking are greatly in- 
 creased by the invention of lucifers ; in my early days
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 39 
 
 those who wanted to strike a light had to use a piece 
 of steel, a piece of flint, and a piece of tinder, besides 
 a brimstone match. And (3) The more prosperous condi- 
 tion of the country has been accompanied by greater 
 indulgence in luxuries. Our liquor bill, as well as our 
 tobacco bill, has about doubled within the last forty years. 
 But while the consumption of intoxicating drinks has 
 increased, there is also an increasing conviction of the 
 evils resulting from them, which has led, in thousands 
 of instances, to their disuse ; and those who can expose 
 the injurious effects of narcotics ought not to be silent in 
 despair. It is my intention to say a little on the nature of 
 tobacco, and to consider its influence on health, on 
 property, on freedom, and on morality. Viewing it thus 
 seriously, I should regard my theme as quite suitable 
 for the pulpit — as much so as the opium-question ; but, 
 on many accounts, I prefer to address my fellow-townsmen 
 from this public platform. It will be my duty to speak 
 without respect of persons — and without disrespect to 
 persons. It would be an ill compliment to those who use 
 tobacco if I took for granted that they would wish me 
 to express myself timidly or obscurely. I invite the 
 criticism of those who are not ashamed to give their 
 names, and am desirous to correct any mistake. Having 
 to speak on so many branches of the subject, I can do 
 full justice to none ; but it is my wish to waken inquiry, 
 and to lead you to read and to think on the subject, and 
 then to express your convictions, and act up to them. 
 
 The tobacco-plant belongs to the botanical order of 
 SolanecB, or the deadly-nightshade tribe, some species of 
 which are to be found in almost every region of the 
 globe : it comprises henbane and other plants noted for
 
 40 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 narcotic qualities. Tobacco was used in Persia long 
 before the discovery of America ; it is supposed to have 
 been introduced into England by Sir Walter Raleigh and 
 the settlers who returned from Virginia, about the year 
 1586.-^ They also imported a plant of the same order, 
 which has been of immense importance to Europe — the 
 potato — of which the leaves, stem, and fruit contain the 
 narcotic principle ; though the tubers of the roots, when 
 cooked, are so useful as food. What a contrast between 
 a steaming dish of potatoes and a cloud of tobacco- 
 smoke ! 
 
 Whether or not smoking is a poisonous habit, tobacco 
 is unquestionably a poison. I^t is not every poison that 
 kills rapidly. There are noted poisons to which persons 
 gradually accustom themselves, and live on, sometimes to 
 old age. Mr. Solly, F. R. S., remarks : " The opium- 
 eater can take an ounce of laudanum for his morning's 
 dram, and feel it not ; when the eighth part of it would be 
 fatal to the uninitiated." In Upper Styria, it is a custom 
 to take arsenic, which in small doses has certain pleasant 
 effects ; and some Styrians may say that they should 
 die if deprived of their arsenic. While many have been 
 killed by raw spirits, others get to drink them habitually, as 
 though eau de vie was really the "water of life." But this 
 does not prove that these poisons are not poisons, nor 
 even that the system which is gradually used to them, and 
 
 1 The earliest detailed account of tobacco in England is said to 
 be in " Joyfull newes oute of the newe founde worlde. Englished 
 by John Frampton, London, 1577," which contains a translation 
 of a Spanish work, and also of a French treatise, relating the in- 
 troduction of it into France by Nicot (whence nicotine, «S:c.), who 
 met with it in Portugal about 1 560. Marvellous cures, especially 
 of wounds, ulcers, and sores, were attributed to it.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 4 1 
 
 is so enslaved by them that abstinence is a terrible 
 privation, is none the worse for them. 
 
 "The constituent part of tobacco which makes it at 
 once so agreeable and so dangerous to health is nicotine. 
 . . . One tenth of a grain of it will kill a middle-sized 
 dog in three minutes ; and ... it has been calculated 
 that in a single cigar there is enough nicotine, if given 
 pure, to kill two men." ^ Persons have died in a few 
 hours after accidentally swallowing tobacco or a little 
 snuff.^ The oil formed in burning it is used by savages to 
 poison their arrows. "A little brother and his sister 
 amused themselves by making soap-bubbles with their 
 father's old pipe ; the boy died from imbibing the essen- 
 tial oil that was in it, and the girl was dangerously ill." ^ 
 In 1879 ^i^ inquest was held on a boy of fourteen, who 
 had been smoking a much-used tobacco-pipe, and died 
 the next morning.^ A man in Paris had been cleaning 
 his pipe with a knife with which he accidentally cut one of 
 his fingers ; in a few hours his hand and arm became 
 inflamed, and amputation afforded the only chance of 
 saving his life.^ Many cases are recorded in which the 
 votaries of tobacco have put the scrapings of their pipes 
 on children's sores as a remedy, and have caused their 
 death. All poisons have certan medicinal qualities, and 
 infusions of tobacco are used in some skin diseases ; 
 
 1 " Tobacco, and the Diseases it Produces," by C. R. Drysdale, 
 M. D., &c., 1880, p. 5. 
 
 2 "Monthly Letters of the Anti-Tobacco Society," &c., October, 
 1879, and April, 1880. Dr. C. Clay's "Two Lectures on Tobacco," 
 1842, p. 12. 
 
 3 " The Workman's Pipe." A Lecture by the Rev. Dr. Ritchie. 
 Third edition, 1878, pp. 49, 50. 
 
 4 " Monthly Letters," p. 168. ^ Ibid. p. 159.
 
 42 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 but, unless applied with judgment, dreadful consequences 
 have ensued. Dr. Clay says (p. 12) : "I have been 
 called to children writhing in horrid convulsions from 
 having had the decoction of tobacco applied for the itch 
 and scald-head, and I have always experienced great 
 difficulty in restoring them ; three instances in my own 
 recollection were attended with fatal results." Soldiers, 
 wanting to disable themselves from duty, have applied a 
 moistened tobacco-leaf to the armpit, inducing extreme 
 prostration and sickness. The physician of a government 
 tobacco-factory at Iglau, in Moravia, reported that " of a 
 hundred boys who entered the works, seventy-two fell 
 sick in the first six months ; " and deaths are not infrequent 
 there from narcotic poisoning. 
 
 The ill effects of a poison are not to be measured by 
 the number of deaths of which it is the obvious cause. 
 It is not easy to estimate the amount of sickness and in- 
 jury resulting from tobacco ; but medical men warn us of 
 its tendencies. All smoke is injurious to the eyes ; but 
 tobacco, which acts on the optic nerve, frequently causes 
 blindness, and color-bHndness, so dangerous in railway 
 signalmen. The eminent London oculist, Mr. Critchett, 
 says that he is constantly consulted by gentlemen for com- 
 mencing blindness, caused solely by great smoking. Others 
 bear a similar testimony.^ If not too far advanced, 
 the malady has been removed by total abstinence from 
 tobacco. The smoker's sore throat and diseases of the 
 tongue and gums are also notorious. " Nicotine enters 
 the body by the stomach, the lungs, and the skin ; and its 
 effects are uniform by whatever gate it enters." " The 
 
 1 See Dr. Drysdale, p. 9 ; and *' Narcotism," No. 31, p. 3, No. 
 55, &c., published by the Anti-Tobacco Society.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 43 
 
 heart beats more rapidly from the paralyzing effects of the 
 nicotine on the minute vessels of the system, which no 
 longer offer their usual resistance to the force-pumps of 
 the circulation." Dr. E. Smith found his pulse rise from 
 74 to 112, after smoking eleven minutes. Another physi- 
 cian took count of his pulse every five minutes during an 
 hour's smoking, and computed that it had beat 1,000 
 times in excess.^ Dr. Townson, a physician to insurance 
 companies, stated that nearly every one of those whom he 
 had rejected, after examining them for life policies, had 
 brought on an affection of the heart through excessive 
 smoking.^ Brain diseases, and those that result from im- 
 paired digestion, are frequently produced by tobacco. It 
 is no proof of its harmlessness that many who use it are as 
 healthy as, or even more healthy than others who abstain. 
 Many soldiers live longer than others who have never 
 endangered their lives in war. No one now doubts that 
 foul air is noxious ; yet in ill-drained towns, where hun- 
 dreds every year fall its victims, others are to be found 
 enjoying better health, and reaching a greater age, than 
 many who have wholesome abodes. Thousands die every 
 year from alcoholic poisoning, and the probabilities of life 
 are, on the whole, far better for abstainers than for drinkers ; 
 and yet there are drinkers who are more healthful than 
 many abstainers. There is a great difference in the sus- 
 ceptibility to poisonous influences in different persons ; 
 and those who offend against the laws of nature in one 
 respect may be obsen-ant in others ; yet any habit that is 
 unwholesome must be more or less hurtful. The first time 
 
 1 " Narcotism," No. 20. 
 
 2 " Monthly Letters/' p. 267. See also p. 259, " The Tobacco 
 Heart."
 
 44 ^ LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 that any one uses tobacco (except, perhaps, those who 
 have been brought up in its atmosphere) its noxious prop- 
 erties are evident enough ; and if these seem to pass away 
 — if " Nature withdraws her monitor when the warning is 
 unheeded " — the evil is not removed because it is stored 
 up secretly. 
 
 It is pleaded that were wholesomeness our rule, other 
 things in continual use should be abandoned — that tea 
 and coffee, e. g., are as injurious to some as tobacco is to 
 others. But " two wrongs " — or even twenty — " do not 
 make a right." There may be excess, no doubt, in " the 
 cup which cheers but not inebriates," and many weaken 
 their digestions and impair their nerves by tea or coffee 
 drinking ; yet I never heard of any one being killed by 
 swallowing a few leaves of tea or grains of coffee. There 
 is nothing but what is good for something, and we have not 
 denied that tobacco has medicinal uses ; but those who 
 take medicines when they are not ill may become so ill as 
 to get beyond the help of medicine ; those who play with 
 a poison may find that the poison makes them its sport 
 and its victim. Tobacco has been commended as a disin- 
 fectant, destroying the germs of disease, and as a prophy- 
 lactic, rendering the smoker insensible to infection ; but 
 though it kills the blight on plants, it may not destroy that 
 which blights mankind ; and insensibility to danger is by 
 no means safety. Indeed, it is said that smokers, from 
 their impaired vitality, are the more liable to take a disease ; 
 while it has often happened that cures have been checked, 
 when the atmosphere of the room has been tainted with 
 smoke. The oblivion of pain and discomfort resulting 
 from tobacco is often a doubtful benefit. If a poor man 
 smokes to allay his hunger, he forgets that hunger should
 
 A LECTURE ON- TOBACCO. 45 
 
 Stimulate him to procure food. It is a mockery, if a man 
 needs bread, to give him a weed. Tobacco does not feed 
 him ; and because he is not well fed, tobacco is more in- 
 jurious to him tlian to his well-nurtured neighbor ; he be- 
 comes emaciated. The smoker may feel warmed, because 
 his sense of cold is numbed ; while the thermometer 
 would show that he has really lowered his temperature. 
 If any one smokes to overcome an unwholesome smell, 
 he only adds to the nuisance ; the ashes and smoke are 
 two dirts the more. The carbonic oxide from the imper- 
 fectly kindled tobacco is an additional element of danger. 
 Smoke blinds in more senses than one. 
 
 Tobacco is taken in different forms. At one time snuff 
 was in fashion. Some great men have been great snuffers, 
 — among them Napoleon I., who kept it loose in his 
 pocket ; his life was shortened by it. Lunatics are usually 
 very fond of snuff. It is the dried leaf and part of the stalk 
 of tobacco, ground down ; but it is also adulterated with 
 other irritating substances. Carlyle told Mr. W. Maccall 
 that he had been cured of snuff-taking when he was four 
 years old. Some old ladies offered him a pinch from their 
 box. '' A succession of explosions followed, and," said he, 
 " I thought my head was blown off." At the age of 
 eleven he unfortunately became a smoker. It is no com- 
 pliment to call a person "snuffy." The snuff he drops 
 hurts our noses, his nose offends our eyes, and the habit 
 is not only unpleasant, but injurious ; it often results in 
 apoplexy. 
 
 Another use, or abuse, of tobacco, is ckewi?ig. This is 
 not a custom in England, except among sailors, but 
 Americans are notorious for it. In the prison at Black- 
 well's Island, New York, a few years ago, there were not a
 
 46 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 dozen out of 936 males who did not chew tobacco, and 
 about 162 pounds were consumed every fortnight. When 
 the allowance was stopped they refused to work, till soli- 
 tary confinement and a bread-and-water diet brought them 
 to terms.^ Chewing, of course, involves spitting; and 
 saliva impregnated with tobacco is not a pleasant sight. 
 All travellers in the United States are struck with the 
 spitting. Mr. White, of New York, in his recent work on 
 " England," noticed with pleasure the absence of spit- 
 toons ; for across the Atlantic one sees them everywhere — 
 in steamers, in homes, in churches, in the capitol — but 
 also very obvious tokens that they are not always used 
 when they should be. The dyspepsia, which is so prevalent 
 in America, is no doubt aggravated by this nasty practice, 
 which no one justifies. 
 
 Smoking is the usual mode of treating the weed in this 
 country. Its distinctive evil is the injury- that it inflicts 
 on others. The smoker has neither the power nor the 
 wish to consume his own smoke ; all in his company 
 must share it — will they, nill they. There is, however, a 
 special harm to himself. The saliva must absorb some of 
 the smoke. He either spits it out or swallows it. If he 
 swallows it he takes an infusion of tobacco ; mild it may 
 be, but the repeated dose is not harmless. If he spits, he 
 practises a nauseous habit, and wastes the saliva which 
 nature gave him for important uses. Smoking dries the 
 mouth and throat, and causes thirst. Those who like the 
 narcotic intoxicant do not necessarily desire alcoholic in- 
 
 1 " Monthly Letters," p. 104. On the other hand, after the late 
 terrible fires in Michigan, the convicts in the Ohio State prison 
 sent a gift to the sufferers of a hundred dollars — the result partly 
 of their relinquishment of tobacco.
 
 A LECTURE OJSF TOBACCO. 47 
 
 toxicants ; the effects are different. The Mohammedans, 
 who are great smokers, are prohibited from taking wine, 
 and may prefer the dreamy influence of the weed. On 
 the other hand, pubhcans ahvays sell tobacco ; which, if 
 they thought that smoking hindered drinking, they would 
 not care to do. The pipe and pot go together. I wish 
 that the Three Cups ^ would stand on their own merits 
 and discard the pipe. 
 
 Drinkers are often ignorant as to what they drink, so 
 are smokers as to what they smoke. There is a remark- 
 able difference in the properties of different kinds of to- 
 bacco, as has been proved by analysts. The dried leaves 
 from various districts in France yielded from 4.64 to 7.96 
 per cent of nicotine ; while in the Havana leaf there was 
 only 2 per cent ; the Virginia weed contains three times 
 as much as that of Maryland.^ But of course those who 
 ask for a Havana cannot be sure of what they may get. It 
 has been lately stated that an immense quantity of cheap 
 European tobacco is shipped to Cuba, to be made up and 
 exported as Havana cigars. The Act of Parliament 
 against the adulteration of tobacco informs us of various 
 noxious articles used by unscrupulous manufacturers. 
 Some, however, are comparatively innocent, such as 
 sawdust, peat, and seaweed ; so that the workman's bad 
 tobacco may not be as poisonous as his neighbor's best 
 Virginia. When I was in Baltimore I went into the great 
 tobacco- warehouses. A pig was wandering about — she 
 seemed quite at home there ; the leaves were being pulled 
 
 1 A Temperance coffee-house for the sale of tea, coffee, and 
 cocoa (three cups), &c. 
 
 ■'-' See Watt's " Dictionary of Chemistr>-," v. 45, quoted in" The 
 Tobacco Question," p. 6.
 
 48 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 by unwashed negroes — without pocket handkerchiefs. 
 But those who do not object to poison cannot be expected 
 to mind dirt.^ 
 
 " Strong drink " used to be thought essential to bodily 
 strength. Masters insisted on their servants drinking it, 
 lest they should be inefficiently served. Even scientists 
 shared the delusion, till working-men put the matter to 
 the proof, and taught their teachers that more work, in the 
 long run, could be done without it. Tobacco, being a 
 modem innovation, has not got this prescriptive praise. 
 Few, whose opinion is worth anything, will maintain that it 
 is essential to health or active duty ; on the contrary, those 
 who are training for various manly exercises declare it to 
 be detrimental. It is said, however, to " minister to a 
 mind diseased," to soothe the troubled nerves, and to en- 
 able a man to do a larger amount of intellectual work. 
 Many literary men smoke, it is true, and the smoke-loving 
 Germans have been famous for their industry as scholars ; 
 but it does not follow that they might not have been 
 stronger in mind without it. We have been told by some, 
 who profess scarcely to smoke at all, that when they are 
 exhausted by study or composition, a few whiffs will quite 
 revive them, and enable them to pursue their work. 
 Moderate drinkers tell us the same about wine. But we 
 
 1 A writer in the " New York Tribune " states that five eighths 
 of the cigars sold in New York as imported articles are made in 
 squalid abodes in that city. The tobacco is wetted down and 
 is spread on the floor over night in the rooms where the families 
 eat and sleep ; and they tread on it in their domestic operations. 
 In the morning, while it is yet damp and soiled, it is stripped from 
 the stems by the children. This is not pleasant information for 
 the smokers, hut our pity is due to the children who have to live 
 and work in the poisoned atmosphere.
 
 A LECTURE OJV TOBACCO. 49 
 
 fear our foes when they bring us gifts ; one is suspicious 
 of the benefits said to be conferred by alcohoHc or nar- 
 cotic poisons. They silence the warnings of exhausted 
 nature. E\^en if the person under their influence seems 
 to be highly exalted or delightfully composed, we want to 
 know what the reaction will be. Those who rely on smoke 
 find in time that they cannot do without smoke ; and they 
 may perhaps experience the truth of what was said by the 
 famous Abernethy, that it stupefies all the "senses and 
 all the faculties, by slow but enduring intoxication, into 
 dull obliviousness." 
 
 Its bad effects are most obvious in the young. In 
 1855, 102 of the pupils in the Polytechnic School in Paris 
 smoked, and 58 did not; yet of the 20 who stood highest 
 in the examinations, there were only six smokers and four- 
 teen non-smokers. Similar experiences led the Minister of 
 Public Instruction, in i860, to issue " a circular addressed 
 to the directors of the colleges and schools throughout the 
 empire, forbidding the use of tobacco and cigars to stu- 
 dents ; giving as a reason that ' the physical as well as the 
 intellectual development of many youths has been checked 
 by the immoderate use of tobacco.' " ^ It has been lately 
 reported ^ that " the experiment of permitting the naval 
 cadets to smoke at the Naval Educational Establishment 
 of the United States, at Annapolis, having been fairly tried 
 for three years, has been found injurious to their health, 
 discipline, and power of study. The medical officers 
 of the Academy and the Academic Board therefore 
 urge, in the strongest terms, that this permission be re- 
 voked." These are important testimonies ; but ?fien who 
 
 1 " May Young England Smoke ? " p. 19. 
 
 2 « Monthly Letters," p. 265. 
 
 4
 
 50 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 indulge in the weed must not expect boys to abstain 
 from it. 
 
 Let us now inquire whether the 7vealth of the country 
 is increased by the use of tobacco ; because we do not 
 regard health as everything. In this town, as in most 
 others, there are occupations which shorten Hfe, but 
 which seem to be necessary. Men must get a Hving — 
 though it is sad if they get a dyi?ig instead. In these 
 cases we advise deHcate persons to take to other emjDloy- 
 ments, even at lower wages ; and we urge manufacturers 
 to adopt plans to make the work more healthful, but we 
 do not wish it stopped. Now is the ?iation the richer for 
 tobacco? The government seems to be — it gets more 
 than eight millions a year by it; but the gain to the 
 exchequer may be a far greater loss to the people. Its 
 income from beer, wine, and spirits is more than three 
 times as much ; but no one now doubts that the nation 
 would be far richer if it spent its money more wisely. 
 Government is to secure good order, and it cannot really 
 benefit by that which promotes disorder or idleness ; 
 though as long as these practices continue, it is fair that 
 they should be restrained by taxation. As to the growth 
 of tobacco, since it is not permitted at home,^ whatever 
 profit comes from it goes to the foreigner. The tobacco 
 consumed in the United Kingdom in 1880 was 49,323,- 
 769 lbs. or I lb. 6}^ oz. a head'-^ — men, women, and chil- 
 dren, smokers and non-smokers. The duty on a pound 
 
 1 It is prohibited by statutes. Quantities not exceeding half a 
 pole in extent may, however, be grown in gardens, for scientific 
 use. — " Monthly Letters," p. 204 
 
 2 See the " Twenty-fourth Report of the Commissioners of Her 
 Majesty's Inland Revenue, for the year ending 31st March, 1881," 
 Appendix, p. xxv. In 1841 the consumption was 23,096,281 lbs..
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 5 I 
 
 of common tobacco is 3s. 6d. The original cost when 
 imported is about 6d., making four shiUings, — but this is 
 the retail' price of the common sort, apparently leaving 
 no profit to the manufacturers and venders ; but the 
 weight is greatly increased in the process of manufacture.-^ 
 Taking this into account, and also the great quantity 
 smuggled, it is supposed that 75,000,000 lbs. are sold, 
 making 2 lbs. 2 oz. on an average ; and reckoning the 
 cost of cigars and the more expensive tobaccos, pipes, 
 meerchaums, &c., los. a head will be under the mark. 
 This would make for Bridport about ;,{^3,400 a year. 
 Even if we said ;^i,ooo, it would be a very large sum for 
 a town which is complaining of its poverty, and where 
 there is such a difficulty in raising ^300 a year for educa- 
 tion. Smoking is by no means so expensive a habit as 
 drinking, but it wastes a great deal of money as well as 
 
 or 1334^ oz. per head. The maximum was in 1877, before the in- 
 crease of the duty, viz., 50,775,032 lbs., or I lb. 8 oz. per head. 
 From the Customs' Returns in 1880-81 it appears that there were 
 imported 47,968,448 lbs. of unmanufactured tobacco at 3s. 6d. a 
 pound duty ; manufactured tobacco (including " home " in bond), 
 at 4s. 4d. to 4s. lod. duty, 156,951 lbs ; cigars, at 5s. 6d., 1,122,325 
 lbs.; snuff, at 4s. id. to 4s. lod., 310 lbs.; free for agricultural 
 purposes, 75,154 lbs. ; total, 49,323,188 lbs. 426,856 lbs. were ad- 
 mitted free for manufacture in bond ; while yjS'1^7 ^^^- o^ snuff and 
 103, 785 lbs. of manufactured tobacco were exported on drawback. 
 1 The "Journal of the Statistical Society" (September, 1872) 
 reckoned the increase at 58 per cent. ("Narcotism," No. 36.) If 
 2,^ per cent, is reckoned for moistening, 25 per cent, is added for 
 adulteration (" Narcotism," No. 26). The Inland Revenue Report 
 (Appendix, p. xxiv.) states that in 1879, out of 276 samples exam- 
 ined, 136 were adulterated ; in 1880, out of 148 examined, only 
 53 were adulterated ; these were mostly smuggled. In only one 
 manufactory was there any evidence of adulteration. The leaf is 
 twopence or threepence below its normal price.
 
 52 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 of time. Those who smoke tenpenny or even sixpenny 
 cigars, would soon dispose of los. 6d. a week, or ^27 6s. 
 a year ; but the few pence weekly spent by very mode- 
 rate smokers among working-men, is often more than 
 they can afford. As for that, many spend on food more 
 than they know how to afford ; but food brings them a 
 return. A well-fed man can do more work than an ill-fed 
 one ; while a smoking man does not do more work than a 
 non-smoker. On the contrary, the smoker is apt to lose 
 time ; the narcotic makes him take things too easily ; 
 and the tendency of smoking is, more or less, to paralyze 
 his faculties, and to shorten his working life. 
 
 It may be said that the money is not lost ; the seven- 
 teen miUions are not flung into the sea. About half goes 
 to the government ; the rest is divided among the growers, 
 the importers, the adulteraters, and the venders. As to 
 the workmen, the employment is unwholesome, and a 
 much larger share would go to them if the money was 
 spent on other manufactured articles. If the sale ceased, 
 the tobacco-buyers would either buy something else, or 
 pay their debts, or save for bad times ; so that the coun- 
 try would be as prosperous — more so ; as much money 
 would circulate, and more would be produced ; because 
 nothing comes of tobacco but smoke and ashes and nox- 
 ious gases. 
 
 Tobacco not only hinders a great deal of productive 
 labor, but it is indirectly destructive of property. It is 
 impossible to compute the fires caused by smoking — fires 
 in bedrooms, workshops, warehouses, stables, barns, ricks, 
 churches, ships, and mines — from the hot ashes of the 
 pipe or cigar, or from the matches used for lighting 
 them. Dr. Ritchie, after stating that in i860 53 fires
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. $3 
 
 occurred in London alone from smoking, adds : " I have 
 more than once seen a carpenter, under a London station, 
 stop his work, light his pipe, and cast the half-burnt match 
 among the shavings/' In 1869 pipes and lucifers were 
 taken from the pockets of 58 workmen in one day, 
 as they were entering powder- works at Hounslow. 
 Many explosions of gunpowder have this cause. Last 
 July the government powder-magazine at Mazatlan, Mex- 
 ico, was blown up, with many houses round it, and over 
 seventy lives were lost through the cai-elessness of a sol- 
 dier who dropped his lighted cigar/ Cases have fre- 
 quently been brought before the magistrates, of miners who 
 have incurred fines or imprisonment through taking their 
 pipes and matches with them into dangerous coalpits. At 
 the Blantyre explosion (July, 1879), which resulted in the 
 death of 28 persons, the Inspector of Mines reported 
 that, near the bodies, pipes had been found, with tobacco 
 partly smoked, and lucifer matches.'^ This is but one 
 instance among many. Those who work in constant peril 
 are too apt to become reckless ; but the indolent careless- 
 ness, which is considered one of the charms of smoking, 
 greatly enhances the danger. Offenders have sometimes 
 pleaded that they were not even aware that they were 
 smoking, so unconscious were they of what is habitual. 
 
 We shall next consider whether the use of tobacco pro- 
 motes or hinders freedom. Freedom is very dear to 
 Britons, who not only boast that they "never will be 
 slaves," but also that — 
 
 " Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
 Receive our air, that moment they are free.*' 
 
 But this free air is something different from smoke. For 
 1 " Monthly Letters," p. 272. 2 "Monthly Letters," pp. 162, 193.
 
 54 ^ LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 every man to do as he likes is not freedom, — nor anything 
 else, for it is an impossibility.* Lawlessness and anarchy 
 are not freedom ; and for the strong to oppress the weak 
 is tyranny. Freedom co-exists with the observance of 
 laws, written or unwritten, which do WTong to none, and 
 which promote " the greatest good of the greatest num- 
 ber." If any one compels another to do that which he is 
 not lawfully bound to do, he so far robs him of his free- 
 dom. When, in the old drinking days, a host would lock 
 the door, and tell his guests that no one should leave the 
 room till all his wine was drunk, that was a tyrannical as 
 well as a disgusting usage. When bullying workmen have 
 forced their comrades to drink, that was tyrannical. Is it 
 a less tyranny when we are compelled to smoke ? The 
 Temperance movement has secured liberty for those who 
 have moral courage to assert it, when they do not choose 
 to drink intoxicants. If an abstainer is in a room with 
 drinkers, he may disapprove of what they are doing, and 
 if they drink to excess, he may be in danger from them ; 
 but what is in their cups does not go down his throat. If 
 he is in the company of tobacco-chewers, their spitting 
 habits may disgust him, and perhaps imperil his clothes ; 
 but he is not forced to chew. But if he is among smok- 
 ers, he is compelled to be smoked, if not to smoke ; and 
 even when pipes and cigars have gone out of sight, they 
 may not be out of smell. The nuisance which smokers 
 cause does not pass away with them. Railway carriages, 
 in which they had no right, retain the stale smell which 
 they have left. If an ill-mannered passenger puts his 
 dirty feet on a cushion, the dirt may rub off when it is dry ; 
 but who can brush out the ill odor of tobacco? It clings 
 to cloth, as those know who employ a smoking tailor, or 
 whose clothes are narcotized by smoking companions.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 55 
 
 Now if the qualities of tobacco were innocent, it might 
 be questioned how far the dishke of those who think it 
 disagreeable ought to be regarded. We must not forbid 
 the doctors to prescribe assafaetida because of its nauseous 
 smell ; gourmands would not hke to be deprived of their 
 high game and mouldy cheese ; nor would the lovers 
 of onions consent that their ill odor should condemn 
 them. It is not wise to be too squeamish. If a Httle 
 sickness or faintness was an insuperable evil, we should 
 never cross the sea or get seamen for our ships ; nor 
 would medical students pass the dissecting-room. But if 
 you have gone with me thus far, you will agree that those 
 who object to get accustomed to tobacco-fumes have the 
 right on their side ; since smoking is not such a beneficial 
 custom that those who dislike it are bound to become 
 parties to it. When a well-bred gentleman smokes, he 
 aims to do it where it will not cause annoyance (though 
 this will not be always as easy as he hopes), and is careful 
 not to sacrifice the health and comfort of others to his 
 own pleasure. No doubt there are gentlemen of high 
 breeding who are not thus particular. It is said that good 
 breeding considers what is due to others, — high breeding, 
 what is due to one's self. Each has its uses ; both should 
 be combined ; for high breeding, when it is not good, is 
 apt — like high game — to be offensive ; and the high- 
 bred nobleman, who is the slave of tobacco, is, in that 
 respect, not above the smoker who blacks his boots. 
 
 Tvly opinion of the tobacco- tyranny is confirmed by a 
 leading article in "The Times " of Sept. 13, 1879 : — 
 
 "There is a reason against pubhc smoking — perhaps, 
 in effect, against all smoking — which has scarcely received 
 sufficient recognition. It is the absolute indifference to
 
 56 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 the comfort and convenience of society at large that it is 
 certain to produce. In this country there is still a 
 majority who do not like smoking or its atmospheric 
 products. They do not like the smell of tobacco, espe- 
 cially if it be bad, which it generally is. They do not like 
 having to breathe the smoke ejected from the mouth of 
 the smoker who has walked past them, or perhaps is 
 standing by. They do not like to enter a room and find 
 that habitual smokers have been there. . . . Smokers 
 monopolize far more than their share of our railway 
 accommodation. Their exigency knows no limits. A 
 smoker must have a compartment in which he enjoys the 
 free exercise of his privilege, even if he have it all to 
 himself, and a dozen people are rushing about the plat- 
 form looking in vain for room, the guard's whistle already 
 sounding. What is worse, he often ignores the carriage 
 provided for his accommodation, and looks aggrieved if, 
 after asking whether you object to smoking, you answer — 
 however mildly — that you do. Tobacco is a powerful 
 drug, administered through the respiratory organs — that 
 is, through the atmosphere ; and as we breathe one 
 another's atmosphere, as it were, in common stock, the 
 smoker administers his drug to all about him, whether 
 they wish it or not. Indifference or apathy with re- 
 gard to the comfort of others is one of the most 
 remarkable effects of tobacco. No other drug will 
 produce anything like it. Neither opium nor intoxicating 
 drink produces such an insensibility. They make a man 
 insensible to his own true interest and his own dignity ; 
 they make hjm foolish or violent ; but they do not put 
 him into such actual antagonism to the human race 
 generally as to make him do constantly, openly, and with
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 57 
 
 pleasure, what they very much dishke and beheve to be 
 hurtful. The opium-eater does not compel you to eat 
 opium with liim ; the drunkard does not compel you to 
 drink. The smoker compels you to smoke — nay, more 
 — to breathe the smoke he has just discharged from his 
 own mouth. It is true there is no malice in it. The 
 tobacco-smoker does not wish you harm when he blows a 
 cloud of nicotine into your face. . . . He does not care 
 whether you are happy or miserable." 
 
 So far "The Times." The smoker may bear "no mal- 
 ice " if he has his own way ; but if you remind him that 
 he is in a carriage where smoking is prohibited, he is too 
 apt to show his rough side, as the records of police-courts 
 prove, when those who have been insulted by him ha\-e 
 had the pubhc spirit to bring him before the magistrate. 
 You may remember the old story of a traveller in a stage- 
 coach, who brought home to his fellow-passenger the 
 annoyance he was causing. The smoker was asked to 
 refrain, but he answered that he had a right to do as he 
 chose. At the next inn the Quaker (for the Friends are 
 generally the heroes in such transactions) provided him- 
 self with two tallow- candles ; one of these he took with 
 him lighted into the coach ; then he ht the other, and blew 
 out the first. After it had cooled, he reHt No. i, and 
 blew out No. 2, — and so on, till the coach was pretty well 
 filled with their fumes. At last the smoker could bear it 
 no longer, and asked the Friend what he meant by it. 
 He was coolly met with his own reply, " I have a right 
 to do as I choose ! " (After all, candle-smoke is not so 
 poisonous as tobacco-smoke, and it had not passed 
 through the Friend's mouth !) He had the good sense 
 to take the hint and put out his pipe, and they travelled
 
 58 A LECTURE OAT TOBACCO. 
 
 happily ever after, as the story-book would say. Some 
 who recognize that smoking inside a coach or omnibus is 
 a nuisance, suppose that it cannot be so regarded in the 
 open air outside. The Manchester Corporation are not of 
 this opinion, for they fine a cabman if he smokes while 
 conveying a passenger.^ The movement of the air 
 often blows the smoke and ashes on those who feel any- 
 thing but grateful for them, and the .pleasure of travel- 
 ling through beautiful scenery is completely destroyed, 
 in the case of those who are made to suffer distressing 
 nausea. 
 
 The smoke-nuisance is worse on the Continent. A 
 few years ago the Statistical Society of Paris reckoned the 
 annual consumption of tobacco in different countries, for 
 every hundred inhabitants, as follows: England, 136^ 
 lbs. (the present amount is 142^ lbs.); France, 178)^ 
 lbs.; Germany, 330 lbs. ; Holland, 441 lbs.; Belgium, 
 55ii<lbs.;&c.2 
 
 Abroad, they are the non-smokers who have special 
 compartments in the railway carriages ; and often it is a 
 great worry to secure one, as they are " few and far 
 between." If you attend an open-air concert, or dine at 
 a restaurant, you are liable to be smoked out. If you go 
 on the verandah of a hotel to enjoy the sweet air and 
 the beauty of the prospect, those who care more for the 
 
 1 " Monthly Letters," p. 235. 
 
 '^ "Monthly Letters," p. 103; compare p. 195. "Whittaker's 
 Almanac," p, 3S4, gives the consumption in England for 35 years. 
 In the United States, during the year ending Midsummer, 1878, 
 1,905,063,000 cigars and 25,312,433 lbs. of tobacco were consumed. 
 ("Monthly Letters," p. 144.) The recent census states that the 
 culture of tobacco is largely on the increase; 638,841 acres (nearly 
 1,000 square miles) are devoted to it.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 59 
 
 weed than for flowers may begin to fume, and you begin 
 to fret/ Sometimes one is half tempted to accustom 
 one's self to smoke, so as to get indifferent to it ; but it is 
 not wise to be indifferent to an evil, and if the non-smoker 
 suffers from nausea at the habits of others, he at all 
 events retains his power of enjoying fresh and pure air. 
 If a smoker could only appreciate the injury to the health 
 and comfort of others which his habit causes, he would 
 ask himself whether he has any more right to foul or 
 poison the air they must breathe than to foul or poison 
 the water they must drink. We are, in this to\vn, taxing 
 ourselves heavily for drainage — to remove, as far as 
 possible, ill odors and bad gases from our houses and 
 streets ; yet hundreds are taxing themselves still more 
 heavily to supply our streets and houses with nicotine 
 and carbonic acid. 
 
 The steadfast resistance to the drink-t\Tanny won im- 
 portant concessions to abstainers. The value of pure 
 water has been recognized, and colossal enterprises have 
 been undertaken to provide it. Many social meetings, at 
 which intoxicants used to appear as a matter of course, 
 are now enjoyed without them. It is the reverse as 
 regards smoking ; it has claimed, first toleration, and then 
 dominion, where, till of late years, it never ventured to 
 intrude ; it drives away many from places and companies 
 where they have a right, and where they used to find a 
 welcome ; or if they sacrifice their disgust for the sake of 
 social intercourse, they may have good reason to rue 
 their complaisance.-^ 
 
 1 No doubt many non-smokers, including ladies, are compara- 
 tively indifferent to inhaling a moderate amount of smoke ; it is no 
 less the case that others are made more or less ill by it.
 
 60 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 Those who feel indignant at being robbed of their 
 right to enjoy the fresh air, and to meet their friends 
 without being drugged, ought in charity to remember 
 that these spoilers of their liberty have often lost their 
 own. Smokers who have been enslaved in childhood, 
 and learnt to smoke before they were of an age to reason, 
 are objects of pity. Great is the power of habit — of 
 this we are glad when reason approves a habit ; but, 
 unhappily, unreasonable habits are the most difficult to 
 change. It is no longer thought impossible to reform a 
 drunkard. But we are assured that it is easier to give up 
 alcoholics than tobacco or opium ; the slavery is more 
 incessant and complete. No one can be constantly 
 drinking ; but persistent smokers inhale their nicotine all 
 day long, and its enervating influence takes away the 
 desire, and almost the power, to be free. It is pitiable, 
 the degradation to which the slave of tobacco is reduced ; 
 he declares that he is not half himself unless under its 
 influence. Except in the case of the drunkard who reels 
 along tlie streets, the slave to drink may not be publicly 
 exposed ; but the smoker, who can go nowhere without 
 his pipe or cigar, bears about him the outward and visible 
 sign of his bondage. 
 
 As regards our last topic — the influence of tobacco on 
 morality — we have shown that no inveterate smokers ob- 
 serve the Golden Rule, " Whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do unto you, do ye even so to them." They not 
 only ignore the laws of courtesy, but defy the regulations 
 of public companies. In spite of notices at railway sta- 
 tions and elsewhere, they disgust you with their pipes ; 
 and, as we have stated, they are reckless of human life, 
 breaking the laws which forbid these practices in mines
 
 A LECTURE OAT TOBACCO. 6 1 
 
 and other dangerous places. This lawlessness does not 
 stop here. Those who fancy that tobacco is necessary to 
 them — even boys who have got to like it — have not 
 hesitated to sneak and tell falsehoods, if they cannot else 
 indulge in it ; to swindle, peculate, and steal, that they 
 may obtain it. There may be cases in which a smoker 
 may suppose that he has gained valuable introductions by 
 his habit, but the rule is the reverse. Horace Greeley 
 remarked : " I do not say that every smoker or chewer 
 is necessarily a blackguard, however steep the proclivity 
 that way ; but show me a genuine blackguard who is not 
 a lover of tobacco in some way, and I will show you two 
 white blackbirds." Ruifians, wife-beaters, and murderers 
 have soothed themselves after their crimes, with the pipe, 
 and when imprisoned have raved — not at the ignominy, 
 but at being deprived of tobacco.'^ 
 
 Some smokers among my audience may think this very 
 
 1 "The Daily News " (November 12) reported that some boys 
 from a Ramsgate boardmg-school came over to Canterbury to play 
 football with the King's School : several of them visited tobacco- 
 nists' shops, and two boys of sixteen were noticed to have in their 
 pockets pipes and cigarettes, which they had not paid for. They were 
 brought before the police-court, when they pleaded guilty, and 
 were let off with fines of ^^5 each and costs. We wonder what 
 had been the influence of parents and tutors on these poor de- 
 graded lads. The superintendent of the Reform School at West- 
 boro', Mass. (the first established in America), states that all the 
 boys committed there have been users of tobacco ; and it is the 
 one thing that gives him most trouble — that he is working hardest 
 to extirpate. 
 
 2 In a recent article in " The Daily Telegraph " on " Life at 
 Portland Convict Prison," the writer gives some striking illustra- 
 tions of the fascination which tobacco has for convicts of every 
 degree, who will risk " eighteen lashes with the cat " to obtain a 
 bit of it.
 
 62 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 exaggerated and unreal. I am glad if they feel it so, 
 should this prove that they are not yet in bondage. 
 
 As with intoxicating liquors, only a minority of those 
 who use them exemplify their worst evils. Perhaps there 
 are other effects of which they may not be unconscious. 
 Ruskin says -} " It is not easy to estimate the demoral- 
 izing effect on the youth of Europe of the cigar, in en- 
 abling them to pass their time happily in idleness. To- 
 bacco is the worst natural curse of modern civilization." 
 Englishmen are not naturally Lazzaroni ; they like either 
 to do something, or to seem to do something. When 
 ladies spend their leisure hours together, they have their 
 fancy-work — or what they fancy is work. Men have not 
 this resource, and feel it awkward to sit and do nothing ; 
 unless they have some exciting theme they may not be 
 ready to talk ; when they smoke they feel at their ease, 
 for they are doing that which gives them no trouble. But 
 indolence, when it takes the guise of occupation, is 
 doubly ensnaring. No one, however, will accuse Carlyle 
 of indolence, and after his wife's death " he lauded tobac- 
 co" (to Mr. W. Maccall, a writer in " The Tobacco Plant*') 
 " as one of the divinest benefits that had ever come to 
 the human race, . . . when social, political, religious 
 anarchy, and every imaginable plague, made the earth un- 
 speakably miserable." But those of healthful mind do not 
 find " the earth unspeakably miserable," and in his soberer 
 mood he thus describes the influences of tobacco : " Gen- 
 erally bad ; pacificatory, but bad ; engaging you in idle 
 cloudy dreams ; still worse, . . . soothing all things 
 into lazy peace, that all things may be left to themselves 
 
 1 " The Queen of the Air," p. 91. See "Monthly Letters," pp. 
 190* 235.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 63 
 
 very much, and to the laws of gravity and decomposi- 
 tion."^ It is dangerous, as well as lazy, to say, "'Peace, 
 peace,' when there is no peace." It is this which has 
 helped the downfall of those Mohammedan countries 
 which have escaped the crimes resulting from strong 
 drink. The use of narcotics has increased their indo- 
 lence, irresolution, and tendency to leave " all things to 
 themselves, very much." "What can't be cured must be 
 endured ; " but tobacco helps men to endure that which 
 demands a cure, till at length the cure is out of reach, 
 and endurance fails. Certainly the smoker puts the en- 
 durance of others to the test. We have often not only 
 to imbibe his smoke, but to bear his burdens. Rate- 
 payers may well complain of those who are paupers 
 through their own fault. Men are not ashamed to keep 
 their children from school, on the plea that they cannot 
 afford twopence or fourpence a week, while they spend 
 sixpence on tobacco ; they care more for their pipe 
 than for their children ; and if some good-natured person 
 pays for their schooling, he has the pleasure of reflecting 
 tfiat in reality he is paying for their father's pipe. We 
 may well pity a hard-working man, with a load of cares 
 which he longs to forget, if he seeks some oblivion in his 
 pipe (only we know that the cloud of smoke, like the sand 
 in which the terrified ostrich hides her head, gives no 
 escape from the dangers it conceals) ; but one's pity is 
 mingled with another feehng when we see young fellows 
 wasting in smoke the money they ought to save for their 
 start in life, wasting the time in which they might store 
 their minds with useful knowledge, becoming idle dreamers 
 
 1 " Monthly Letters," p. 186.
 
 64 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO.' 
 
 instead of robust thinkers.-^ They form indolent and ex- 
 pensive habits, and then expect their purses to be filled 
 by those who have shown more self-denial and more self- 
 respect. 
 
 Moderate smoking, like moderate drinking, too often 
 leads on to what is obviously hurtful. Temperance con- 
 sists in keeping to the rule which reason approves ; where 
 reason demands abstinence, any indulgence is intempe- 
 rate. As wine or beer is to spirits, so is tobacco to opium. 
 The use of the one may prepare the way for the other.^ 
 Those who seem to have exhausted the relief to be 
 gained from smoking, often addict themselves to morphine 
 or to chloral. These anaesthetics are becoming danger- 
 ously common ; we are continually hearing of their fatal 
 effects ; and when woi7ien resort to them, whom the cus- 
 toms of society debar from tobacco, they can often plead 
 that their husbands and brothers justify the use of narco- 
 tics by their example. 
 
 And now what is to be done ? Some may say : " Do 
 nothing ; what is the use ? The more foolish you show 
 a practice to be, the more attractive will it be to fools. 
 There have been laws against tobacco ; a royal ' Counter- 
 blast ' against it ; the remonstrances of divines, physicians, 
 and shrewd men of the world against it; and yet the 
 habit is increasing ! " But many have formed it without 
 
 1 Sir David Brewster, in his " Life of Sir Isaac Newton " (vol. 
 ii. p. 410), records that the great philosopher, "when he was asked 
 to take snuff or tobacco, declined, remarking that he would make 
 no necessities to himself." 
 
 2 In 1843, 47,000 lbs. of opium were used in England ; the an- 
 nual import is said to have now reached about 400,000 lbs. In the 
 United States the Custom House returns were about 250,000 lbs. 
 in 1877; and, in 1880, 516,600 lbs.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 6$ 
 
 having been warned against it ; and something may be done 
 to induce men of courage and principle to give it up, 
 if they are convinced that it is injurious, and to check 
 its inroads among the young. In doing so we shall have 
 the sympathy of many smokers ; for as pubhcans dislike 
 disreputable, impoverished drunkards, so the patrons 
 of tobacco are disgusted with its victims. The journal 
 of that trade — '' Cope's Tobacco Plant " — says : " Few 
 things could be more pernicious to boys, growing youths, 
 and persons of unformed constitution, than the use of 
 tobacco in any of its forms." Sir Benjamin Brodie, after 
 detailing in "The Lancet" some of the ill effects of to- 
 bacco, adds : " Boys get the habit of smoking, because 
 they think it manly and fashionable to do so, — not unfre- 
 quently because they have the example set them by their 
 tutors, and pardy because there is no friendly voice to warn 
 them, as to the special ill consequences to which it may 
 give rise, when the process of growth is not yet com- 
 pleted." Teachers, who would prepare the young to be 
 manly men, must warn them, both by precept and ex- 
 ample, against this enfeebling and enslaving practice. In 
 this matter parents should themselves be teachers. In the 
 choice of companions for their sons, and in the selection 
 of a school, they should not only consider social and intel- 
 lectual advantages, but whether those habits are counte- 
 nanced which may be very injurious to their physical and 
 moral well-being. 
 
 But if from carelessness or despair, or from a dislike to 
 attack habits to which valued friends may be addicted, we 
 make no protest,^and become like the smokers, " soothed 
 into lazy peace," what may happen? Women are now 
 asserting their claims to do what men do. We are told 
 
 5
 
 66 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 that, owing to the facihties afforded by some grocers and 
 confectioners, they drifik much more than they did. Do 
 we wish them to smoke? Those who are Hving in an 
 atmosphere narcotized by their male relatives will not find 
 it difficult. In the North you often see poor women with 
 a pipe. If it is so very soothing, their nerves need com- 
 posing as much as those of men ; and a careworn wife, 
 whose work is never done, may want the comfort as much 
 as a working-man. Then if the boys smoke, why not 
 the girls ^ and little children, just as they are taught by 
 the drinkers to drink? Women smoke opium in China, 
 and tobacco in Russia, Spanish America, and elsewhere. 
 In New Zealand the Maori woman clings to her pipe and 
 weed. Among savages in Siberia " tobacco is their first 
 and greatest luxury; women and children all smoke, 
 the latter learning the accomplishment as soon as they are 
 able to toddle.^ In Burmah they smoke in their mother's 
 arms.^ Is this what we want, or are content to drift to ? 
 This is what we may come to if we make no opposing 
 effort. Much will depend on women themselves ; many 
 have been accustomed to tolerate smoking, and even pro- 
 fess to like it, when it gives pleasure to those whom they 
 like. A poor woman would be blamed if, by her objection 
 to the pipe, she drove her husband to the public-house ; 
 but this should not be the alternative. Smokers are yet 
 to be found who find more delight in a cheerful, kindly 
 
 1 "The Daily News," of January ii, describes the abandoned 
 girls, many of them very young, who frequent the Rogues' Walk 
 after midnight, each with a " manly cigar " in her mouth ; " the last 
 drain of ardent spirits and the fumes of tobacco seem to have com- 
 pletely taken away from them the last vestige of shame." 
 
 2 "Monthly Letters," p. 191. ^ "Narcotism," No. 46.
 
 A LECTURE ON- TOBACCO. 67 
 
 home than in a pipe. If it is a mere question of pleasure, 
 he or she is most to be commended who gives up to the 
 other. But when the serious results of smoking are better 
 understood, true affection will do its utmost to avert them. 
 We all recognize the influence of women on social cus- 
 toms ; when they heartily beheve that this is hurtful, and 
 even dangerous, as well as of ill-odor, their influence will 
 be strong to discountenance it. 
 
 The dehberate opinion of the medical profession will 
 sustain our efforts, whatever may be the habits of some of 
 its members. It is said that, as regards intoxicants, they 
 have been too apt to consider the pleasure of their patients, 
 and to prescribe that which may lessen a passing evil 
 without regard to subsequent dangers ; but of tobacco, 
 they will usually say that it is safest to abstain from it. 
 
 In my youth there was no scruple as to moderate drink- 
 ing, and a pipe was considered a suitable appendage to a 
 minister's study. Now there are many who protest against 
 both, and some American Conferences refuse to license, 
 as preachers, those who take the license of the weed.-^ 
 Religious men, who have been taught to flee from idolatry, 
 have been conscience -stricken when it was brought home 
 to them that the pipe was their idol, asserting its claims 
 over those of social duty and Divine service. If those 
 who are not conscious of this idolatry, but who own the 
 obhgations of rehgion and morality, would look on smok- 
 ing-customs, not on their playful or social side, but with 
 due regard to their unsocial tyranny, and the serious evils 
 attending them, they would more frequently make it a 
 matter of conscience to abstain from them, and to induce 
 others to do the same. If they feel that this would in- 
 1 "Narcotism," No. 25; "Monthly Letters," p. 190.
 
 6S A LECTURE 017 TOBACCO. 
 
 volve much self-sacrifice on their part, they may learn 
 that they are themselves under bondage. 
 
 The Temperance movement in England has not been 
 strong enough to counteract the effect of increased means 
 of indulgence ; more is drunk now than when it com- 
 menced ; yet it has saved hundreds of thousands, and has 
 done much to enlighten public opinion, to weaken bad 
 customs, and to influence the conduct of those who wish 
 to live reasonably. To be consistent, it should resist that 
 which intoxicates,^ whether it be chewed or drunk, whether 
 smoked or snuffed. That smoking checks drinking is a 
 delusion. It has been found, in districts where investiga- 
 tions have been made as to those who have broken their 
 Temperance pledges, that most of them were smokers.^ 
 Since all wise persons wish to keep the young from the 
 habit, it has become not unusual to forbid tobacco to 
 members of Bands of Hope ; ^ it is also prohibited in Juve- 
 nile Temples. So far, so good ; but if a boy is told that 
 he must not smoke till he is sixteen, is it not in boy-nature 
 that he should look forward to it as a manly privilege — 
 unless he remembers the babies in Burmah ? 
 
 It is satisfactory to find that shopkeepers are question- 
 ing whether they ought to deal in what they regard as 
 unwholesome and demorahzing. A tract, entitled " Con- 
 
 1 Tobacco-smoking was in old times called tobacco-drinking. 
 Persons are sometimes " smoke-drunk." See " Monthly Letters," 
 p. 264. 
 
 2 " May Young England smoke ?" p. 21, second edition. 
 
 3 "The Band of Hope Chronicle" for 1880 and 18S1, has con- 
 tained a cjuarterly " Outline Address " for Bands of Hope, on 
 " Tobacco, and its Effects ; " a similar series will appear this year. 
 It is very important to give the young good reasons for not form- 
 ing bad habits.
 
 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 69 
 
 science in Business " gives many such instances. Some 
 were wakened to the evil after selling to little boys. One 
 reports that, though he has turned hundreds of tobacco- 
 customers away, his business has improved ; another, 
 whose returns from tobacco were ;^ioo a week, sent a 
 circular to his customers that he could sell it no longer. 
 There is an abstainer in Bridport who has given up the 
 sale. David would not offer to God of that which cost 
 him nothing,^ and our religious convictions demand sacri- 
 fices as well as offerings ! 
 
 We must not underrate the difficulties attending this 
 reform. It is no easy thing for those who are enthralled 
 by tobacco to give up its use. When this is compulsory, 
 as in gaols, or when they have been almost compelled to 
 do it by their doctors, after the first weeks of misery are 
 over they have generally found their health improved. 
 But the conflict with habit is always hard. Let them re- 
 member the penalties of defeat and the glory of victory. 
 He that ruleth himself is "better than the mighty; " and 
 though tobacco is but a weed, he who can trample on it 
 may prove a hero. Never despair ! " We are saved by 
 hope." In the midst of craving and suffering, he who 
 has resolved to maintain his manhood may look forward 
 to the time when his health and spirits will improve ; when 
 he will not be a nuisance to others, nor waste his best sub- 
 stance in a folly. We who have never been brought under 
 this bondage have, on our part, to encourage those who 
 would be free, to be patient with the irritability and ill- 
 temper which sometimes attends the effort J and to show 
 that good-fellowship and good-nature and cheerful enjoy- 
 ment are most natural to those who do not allow them- 
 1 2 Samuel xxiv. 24.
 
 70 A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 
 
 selves in that which they condemn. May those who root 
 out the weed enjoy the flowers and gather the fruit ! 
 They shall " have beauty for ashes," the sweet breath of 
 day and the pure light, instead of poisonous vapor and 
 clouds of smoke.
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 By G. F. witter, M. D. 
 
 A REPORT TO THE WISCONSIN BOARD OF HEALTH, 
 FOR THE YEAR iS8i.
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 o>»ic 
 
 T N this age it becomes more and more the aim of the 
 ^ sanitarian to search out the avoidable causes of sick- 
 ness, and to admonish the people to order their lives in 
 accordance with Nature's laws, and thus avoid many evils 
 that otherwise they must endure. The medical profession 
 has had much to do in relieving the suffering in the world 
 that has been due to accident or indiscretion ; but it has 
 not hitherto taken that interest in discovering and endeav- 
 oring to remove the causes of ill-health which will be the 
 foundation of a large part of the medical science of the 
 immediate future. 
 
 It is not difficult to see that there are at present many 
 vast and wholly unexplored fields in the province of pre- 
 ventive medicine. PubHc hygiene is yet in its infancy. 
 Certain forces are at work producing illness, and a huge 
 amount of drugs is used to counteract the evil tendencies 
 thus engendered ; while no sufficient attention is given to 
 the causes that have occasioned the sickness, the removal 
 of which would restore health, with little or no medicine. 
 We study fully the symptoms and effects of disease, but we 
 have not as yet investigated its sources with anything like
 
 74 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 the same thoroughness. The communicable diseases, as 
 scarlet-fever, measles, diphtheria, yellow-fever, &c., we 
 know by their manifestations ; but no one has yet made 
 us fully acquainted with the methods by which they invade 
 the human system. Some may have undertaken to ex- 
 plain their mysteries, but nothing more has been accom- 
 plished than to show how the body may at times be 
 prepared for the invasions of disease, as the ground is pre- 
 pared by ploughing and harrowing for the reception of 
 the seed. We do not yet know whether a given disease 
 is developed from germs, from invisible and indefinable 
 miasma, or through tendencies inherent in the individual, 
 or whether it is partly or wholly due to long- continued 
 
 habits of abuse. . 
 
 Impressed with the ideas that a very large proportion of 
 the'suffering in the world has been brought about by igno- 
 rance, not only among the wholly uneducated, but also 
 among those possessing — or at any rate claiming the 
 possession of -a higher degree of cultivation, a larger 
 amount of knowledge, and that many diseases, the origin 
 of which is regarded as obscure and mysterious, are really 
 often due to the bad habits of the individual, we propose 
 in the following pages to discuss the effects of one habit 
 which we consider a bad one, i.e, the use of tobacco and 
 its influence on health. 
 
 It is well known that tobacco is used in every conceiv- 
 able dose, from the most heroic to the infinitesimal; m 
 every nation and in all ranks of society its sway is estab- 
 lished ; the gray-haired patriarch is not too old, nor is the 
 boy of ten too young to be its willing subject ; alike m the 
 filthiest slums and byways, and in the promenades and 
 avenues where the highest fashion and the most polite
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 75 
 
 society are found, it is present. It sits in our legislative 
 halls, both State and National ; it travels by every convey- 
 ance, on land and water. The offices of the lawyer and 
 physician and the sanctum of the clergyman are alike 
 under its cloud. The coarse and blustering, and the ele- 
 gant, refined, and scholarly are equally its victims. To- 
 bacco's insidious spell has fallen upon the world, and the 
 pipe, the cigar, and the snuff-box are a common solace 
 among all ranks and conditions of men. 
 
 " One of the most remarkable circumstances connected 
 with the history of tobacco is the rapidity with which its 
 growth has spread and its consumption increased." The 
 enormous extent to which its use has attained in Great 
 Britain and other countries is briefly shown in the follow- 
 ing figures : — 
 
 In Great Britain the total consumption has been : — 
 
 " 1857 32,856,913 lbs. 
 
 " 1867 40,720,767 " 
 
 " 1875 49.951,830 " 
 
 " 1880 50,000,000 " 
 
 " France the amount entered for consumption 
 
 in 1880 was 45,000,000 " 
 
 " Austria, during the same year . . . . ' . 81,000,000 " 
 
 " Russia, " " « " 25,000,000 " 
 
 The extent to which its use has increased in our own 
 country may be judged with tolerable accuracy by a com- 
 parison of the census-returns, given herewith, which show 
 the tobacco-production of the States and Territories for 
 the census years 1870 and 1880, the increase being 
 210,372,232 lbs. during the decade, or rather more than 
 eighty per cent. These figures become more significant 
 when it is known that the crop of 1880 was only a medium
 
 16 
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 crop, and not at all in excess of the present requirements 
 for home-consumption and exportation. 
 
 "Fifteen States produce now, as in 1870, more than 
 ninety per cent of the tobacco of the United States ; of 
 these fifteen, only Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Massa- 
 chusetts produce less than in 1870. Kentucky occupies 
 the first position, producing thirty-six per cent of the 
 total amount ; Virginia holds the second place, raising 
 80,099,838 lbs. against 60,000 lbs. in 1862; Pennsyl- 
 vania has advanced from the twelfth place to the third, 
 Wisconsin from the fifteenth to the tenth, and North Caro- 
 lina, Connecticut, and New York have each gained one 
 point, making North CaroHna sixth, Connecticut eighth, 
 and New York twelfth in the rank of tobacco States. The 
 changes of the decade may appear more clearly in . the 
 following statement : — 
 
 A Comparative Statement, showing the Tobacco Product 
 OF THE States and Territories for the census-years 
 1880 and 1870, with the Acreage of 1880. 
 
 States and Territories. 
 
 1880. 
 
 1870. 
 
 Acreage. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 Pounds- 
 
 Total 
 
 Alabama . . .. . , . . 
 
 Arizona 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 California 
 
 Colorado 
 
 637,659 
 
 473.107.573 
 
 262,735,341 
 
 2,198 
 
 I 
 
 2,064 
 
 84 
 
 452,556 
 
 600 
 
 970,220 
 
 152,742 
 
 100 
 
 594,886 
 
 63,809 
 
 890 
 
 8,328,798 
 
 250 
 157.405 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 Dakota 
 
 Delaware 
 
 District of Columbia , . 
 Florida 
 
 8,666 
 7 
 5 
 
 102 
 
 14,044,652 
 2,107 
 
 1.353 
 
 1,400 
 
 22,197
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 77 
 
 C0MPAR.A.TIVE Statement, Continued. 
 
 States and Territories. 
 
 Georgia 
 
 Idaho 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Iowa 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Kentucky .... 
 Louisiana .... 
 
 Maine 
 
 Maryland .... 
 Massachusetts . . 
 Michigan .... 
 Minnesota .... 
 Mississippi . . . 
 Missouri .... 
 Montana .... 
 Nebraska .... 
 
 Nevada 
 
 New Hampshire . . 
 New Jersey . . . 
 New Mexico . . . 
 New York .... 
 North Carolina . . 
 
 Ohio 
 
 Oregon 
 
 Pennsylvania . . . 
 Rhode Island . . . 
 South Carolina , . 
 Tennessee .... 
 
 Texas 
 
 Utah 
 
 Vermont .... 
 Virginia .... 
 Washington Territory 
 West Virginia . . 
 Wisconsin .... 
 Wyoming .... 
 
 1880. 
 
 Acreage. 
 
 1,057 
 5.625 
 
 11,955 
 694 
 
 334 
 
 226,127 
 
 264 
 
 „ 3 
 
 38,174 
 3,35^ 
 
 167 
 
 1,475 
 
 106 
 
 2 
 
 88 
 
 154 
 
 10 
 
 4,938 
 
 57,215 
 
 34,679 
 
 46 
 
 27,567 
 
 41,532 
 702 
 
 83 
 
 139,423 
 
 9 
 
 4,071 
 8,811 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 231,198 
 
 400 
 
 3,936,700 
 
 8,872,842 
 
 420,722 
 
 191,749 
 
 I7i,i2[,i34 
 
 56,564 
 
 . o 350 
 
 26,082,147 
 
 5,369,436 
 
 70,389 
 
 415,248 
 
 11,994,077 
 
 58,589 
 
 1,500 
 
 170843 
 
 171,405 
 
 1,249 
 
 6,553-351 
 
 26,986,448 
 
 34,725,405 
 
 17,860 
 
 36,957,772 
 
 46,144 
 
 29,365,052 
 
 222,398 
 
 131,422 
 80,099,838 
 
 7,072 
 
 2,296,146 
 
 10,878,463 
 
 1870. 
 
 Pounds. 
 
 288,596 
 
 5,249,274 
 
 9^325,392 
 
 71,792 
 
 33.241 
 
 105,305,869 
 
 15,541 
 
 „ 15 
 
 15,785,339 
 
 7,312,885 
 
 5,385 
 
 8,247 
 
 61,012 
 
 12,320,483 
 
 600 
 
 5,988 
 
 25 
 
 155,334 
 
 40,871 
 
 8,587 
 
 2,349798 
 
 11,150,087 
 
 18,741,973 
 
 3,847 
 
 3,467,539 
 
 796 
 
 34,805 
 
 21,465,452 
 
 59,706 
 
 72,671 
 37,086,364 
 
 1,682 
 
 2,046,452 
 
 960,813
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 78 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the amount of money expended 
 and changing hands for tobacco, in this country alone, is 
 enormous ; allowing ten cents per pound for the raw ma- 
 terial in 1880, it reached the sum of ^47,3io,757-30. ^nd 
 this only on the first change from the producer's mto the 
 manufacturer's hands, to say nothing of the added value 
 given to it in the factory, and the added cost due to the 
 revenue tax. What more effectual argument can be made 
 by the economist than the simple presentation of these 
 ficrures? The official returns show that in Germany, Spam, 
 Holland Great Britain and the United States tobacco costs 
 more than bread. " A single firm in New York paid to 
 the government in ofie month in 1880, a revenue tax ot 
 ^120 000 ! The average monthly tax paid by this house 
 for Internal Revenue is over ^100,000. The shipment of 
 of snuff by this concern to one city in North Carolina 
 amounts to one hundred pounds per month." We learn 
 from the Internal Revenue Reports that more than nmety- 
 five miUion pounds of manufactured tobacco, and one 
 bilion, three hundred miUions of cigars are used m the 
 United States every year, at an expense of two hundred 
 and fifty millions of dollars, while the revenue tax amounts 
 to one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. In the city 
 of New York alone, about seventy-five millions of cigars 
 are annually consumed at a cost of more than nine miUions 
 
 of dollars. 
 
 Now we do not assume that this outlay is wrong because 
 it is so enormous. There is said to be no better use for 
 money, as a general thing, than to "spend it as one goes 
 alon- " This, however, is a question of spendmg money 
 to the best advantage ; there ought to be no doubt m re- 
 gard to the character of any personal indulgence which
 
 TOBACCO AA^D ITS EFFECTS. 79 
 
 draws so largely upon the resources, usually moderate in 
 American homes, on which the whole family depends, 
 from which must come whatever its members have of edu- 
 cation, recreation, &c., — in short all that gives form and 
 tone to character ; and more than this, " No man is so 
 rich that he has a right to spend money to his own or hris 
 fellow's undoing." 
 
 If, moreover, it shall become apparent on analysis that 
 there is an actual food-value to tobacco, or if it prove 
 a health-producing agency, or even a valuable luxury, 
 the enormous tax above referred to will not appear so ap- 
 palling. And this suggests a reference to the chemical 
 constitution of tobacco. 
 
 The constituents which chiefly give tobacco its peculiar 
 characteristics are : an alkaloid called Nicotina ; a substance 
 called Nicotianin or Tobacco-camphor, of which little is 
 known (but concerning which it has been noted that upon 
 the greater or less proportion of it depends the estimation 
 in which a given sample of tobacco is held, the choicest 
 tobaccos containing the largest percentage) ; and an 
 emp}Teumatic oil of complex constitution. The alkaloid, 
 nicotina, has the odor of tobacco, and possesses very 
 poisonous quahties ; in this respect it is equal to prussic 
 acid, a single drop being sufficient to kill a dog. "Its 
 vapor is so irritating that it is difficult to breathe in a room 
 where a single drop has been vaporized." Nicotina 
 taken internally in very minute quantity produces great 
 muscular depression, occasionally convulsions, and at last 
 paralysis and death. The proportion of this substance 
 contained in the dry leaf of tobacco varies from two to 
 seven per cent. Besides these tvvo volatile substances 
 existing in the leaf, ready formed, there is another of an
 
 8o TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 oily nature, produced when the tobacco is distilled alone 
 in a retort, and to a certain extent also when it is burned 
 in a pipe ; it is acrid and disagreeable in taste, and has 
 narcotic and poisonous properties. One drop applied to 
 the tongue of a cat caused convulsions, followed by 
 death in ten minutes. 
 
 There are various adulterations of tobacco, especially 
 in countries where high duties hold out a temptation to 
 fraud. The leaves of other plants, dried and flavored 
 with tobacco-extract, are frequently found in manufactured 
 tobacco; paper and hay are sometimes used, but the 
 more common adulterants are said to be the leaves of 
 rhubarb, dock, burdock, cabbage, &c. "It is not sur- 
 prising, therefore, to meet with manufactured tobaccos 
 possessing a thousand different flavors, for which the 
 chemistry of the leaf can in no way account." 
 
 " Extensively as tobacco is used, it is remarkable how 
 very few persons can state distinctly the effects which it 
 produces upon them, — why they began and for what 
 reason they continue the indulgence. If the reader be a 
 user of tobacco, let him ask himself these questions, and 
 he will probably be surprised to note how unsatisfactory 
 the answers he receives will be. Indeed, few have cared 
 to analyze their sensations while under its influence,— or, if 
 they have analyzed them, have cared to tell truly what 
 kind of enjoyment it is which they seek in its use." 
 
 Turning to another branch of the subject, and examin- 
 ing more fully the physiological effects of tobacco, we 
 find that physiologists are not agreed in regard to the 
 peculiar mode of its action. The nerves are considered 
 by some as being probably the principal medium, but the 
 cases on record where death has been produced by the
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 application of small quantities to wounds, would indicate 
 that the process is more complex. The whole subject 
 of the physiological action of tobacco is so complicated 
 that but little is really known concerning it ; there is, it is 
 said, a remarkable difference between the action of the 
 alkaloid and the essential oil, the one of which possesses 
 the power of paralyzing the heart's action, while the other 
 has no such property. Given to a person in ordinarily 
 good health but unaccustomed to its use, tobacco, either 
 chewed or smoked, causes distressing sickness at the 
 stomach, fulness at the head, and frequently ringing in 
 the ears and giddiness, relaxation of the bowels, partial 
 paralysis of the sphincter muscles, especially those of the 
 large intestine, and other equally serious effects. These 
 conditions are not all met with in each case, but a suf- 
 ficient number is always present to startle any one who 
 sees them for the first time. 
 
 Persons of a nervous temperament have found it im- 
 possible, for a long time after beginning the use of tobacco, 
 to indulge in it without experiencing decidedly unpleasant 
 sensations. Dr. Pereira says that " in small doses tobacco 
 causes a sensation of heat in the throat, and sometimes a 
 feeling of warmth in the stomach. These effects are less 
 obvious when the agent is taken in liquid form and largely 
 diluted. By repetition it usually acts as a diuretic, and 
 less frequently as a laxative. Accompanying these effects 
 are often nausea, and a peculiar feeling usually described as 
 giddiness, — scarcely according, however, with the ordinary 
 acceptation of that term. In larger doses it produces 
 nausea, vomiting, and purging; though it seldom gives 
 rise to abdominal pain, it produces a most distressing 
 sensation of uneasiness at the pit of the stomach. It 
 
 6
 
 82 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 occasionally acts as an anodyne, or more rarely promotes 
 sleep. But its most remarkable effects are languor, ful- 
 ness, relaxation of the muscles, trembling of the limbs, 
 great anxiety, and tendency to faint. Vision is frequently 
 obscured ; the ideas are confused, and the pulse is small 
 and weak ; respiration is somewhat laborious ; the surface 
 is cold and clammy, or covered with a cold sweat, and in 
 extreme cases, convulsive movements are observed. In 
 excessive doses the effects are of the same kind, but more 
 violent in degree. The more prominent symptoms, in 
 addition to those already noted, are extreme weakness and 
 relaxation, depression of the vascular system (manifested 
 by feeble pulse, pallor, cold sweat, and tendency to faint), 
 convulsive movements followed by paralysis, and a kind 
 of torpor, sometimes terminating in death." 
 
 One would suppose that a substance producing such 
 effects as those just described at the beginning of its 
 use would be very soon abandoned. '' Nothing, however, 
 with mankind appears so attractive as a habit surrounded 
 by all the attributes which lift it into the dignity of a 
 fashion." 
 
 The enormous consumption of tobacco in our country, 
 heretofore mentioned, has been ascertained from the 
 yearly returns of the revenue officers ; but the physical, 
 mental, and moral deterioration resulting therefrom admit 
 of no such tangible analysis. These, although sure, are 
 slow and imperceptible in their development, and it is 
 therefore impossible to estimate the amount of the injury 
 which tobacco thus inflicts upon the public welfare. We 
 cannot do better in this connection than quote the 
 remarks of Dr. B. W. Richardson, an eminent prac- 
 titioner, whose researches are taken by Chambers as the
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 83 
 
 basis of his treatise on tobacco. Richardson declares 
 " that in the confirmed smoker there is a constant func- 
 tional disturbance which extends to the blood, the 
 stomach, the heart, the lungs, the brain, and the nerves." 
 That does not leave much of the man except his hair and 
 his bones. He says further that *^the use of tobacco 
 gives a doubtful pleasure for a certain penalty, — that so 
 long as the practice is continued the smoker is out of 
 health ; his stomach only partially digests ; his heart 
 labors unnaturally ; his blood is not fully oxygenized." 
 
 Dr. Hassall says : " Tobacco owes its chief properties 
 to the presence of two principles, both of which produce 
 the worst possible effects upon the human system, when 
 taken pure." Both of these active principles have been 
 shown by Zeise and Milsens to be present in the smoke of 
 tobacco ; they are therefore not destroyed by the com- 
 bustion of tobacco, whether in the form of cigars or when 
 used in a pipe. They are inhaled in the act of smoking, 
 and thus are taken into the lungs and stomach ; especially 
 is this the case when the saliva, impregnated with smoke, 
 is swallowed. That these active constituents are actually 
 absorbed, and make their way into the system, is further 
 proved by the sickness, giddiness and death-like faintness 
 experienced by those unaccustomed to smoking; the 
 difference in the effects in the case of habitual smokers 
 being caused by the fact that the system becomes inured 
 to the use of tobacco, and therefore grows less susceptible 
 to its influence. 
 
 Dr. Prout says : " Tobacco disorders the assimilative 
 functions in general, but particularly, as I beHeve, the 
 assimilation of the saccharine principles. I have never 
 been able, indeed, to trace the development of oxalic
 
 84 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 acid to the use of tobacco ; but that some analogous and 
 equally poisonous principle is generated in certain indi- 
 viduals by its abuse, is evident from their cachectic looks, 
 and from the dark, and often greenish-yellow tint of the 
 blood. That severe and peculiar dyspeptic symptoms are 
 sometimes produced by inveterate snuff-taking is known, 
 and I have more than once seen such cases terminate 
 fatally with malignant disease of the stomach and liver. 
 Great smokers, also, especially those who use short pipes 
 and cigars, are said to be liable to cancerous affections of 
 the lips. But it happens with tobacco, as with deleterious 
 articles of diet, — the strong and healthy suffer compar- 
 atively little, while the weak and predisposed to disease 
 fall victims to its poisonous operation. Surely, if the 
 dictates of reason were allowed to prevail, an article so 
 injurious to health, and so offensive in all its forms and 
 modes of employment, must speedily be banished from 
 common use." 
 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie, in his " Physiological Researches," 
 published in 1854, says : " We may conclude that the em- 
 pyreumatic oil of tobacco occasions death by destroying 
 the functions of the brain, without directly acting on the 
 circulation. In other words, its effects are similar to those 
 of alcohol, the juice of aconite, and the essential oil of 
 almonds." This testimony might be greatly increased, 
 were it necessary or desirable to add to it. 
 
 On the other hand, the advocates and friends of tobacco 
 consider it a harmless luxury, and hold that " it soothes 
 irritated nerves, clears and sharpens the exhausted intel- 
 lect, fills an indefinable vacancy, produces a satisfied and 
 calm condition of the mind, dispels loneliness, relieves 
 weariness, and induces repose." They assert that its bad
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 85 
 
 effects are only transient, that no organic lesions are ever 
 to be obsen-ed which can be certainly traced to its use. 
 In answer to all of which Dr. T. F. Rumbold says : '' It 
 is seen that the system must be in a more or less vigorous 
 condition to allow of the use of tobacco, plainly proving 
 that it is a depressor of the nervous system ; it as plainly 
 follows that it is while the depression process is going on, 
 that the pleasurable feehng is experienced." It does not 
 soothe the nerves, until by its primary effects it has first 
 irritated them ; it would of course be absurd to say that it 
 soothes un-irritated nerves. It cannot clear and sharpen 
 the exhausted intellect until it has first beclouded and 
 dulled the intellect. It cannot fill an indefinable va- 
 cancy, until it has caused this vacancy. It cannot induce 
 a calm and satisfied condition of the mind, except it has 
 first induced a restless and unsatisfied condition, nor can 
 it induce repose until it has caused sleeplessness. Will 
 the lad who has just smoked his first pipe or cigar say 
 that it has soothed his ner\-es, cleared and sharpened his 
 intellect, satisfied and calmed his mind, or induced repose ? 
 Even though his nerves were irritated, his intellect dull 
 and exhausted, his mind restless, and his eyes sleepless, 
 has his cigar given him the least rehef ? What evidence 
 have we, beyond the assertions of the users of tobacco 
 whose nen-es are already perv^erted, that the exhilaration 
 of which they tell us causes any greater enjoyment of life 
 than would have been experienced had tobacco never 
 been known? Is the consumer of a narcotic, who is fully 
 under its influence, in a fit condition to judge whether or 
 not he enjoys Kfe better in consequence of his indulgence? 
 If his sensibilities are perverted, is not his judgment also 
 perverted with respect to those sensibilities ?
 
 86 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 There seems to be little room for doubt that tobacco 
 perpetrates a most successful deception upon its users, by 
 inducing them to believe that its effects are exhilarating, 
 when the so-called exhilaration is in fact only the sensation 
 ofreHef from its primary effects, and a hallucination brought 
 on by the narcotic and perverting action of tobacco on 
 the sympathetic nerves. Had I not used tobacco my- 
 self to excess during fifteen years, I should not be able 
 to speak so definitely with regard to its effects. 
 
 The dangers and the injuries already discussed, as re- 
 sulting from the use of tobacco, are manifest ; but there 
 is an effect not yet mentioned, which threatens ultimately 
 to produce a great national calamity — nothing less than 
 a tendency to gradual enfeeblement of mind, progres- 
 sive loss of intellectual power and vigor. That this is no 
 chimera, known and well-proven facts will testify. 
 
 In 1862 Napoleon III. of France had his attention 
 called to the facts that there were more than five times as 
 many paralytics and lunatics in the hospitals of France as 
 there were in proportion to the population thirty years 
 before, and that the government revenue from the tobacco 
 monopoly had increased during that time in about an 
 equal ratio. He appointed a commission of scientific 
 men, to examine whether this were a case of cause and 
 effect or only a coincidence. This commission devoted 
 much time and attention to the young men in the govern- 
 ment training-schools, dividing the students into two 
 classes — the smokers and the non-smokers. The latter 
 were found so much superior physically, mentally, and 
 morally, that the Emperor at once prohibited the use of 
 tobacco by students in all the schools under govern- 
 mental supervision throughout the country.
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 8/ 
 
 But we are not compelled to consult the statistics of 
 Europe in order to present examples of this kind. 
 
 Probably as conclusive evidence as the most exacting 
 can demand, in regard to the effects of smoking upon the 
 constitution of the young, and even the most vigorous 
 among the young, is to be found in the testimony given 
 by the action of the authorities of the United States Naval 
 School at Annapolis, and those of the Military Academy at 
 West Point. It is well known that only lads who are close 
 approximations to physical perfection can pass the rigor- 
 ous examination to which all candidates for admission are 
 subjected at these institutions ; if such boys as are there 
 to be seen cannot endure the strain which tobacco puts 
 upon them, it is fair to ask, who can? Yet, after a full 
 trial of the experiment, extending over the period of 
 three years, we find Dr. Gihon, Medical Director of the 
 United States Na\y, using the following language in 
 regard to the use of tobacco at the Naval School : — 
 
 " I have urged upon the superintendent, as my last official utter- 
 ance before leaving this institution, the fact — of the truth of which 
 five years' experience as health-officer of this station has satisfied 
 me — that, beyond all other things, the future health and usefulness 
 of the lads educated at this school require the actual interdiction of 
 tobacco. In this opinion I have been sustained, not only by all my 
 colleagues, but by all other sanitarians, in military and civil life, 
 whose views I have been able to learn, while I know it to be the 
 belief of the officer who is to succeed me in the charge of this de- 
 partment, and who was one of the board of medical officers which in 
 1875 reported ' that the regulations against the use of tobacco in any 
 form cannot be made too stringent.' Since three successive annual 
 boards of visitors have indorsed the prohibition of tobacco as a 
 'wise sanitary provision,' and the last of these boards, on being 
 informed that the regulation against its use was not then in opera- 
 tion (June 10, 1879), emphatically recommended that 'its strict
 
 88 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 enforcement be at once restored.' . . . An agent . . . that is act- 
 ually capable of such potent evil, . . . which determines func- 
 tional disease of the heart, which impairs vision, blunts the 
 memory, and interferes with mental effort and application, ought, 
 in my opinion as a sanitary officer, at whatever cost of vigilance, 
 to be rigorously interdicted. . . . The difficulty of restraining 
 smoking should be no more valid excuse for its tolerance, in the 
 face of sanitary objections of such magnitude, than for the tolera- 
 tion of ' frenching or gouging or hazing.' The use of stimulating 
 liquors is forbidden, but that the regulation prohibiting it is evaded 
 is shown by the empty whiskey bottles which are picked up outside 
 the cadets' quarters ; but it is not proposed to allow drinking on 
 this account, although, as a sanitary fact, a half-pint of table claret 
 or of beer would be a wiser indulgence than a cigar, or the in- 
 numerable cigarettes, — which latter, there is good reason to be- 
 lieve, cause injury to the health from other agents than the mere 
 tobacco which they may contain. 
 
 " I have dwelt at such length on this topic, feeling assured that 
 I shall have done no act of greater good to this school, in the suc- 
 cess of which I have so profound an interest, than if I can succeed 
 in saving its pupils from the impairment of health which is sure to 
 result from the unrestrained premature use of tobacco." 
 
 We doubt not that many a parent in this broad land 
 thanked Dr. Gihon, from his inmost heart, for the exhibit 
 of the evils following on the use of tobacco by growing 
 boys, however robust, made in the paper from which the 
 above extracts are quoted. And Rear-Admiral Rodgers 
 deserved their gratitude no less when he issued the follow- 
 ing order, which explains itself : — 
 
 " U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md., Jicne 14, 1881. 
 " Order No. i. 
 
 " The experiment of permitting the Naval Cadets to smoke at 
 the Naval Academy, having been fairly tried for nearly three years, 
 has been found injurious to their health, discipline, and powers of 
 study. 
 
 " The Medical Officers of the Academy, and the Academic Board,
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 89 
 
 urge in the strongest terms that this permission to smoke be 
 revoked. 
 
 " Therefore, with the consent of the Honorable, the Secretary 
 of the Navy, I have to forbid the further use of tobacco by the 
 Naval Cadets, and to declare that the prohibition in relation to 
 tobacco, contained in paragraph 169 of the Naval Academy Regula- 
 tions, will be strictly enforced. 
 
 (Signed) " C. R. P. Rodgers, Rear-Admiral, Sup't:" 
 
 And not only at the Naval School has this salutary ac- 
 tion been taken. " The recommendation of the Academic 
 Board that paragraph 129, Regulations of the United 
 States Military Academy of 1877, be expunged, and that 
 the following be substituted for it : The use of tobacco in 
 any fo?'?7i by Cadets is prohibited ; has been approved by 
 the Secretary of War. General Order No. 6. June 11, 
 1881, Headquarters U. S. Military Academy." 
 
 If youth be the flower of a nation, and if it be in the 
 flower that we are to look for the promise of the future 
 fruit, surely no wiser steps could have been taken than 
 those indicated in the two orders just quoted — orders 
 which, being enforced, \vill certainly increase the vigor even 
 of the elect of our youth who constitute the membership" 
 of these two great national schools, and can hardly fail at 
 the same time to confer on them the graces of an added 
 refinement. 
 
 Another point connected with the use of tobacco, the 
 consideration of which no physician can, and no parent 
 ought to overlook, is that of heredity — the question of 
 the transmission of various traits, not only to the imme- 
 diate descendants, but to those more remote. This 
 question is so extensive, and involves such important 
 considerations of family entailments and social and race 
 deterioration or elevation, that we trust we shall be par-
 
 90 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 doned for dwelling upon it a little, the more especially as 
 the records of our insane asylums point clearly to some 
 cause for the rapid increase of brain and neurotic troubles. 
 Should this cause prove to be the abuse, to say nothing of 
 the use of tobacco, we may yet find that the germs of 
 premature decay, thus widely spread over the land, are 
 more dangerous than those other germs of whose deadly 
 powers we have of late years heard not a little. 
 
 It is a fact within the experience of every one, that a 
 scar upon the body remains practically indelible through 
 life ; that it can neither be washed out nor worn out ; that 
 in spite of all the changes incident to growth and waste 
 and repair, notwithstanding the continual flux of particles, 
 it is constantly and accurately reproduced. A child is 
 born, and meets, it may be in years of infancy, with some 
 accidental injury which causes destruction of tissue and a 
 consequent scar; that scar remains to mark the site of 
 the injury through the whole existence of the individual, 
 goes with him into his coffin, and remains to prove his 
 physical identity until the body decays. But not one 
 single particle, of all the many particles that went to make 
 up the body of the child at the time the injury was 
 received, was buried with the body of the man when at 
 last he died. Something reproduced that scar, however, 
 as the body grew, and as the system threw off particle 
 after particle, day by day and hour by hour, until the 
 renewal was completed, then only to be recommenced ; 
 and that something which constituted the identity of the 
 man was injured by the accident which produced the scar- 
 ring. Here is a mysterious fact, but none the less 
 incontrovertible, right before every one of us each day ; 
 and what is true of the comparatively coarse outer
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 9 1 
 
 integuments of skin and muscle, is also true of the mar- 
 vellously delicate tissues that go to make up brain and 
 nervous system. Our great psychologists seem tending 
 toward the conclusion, which some at least among them 
 have fully adopted, that the characteristics, mental and 
 physical, which distinguish whole families, in some cases 
 whole tribes and nations, are attributable to alterations of 
 tissue, which partake very much of the nature of the altera- 
 tion produced by an injury which we call a scar, and 
 which, when affecting the deHcate nervous and cerebral 
 tissues, may be transmitted from one generation to another. 
 "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
 teeth are set on edge." 
 
 Men cannot live without acquiring habits; and these 
 habits, which react on bodily conformation to a greater or 
 less extent, do the same thing, it is highly probable, on 
 the mind. Who can doubt, that has ever hstened to an 
 old man telling for the hundredth time some story of his 
 younger days, that the habit of telling has induced some 
 permanent effect on his brain-tissue — that the mind is 
 moving, as it were, in a groove ? And who can doubt that 
 habit, whether good or bad, acts upon every one much 
 in the same way, producing grooves which are made deep 
 and yet deeper by every repetition of the habitual action ; 
 which, in its turn, is thus rendered more and more easy, 
 until it at last becomes automatic, instinctive, practically 
 a part of the organization of the individual, ready to be 
 transmitted to his offspring, and through them, it may be 
 in an intensified form, to distant generations ? 
 
 Thus when the appetite for tobacco is fully established — 
 as it has been, in instances almost innumerable, when an 
 individual has come so fully under its influence that to
 
 92 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 forego its indulgence is an impossibility — there can be little 
 room for doubt that some change has been brought about 
 in his organization, that may be, and very possibly often is, 
 transmitted to his children. It would, perhaps, be too 
 much to say that a child of the second generation will 
 come into the world with an appetite for tobacco fully 
 formed ; but it seems exceedingly probable that, with this 
 or any similar habit firmly fixed in the father, a modifica- 
 tion of the system has been brought about, which may be 
 transmitted in a less decided degree to the child, for whom 
 the formation of the habit or the acquisition of the appe- 
 tite is thus rendered easier — in whom perhaps its devel- 
 opment, at a comparatively early age, may be looked for 
 with great confidence ; and it is evident that but a few 
 repetitions of this process, in successive generations, are 
 needed to produce a family or a tribe, or even a whole 
 race, in whom the habit shall be innate, and shall appear 
 among the earhest manifestations of liking or disliking. 
 That this is not a mere theory — that, so far from such 
 being the case, it is an estabhshed fact — is proven 
 by the testimony of travellers in East India, and among 
 those races of Central and South America, with whose 
 ancestors the use of tobacco probably first originated ; and 
 where we are told that children, yet unable to walk, are to 
 be seen carried at the mother's back, papoose-fashion, or 
 astride of her hip, puffing at a cigarette, identical in kind 
 with that which the mother herself is enjoying, and seem- 
 ingly finding it more of a necessity than many things 
 which our own children reckon among the essentials of 
 existence ! Do we desire to see any such state of things 
 in our own country? It is not enough to say that such 
 instances are to be met with only among barbarians ; we
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 93 
 
 have only to keep our eyes open, as we walk the streets of 
 any of our cities, to see that the tendency is toward that 
 consummation ; if further evidence than that thus obtain- 
 able is w^anted, we have only to consult the records of the 
 United States Navy, to learn that "the most prominent 
 cause of rejection of candidates for apprenticeship is 
 irritable heart, caused in most cases primarily by tobacco." 
 Do such things look as though there were absolutely no 
 danger? Do they not rather point to the conclusion that 
 the tobacco-habit is making seriously rapid headway 
 amiong us by means of heredity as at least one of, it 
 may be, many causes. 
 
 \Yq are well aware that other views are taken than those 
 that we have thus far expressed. We know that medical 
 journals have lately claimed that the use of tobacco is 
 upon the whole rather beneficial than otherwise ; that it is 
 pleaded, in extenuation of the many heavy indictments 
 drawn against it, that it produces no organic lesions which 
 the scalpel of the post fnortem examiner can detect ; that 
 the damage produced is rather functional than structural ; 
 that it works badly with only a minority of the many who 
 use it ; and that, if it be once given up, all bad effects dis- 
 appear, — if not immediately, certainly very soon after its 
 discontinuance. We know, moreover, all that is claimed 
 for it on the score of its wide-spread use, and on the 
 ground of the testimony in its favor by the many who 
 employ it ; but we note that all physiologists — with, so 
 far as we know not a single exception — condemn its use 
 by those who have not yet attained their growth. 
 
 The late Professor Parke — himself, if we mistake not, a 
 smoker — says : " I think we must decidedly admit injury 
 from excess ; from moderate use I can see no harm,
 
 94 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 except it may be in youth." And this is the most favor- 
 able utterance we have found; for even in the periodical 
 from which we take the above extract, we find, in close 
 connection with Dr. Parke's utterance, the following : " If 
 we are willing to accept the opinions which sanitarians in 
 other nations have formed, we have a very decided one 
 ready to our hand in Switzerland. That intelligent repub- 
 lic enacted a law last year (1880) prohibiting the sale of 
 tobacco to minors under fifteen years of age, and making 
 it an offence against the law for such to smoke. Hence a 
 boy of twelve or fourteen, who parades the streets of 
 Geneva or Berne with a cigar in his mouth, is liable to be 
 arrested and committed to the police-station ; and, as they 
 have a disagreeable habit in that republic of enforcing the 
 laws they enact, such would pretty certainly be the juve- 
 nile smoker's fate. We recommend to our fellow-country- 
 men their manner of dealing with the habit, which, 
 whether harmless or not to most adults, is unquestionably 
 of great injury to young boysJ" And another periodical, 
 of equal prominence in medical science, says : "" It is the 
 duty of our public-school instructors to make the facts in 
 regard to tobacco known and impressively felt by their 
 scholars, and we hope that this field of sanitary mission- 
 work will be actively occupied. Sewer-gas is bad enough, 
 but a boy had better learn his Latin over a trap than get 
 the habit of smoking cigarettes ; for we may lay it down 
 as certain that tobacco is a bane to youth, though it may 
 be the proper indulgence of manhood and a solace to old 
 age." To both of which we think it may be added, that 
 if the habit be not acquired in youth, there is no very 
 great probability that it will be taken up by many in later 
 life. If no tobacco is used except such as may prove " a
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 95 
 
 proper indulgence to manhood and a solace to old age," 
 the present enormous consumption will very soon be 
 diminished greatly, and will in all probability never again 
 be reached. 
 
 As illustrating the effect of tobacco, everi upon an 
 individual habituated to its use, the following experiment, 
 which may easily be repeated by any physician at almost 
 any time, has interest. A young man aged twenty-four, of 
 full habit and accustomed to smoking, was selected and 
 kept perfectly quiet in a sitting position until his pulse 
 was entirely regular at 75.5 per minute, a rate which it 
 maintained steadily, thus indicating the freedom of the 
 subject from all excitement. When this condition was 
 reached he was given a pipe to smoke, all else remaining 
 as before ; during the first five minutes of smoking, the 
 only perceptible effect was an increased fulness and 
 firmness of the pulse, the rate remaining as above ; in 
 the course of the succeeding sixteen minutes the rate 
 increased, being when noted, 87, 89, 95, 98, 103, 104, 
 105, 105, 107, 108, III ; an increase of temperature was 
 also noted, ending in perceptible perspiration. Smoking 
 was now stopped, the individual still remaining quiescent ; ' 
 the pulse continued to increase in frequency slightly for 
 one minute longer, rising to 112, when it began to 
 dechne ; at the end of thirty minutes it was 89, and had 
 not reached its normal rate of 75.5 at the end of two 
 hours. It is hoped that others will repeat this simple 
 experiment and record the results obtained ; it may be 
 varied, moreover, in ways that will readily suggest them- 
 selves to any intelligent observer ; and, being thus repeated 
 and varied, an amount of information now wholly lacking 
 can hardly fail to be obtamed and rendered available for 
 future use.
 
 g6 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 An important point in connection with the tobacco- 
 habit yet remains to be discussed, important as having a 
 bearing upon immense pecuniary interests, i. e., its effect 
 upon Hfe-assurance. Every one who has ever made 
 application for a pohcy of this kind must have observed 
 that considerable stress is laid upon the physical condition 
 and general health of parents and other relations. The 
 reason for this is obvious : the applicant may not at the 
 time of insurance have exhibited any failure of power ; but 
 the examiner by his survey of the family- history, espe- 
 cially that of the immediate progenitors, obtains the means 
 of judging with tolerable accuracy his power of resisting 
 strains, of combating with success any morbid influences 
 to which he may be subjected. By means of auscultation, 
 and other methods of examination, many points of the 
 physical health can be determined with absolute certainty, 
 but there are as yet no special tests by which the condition 
 of the brain and nervous system can be ascertained; 
 hence the inquiries into parental conditions have an im- 
 portance in this direction also. If now there be any 
 truth in the ideas put forth in a previous portion of this 
 paper, in regard to the possible inheritance of the tobacco- 
 habit, the importance of the whole matter in relation to 
 assurance will be readily apparent. Space does not admit 
 of any further discussion on this subject ; it must sufhce 
 us if we have called the attention of insurers and insured 
 to a point which we beheve may yet assume vast im- 
 portance in the consideration of their relations to each 
 other. 
 
 In conclusion, I have to call attention to the informa- 
 tion contained in the pages which follow these — informa- 
 tion worthy of the closest attention, whatever may be the
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 97 
 
 opinion formed of my o^vn work and views. The series 
 of questions given was sent to nearly all the prominent 
 medical men of Wisconsin, a very large majority of whom 
 responded at considerable length ; some who did not, 
 being prevented, not by any lack of interest in the sub- 
 ject, or by any failure to recognize its great importance, 
 but by the want of time to answer as fully as seemed 
 desirable. To all I offer sincere and hearty thanks, as 
 now I bring my own personal work to a close. 
 
 Mr. Sally, of St. Thomas Hospital, uses the following 
 language : " It is my business to point out all the various 
 and insidious causes of general paralysis, and smoking is 
 one of them ; I know of no single vice which does so 
 much harm as smoking ; it is a snare and a delusion. I 
 believe that cases of general paralysis are more frequent 
 in England than they used to be, and I suspect that 
 smoking tobacco is one of the causes of that increase ; of 
 this being the case in America, there is no doubt." 
 
 Dr. Williams Henderson, in his " Plain Law for Im- 
 proved Health," speaking of insanity from the use of 
 tobacco, refers to a gentleman who, from having been one 
 of the most fearless and healthy of men, became one of 
 the most timid. He became unable even to present a 
 petition ; much less could he say a word concerning it, 
 although he was a practised lawyer. He was afraid to be 
 left alone at night. Though perfectly temperate in other 
 respects he had used tobacco to excess. 
 
 In the " Lancet " (January, 1857) Mr. Fenn thus describes 
 the result of his investigations : " On account of its 
 softening and relaxing effect upon the mucous membrane 
 of the bowels, tobacco is greatly resorted to in habitual 
 constipation, but the susceptibility of the nervous system 
 
 7
 
 98 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 is greatly depressed, and the vital force diminished by its 
 use." 
 
 In the preparation of this paper and its appendix, I 
 have made use of material from the writings of Pereira, 
 Prout, Bright, Radcliff, Orfield, Trousseau, Johnson, 
 Brodie, Sizars, Jackson, Wells, Smith, Taylor, Budget, 
 Rumbold, Richardson, Landon, Parker, — and it may be 
 of others whose names are not given, though such 
 omission is wholly unintentional. 
 
 I have also to make acknowledgment of my indebted- 
 ness to the following gentlemen for personal communica- 
 tions and other effective assistance in various ways : Drs. 
 W. Kempster, B. M. Gill, A. W. Bickford, H. H. Parrott, 
 H. B. Cole, G. R. Taylor, L. G. Armstrong, E. L. Bev- 
 erly, B. C. Brett, O. N. Murdock, E. ElHs, I. W. DeVoe, 
 J. D. W. Heath, C. A. Rood, L. J. Smith, H. P. Wenzel, 
 G. W. Jenkins, G. Seller, L. Wade, R. Broughton, D. B. 
 Wylie, G. W. Jones, J. T. Reeve, Clark, Day, Fenn, 
 Goodwin, Jones, Vincent,. Whitman, Prof. T. W. Chitten- 
 den, and many others. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE ON TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 In order to obtain the freshest and most direct testi- 
 mony with reference to the effects of tobacco, the 
 questions which follow were addressed to about one 
 hundred and fifty correspondents, the most of whom 
 are prominent physicians of our own State. My space 
 admits of the presentation of a condensation only of the 
 information received in answer, and this condensation is
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 99 
 
 compressed into the smallest possible limits. Were it 
 possible, however, to print at full length all the communi- 
 cations received, I doubt that any additional strength 
 would be given to the case I have presented ; although 
 the matter is full of interest and would be read with profit 
 by very many, the general drift of the testimony given is 
 all in one direction. 
 
 Taking each question in its order, I have classified 
 the answers received, giving at full length only such as 
 have special interest, whether they are in accordance with 
 the majority or not. From the nature of the case a 
 simple yes or no in answer to many of the inquiries was 
 not practicable or desirable. One reply often contained 
 several distinct points, each having an importance of its 
 own. 
 
 Question i. "What good effects from the continued 
 use of tobacco have come under your observation? " 
 
 Answered substantially as follows : Eighty-five per cent 
 reply that no good results have been obser\'ed from such 
 use. One correspondent has observed a few cases of 
 pyrosis which had been relieved by the use of tobacco, 
 and has also seen the rehef of constipation. One con- 
 siders that it has given relief in certain dyspeptic troubles, 
 producing, however, other disabilities equally bad. One 
 says that tobacco has appeared to produce free expectora- 
 tion in some instances. One knew of no good effects 
 from the use of tobacco, except what he had heard 
 others speak of. One claims to have been cured of 
 chronic laryngitis by the use of tobacco. One has heard 
 of a gentlemen who thought that smoking had relieved 
 asthma. 
 
 ^uestioft 2. "^Vhat, if any, adulterations of tobacco
 
 lOO TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 have come under your observation, and what have been 
 the effects of such adulterations ? " 
 
 Answered substantially as follows : Ninety-four per cent 
 answer that they have not met with any adulteration. 
 One has met with tobacco adulterated with copperas, to 
 which attention was called by the effect produced on the 
 mucous membrane of the mouth, and ulcers which it 
 caused upon the tongue. 
 
 ^uestioJi 3. "In your opinion, is the use of intoxicat- 
 ing liquors in any way fostered or affected by the habitual 
 use of tobacco? If so, please state how and why." 
 
 Seventy-six per cent answer this question by an unqual- 
 ified affirmative. Six per cent say no. Five per cent do 
 not know, and the remainder give no answer. 
 
 One correspondent makes answer that it depends upon 
 the individual. Another says : " I have seen many cases 
 where the use of tobacco in youth has led to the use of 
 intoxicating liquors also." A third says : " In my opinion 
 the use of tobacco fosters that of intoxicating drinks by 
 reducing the powers of the nervous system ; liquor is then 
 used as a restorative, and is about as active a one as I 
 have found." A fourth replies : " I have considered the 
 use of liquor as a necessary result of the use of tobacco, 
 and have found no boys who use the first who did not 
 begin with the second." 
 
 " Experience demonstrates that those nations which are 
 most addicted to the use of tobacco are also the most 
 prone to drunkenness. This follows first, physiologically, 
 by the fact that tobacco produces an atonic condition 
 from which nature seeks relief; and second, psychologi- 
 cally, because tobacco vitiates the mind and begets 
 drunkenness, as one vice begets another."
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. lOI 
 
 " My observation strengthens my belief that the con- 
 stant use of tobacco creates and fosters a perverted taste 
 for intoxicating liquors ; the social ties of a chronic 
 tobacco-consumer exert a peculiar influence over him, so 
 as more easily to dispose him to the use of intoxicants." 
 
 ''The narcotic properties of tobacco undermine the 
 nervous system, and create what are called tobacco 
 diseases ; and the almost universal testimony is that all 
 topers, both young and old, first used tobacco freely." 
 
 " The effect of tobacco in many cases is to produce a 
 depression of the heart's action, to overcome which a 
 strong desire for stimulants is established. This can 
 hardly be otherwise from the very nature of the case ; 
 since the nicotine of tobacco has a direct tendency to the 
 heart, affecting its action at once, and more or less in 
 proportion to the extent to which tobacco is used." 
 
 " I will not make the charge, sometimes made, that 
 tobacco is a common stepping-stone to drinking, but all 
 our inebriate asylums consider it useless to try to reform a 
 patient so long as he is allowed to continue the use of 
 tobacco." 
 
 Question 4. " In the treatment of any particular class 
 of disease, or of wounds and injuries, have you met with 
 any serious difficulty due to the habitual use of tobacco 
 by the patient? If so, give details." 
 
 The answers to this question may be classified as follows : 
 Seventy per cent answer yes. Twenty-five per cent say 
 no, and the remainder make no reply. 
 
 *' Inasmuch as the excessive use of tobacco interferes 
 with nutrition and absorption, should we not expect a 
 depressing effect upon the growth and repair of tissues ? 
 And since tobacco is universally acknowledged as a debil-
 
 102 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 itating agent, we should not be likely to look for a rapid 
 building up of injured tissues under its use. I have 
 never had good results, and never expect to have them, 
 in cases where tobacco has been applied directly to 
 wounds, as is the foolish practice with many working- 
 men ; in not a few cases in which extensive injuries have 
 been done up with tobacco, and kept in that condition for 
 a length of time, the process of repair has been much 
 retarded." 
 
 " In one instance I had a case in which a person had 
 bitten his tongue while smoking a cigar; the wound 
 seemed to be poisoned, and extensive inflammation and 
 ulceration followed, with serious results." 
 
 " I have seen instances where death has followed severe 
 injuries, the patients having been habitual users of tobacco* 
 in which I could attribute the fatal result to no other 
 cause than the depression of the vital powers resulting 
 from long use of the weed." 
 
 " It is scarcely possible to comprehend the amount of 
 harm the use of tobacco produces in some cases of 
 venereal disease. I think it may safely be said that 
 severe syphilitic or gonorrhoeal cases more frequently 
 pass uncured than cured, if the patient continues the 
 excessive use of tobacco." 
 
 Question 5. " Have you observed any local effects of 
 tobacco upon the mucous membrane of the nose, the 
 throat, or the ear, which leads you to suspect that it acts 
 as a predisposing cause of catarrh or other disease ? If 
 so, give details." 
 
 Sixty-eight per cent of the replies to this question are 
 in the affirmative, thirty per cent in the negative. One 
 '' has cured several cases of catarrh by withdrawing the
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. IO3 
 
 use of tobacco." Another regards " the constant use of 
 tobacco as the source of a chronic inflammation of the 
 throat and fauces, that can never be misunderstood by an 
 experienced eye." 
 
 " I have seen ulceration of the hps in those addicted to 
 constant use of tobacco, which was traceable directly 
 thereto ; in not a few cases catarrh was present, mani- 
 fested by a nasal sound in talking, due to the thickening of 
 the lining membrane of the nose and its appendages." 
 
 " I have met- with many cases of congestion of the 
 pharyngeal mucous membrane, sometimes extending to 
 the ear and sometimes to the larynx, producing hoarseness. 
 It would seem that the pungent oil of the tobacco, volatil- 
 ized by the heat, constitutes the exciting cause — at least 
 I have always found such diseased condition difficult to 
 reach except by requiring the unconditional surrender of 
 its use ; usually thereafter treatment has been easy and 
 successful." 
 
 " I have observed that in some cases smoking has pro- 
 duced eczema of the nasal mucous membrane, and chronic 
 conjunctivitis. I have also seen irritable cough, and, in a 
 few instances, violent heart-disturbance and gastric irrita- 
 tion, all of which have disappeared upon stopping the use 
 of tobacco." 
 
 Question 6. " Have any cases of the following diseases 
 come under your observation, which you beUeve to have 
 been caused by the use of tobacco : {a) Ulceration of the 
 lips ; ij?) epithelical cancer of the lips or mouth ; {c) any 
 local disease of the tongue, gums, tonsils, pharynx, &c. ? 
 If so, give particulars." 
 
 The replies to this question may be arranged as follows : 
 {a) eighty-one per cent answer yes; {b) fifty-nine per
 
 I04 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 cent answer yes, twenty-five per cent say no, sixteen per 
 cent give no answer ; (^) ninety-five per cent say yes. 
 
 " I liave seen two cases of epithelical cancer of the 
 lips, one case of ulceration of the lips, one of ulceration of 
 the tongue, and two cases of glossitis from the use of to- 
 bacco. I know that it was the direct cause, for when its 
 use was discontinued, all the cases improved rapidly." 
 
 " In one case, that of a lady who smoked a short pipe 
 for a long time, the tongue became swollen to an alarming 
 extent ; it was found that the pipe was the cause. I have 
 also seen cancer of the lower lip in one long accustomed 
 to the use of a pipe, the tumor requiring excision." 
 
 " Mr. smoked freely from the age of twelve. At 
 
 the age of sixty-five he was obliged to have a cancer re- 
 moved from the lower lip, due, in my judgment, to the 
 use of tobacco." 
 
 " I have had a fair opportunity to notice these diseases 
 as they have from time to time appeared in one form or 
 another. I have treated several epithelical cancers which 
 I have no doubt were the direct results of the long con- 
 tinued use of tobacco, combined with the irritating effects 
 of the pipe or cigar." 
 
 " I have had two cases of epithelical cancer, supposed 
 to have been the result of smoking, but I cannot give 
 details." 
 
 " I have had two cases of cancer of the lip, one caused 
 by using a pipe which had been used for many years, and 
 was saturated with the empyreumatic oil." 
 
 " I have seen one case of epithelioma of lijD, from the 
 use of an old pipe ; also a case of cancer of posterior por- 
 tion of tongue in an incessant chewer ; it proved fatal." 
 
 " I have seen several cases of ulceration of the lips, and
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. I05 
 
 two of cancer of the lip, undoubtedly caused by use of 
 the pipe." 
 
 " I have operated upon three cases of cancer of the 
 lips, directly traceable to the use of a pipe." 
 
 " A young man aged thirty had smoked almost inces- 
 santly for ten years ; at the expiration of the first year of 
 this practice an ulcer developed upon the tongue near the 
 center, which greatly annoyed him, but not suspecting 
 that tobacco had anything to do with it, he continued to 
 smoke to excess. At last he was compelled to stop be- 
 cause he could not put a pipe- in his mouth w^ithout ex- 
 quisite pain, and then he began to improve. I have no 
 doubt that tobacco was the original cause of the whole 
 difficulty; .since abandoning it he has grown better 
 steadily." 
 
 Question 7. "Do your observation and experience en- 
 able you to enumerate any constitutional derangements 
 resulting from the use of tobacco — e. g. dyspepsia, disease 
 of the stomach, heart, &:c. ? " 
 
 Ninety per cent of those questioned say yes ; t^vo per 
 cent say no ; and the rest make no reply. 
 
 " I frequently meet with and treat cases of dyspepsia, 
 nervous irritation, palpitation of the heart, ner\^ous de- 
 pression, and the like, which are traceable directly to the 
 excessive use of tobacco. In all such cases, if the trouble 
 be not too far advanced, recovery is quite probable on the 
 entire discontinuance of the habit." 
 
 " I am fully persuaded that many cases of dyspepsia 
 are produced by the use of tobacco. I hav^e prescribed 
 for such cases frequently, and find improvement only when 
 the tobacco is discontinued." 
 
 " I have treated a multitude of cases of disease of the
 
 I06 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 heart and stomach, where I had the best of reason to sup- 
 pose that tobacco was the main cause of the trouble, all 
 bad effects disajDpearing when its use was discontinued. 
 Dyspepsia in young men is caused, in many instances, and 
 greatly aggravated in many more, simply by smoking to 
 excess." 
 
 " I feel certain that abuse of tobacco, however employed, 
 may be classed among the causes of chronic disease — e. g. 
 severe forms of irritable dyspepsia, disturbed action of 
 the heart, and the like. Young gentlemen who are in the 
 habit of putting this enemy into their mouths do not be- 
 come aware of the danger sometimes until too late." 
 
 ^uestioti 8. " What is your opinion, founded on your 
 own experience, as to the effects of tobacco in producing 
 diseases of the brain and nervous system — e. g. conges- 
 tion, apoplexy, epilepsy, paralysis, nervousness, impo- 
 tence, &c. ? " 
 
 Of the replies to this question, ninety per cent say that 
 the writers believe tobacco to be the cause of such dis- 
 eases in many instances. Six per cent give no answer. 
 
 One thinks that he has met a few cases where such 
 diseases could be traced to the effects of tobacco. 
 
 " During thirty-six years of medical practice I have had 
 unusual opportunity of seeing various forms of brain di- 
 sease ; have treated epilepsy, paralysis, congestion, apo- 
 plexy, nervousness and impotence, which I knew were 
 traceable to the use of tobacco, from the fact that when 
 the habit was given up the patients recovered. I have 
 frequently met with persons suffering under one or another 
 of these forms of disease, whom I knew to be smokers and 
 chewers, and in whom I beHeved the result to be due to 
 the tobacco-habit."
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 10/ 
 
 '' I have treated two epileptic cases, and numerous 
 cases of nervousness directly due to tobacco." 
 
 " Under certain circumstances tobacco will help to pro- 
 duce all the troubles enumerated, and will help to make 
 them worse when they arise from other causes." 
 
 " I have no doubt that the use of tobacco is worthy of 
 the special attention of practitioners of medicine, as a very 
 frequent but unconsidered cause of disease. I am very 
 certain that if the doctor directs his attention to the sub- 
 ject, he will find in the tobacco-habit an explanation of 
 many obstinate and difficult cases. I do not doubt that 
 the excessive use of tobacco aggravates phthisis ; I have 
 seen cases of amaurosis that were unquestionably due to 
 its use." 
 
 " Amaurosis is a very common result of smoking to ex- 
 cess, but I have never seen it produced by snuffing or 
 chewing. So far as I have been successful in treating it at 
 all, it has been by securing unconditional surrender of the 
 use of tobacco." 
 
 '' Loss of memory takes place in an extraordinary degree 
 in smokers." 
 
 Question 9. "What is your opinion as to the possi- 
 bihty of a diseased condition of any kind being caused by 
 tobacco and being transmitted by inheritance ? " 
 
 The answers to this question were very diverse. Fif- 
 teen per cent of our correspondents, however, think that 
 a weakened and ner\^ous state of the system caused by the 
 excessive use of tobacco is frequently transmitted and 
 manifested in the offspring. Twenty-five per cent reply 
 that diseased conditions from the use of tobacco may be 
 and doubtless often are transmitted from parents to chil- 
 dren. Ten per cent admit the possibility of such trans-
 
 I08 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 mission, but deny that it is probable. Twenty per cent 
 think that nothing of the sort is possible, while the re- 
 mainder either answer very indefinitely or not at all. 
 
 " I am acquainted with two brothers, both of whom 
 have been inordinate lovers of tobacco from childhood, 
 doubtless owing to transmission of the habit from both 
 grandparents." 
 
 " As the child is, as a rule, the reflex of the parents, 
 both mentally and physically, he will partake more or less 
 of the defects of their constitutions ; in other words, his 
 constitution will contain the seeds, which in time will 
 surely develop, of faults mental and physical." 
 
 '' I am firmly of opinion that tobacco, as well as alco- 
 hohc stimulants, creates diseased conditions, which will 
 manifest themselves in the second generation." 
 
 " I have noticed what I thought a transmitted tendency 
 in the children of a few families, some of whom were 
 lovers of tobacco from a very early age. These children, 
 in one instance, were born after the father became an 
 habitual user of tobacco, while their brothers and sisters, 
 born before that time, had a perfect loathing for it. Such 
 a fact seems to me very significant." 
 
 ^lestion lo. " Have you observed whether or not 
 the rapidly extending use of tobacco during recent years 
 has been efficient in producing disease of any specific 
 kind, especially in the nervous, respiratory, or digestive 
 systems?" 
 
 Forty-five per cent of the replies to this question were 
 in the affirmative, twenty-five per cent in the negative, and 
 the remainder, thirty per cent, of the eorresiDondents made 
 no response. 
 
 " Tobacco is undoubtedly one chief cause of the rapid
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. IO9 
 
 increase of dyspepsia, nervous debility, and all the long 
 train of symptoms of nervous trouble so common among 
 our business and professional men, and those who lead 
 sedentary lives." 
 
 " I do not think that there is an articl-e in use in this 
 country whose legitimate effect upon the nervous system 
 tends to induce deterioration more decidedly than does 
 the effect of tobacco." 
 
 " As our studies of the causes of disease acquire the 
 definiteness of science, and convictions of the laws and 
 requirements of bodily health are forcing themselves upon 
 us, the evils to the physical life of society, that result from 
 whiskey and tobacco, become more and more apparent. 
 I have little hesitation in attributing a very large propor- 
 tion of some of the most painful maladies that come 
 under my notice to the ordinary' and daily use of tobacco 
 in the quantity usually deemed moderate." 
 
 " While there are differences in the medical estimate of 
 tobacco, and differences, to some extent, in opinions as to 
 the toleration of its use which can be established or 
 endured by individuals, there is yet great uniformity of 
 the opinion as to unadvisabihty of its use under any 
 pretext whatever. No person or community need make 
 the effort to use tobacco extensively in any form, without 
 the expectation and assurance that the result will be 
 continued injury to the individual, and enfeeblement to the 
 race. I do not mean to say by this that one cigar or one 
 pipe of tobacco will leave the partaker pennanently 
 impaired, any more than I would assert that the loss of 
 one night's sleep is a permanent injury to a person in fair 
 average health ; but it should be understood that the 
 general Une of direction is toward the impairment of
 
 no TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 vital force, and hence toward prostration and serious 
 nervous disease." 
 
 " I think the majority of my office-patients are those 
 whose systems have been shattered by the excessive use 
 of tobacco ; the effects of this drug and its entaihiients 
 are not sufficiently taught by the medical profession." 
 
 *• Experience and observation alike show that the use of 
 tobacco is producing a rapid increase in the amount of 
 nervous and pulmonary diseases. Hence comes also a 
 demand for whiskey to counteract the depression caused 
 by tobacco, and from both we have broken-down constitu- 
 tions and premature exhaustion in the offspring of their 
 consumers." 
 
 " I answer your questions generally, by saying that I 
 believe that the use of tobacco tends to promote intem- 
 perance, by causing profuse expectoration, and consequent 
 exhaustion, which calls for stimulating liquors. During 
 thirty years in which I used tobacco I laid the foundation 
 for dyspepsia, diseased throat, catarrh, and general de- 
 rangement of the nervous system, which now, after twenty 
 years' abstinence, still maintain a hold upon my bodily, 
 mental, and moral powers ; and though the effect is far less 
 injurious than it would have been had I not reformed, I 
 must regard the formation of the evil habit as one of the 
 gravest sins of my life." 
 
 " We are told that Nature never forgives sins committed 
 against her by individuals ; that the record of offences 
 against her is never effaced ; that the penalty is always 
 exacted to the uttermost ; and I have never been more 
 firmly convinced of these facts than when attempting to 
 treat the long train of nervous and digestive troubles — 
 traceable, directly or indirectly, to the use of tobacco in
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. HI 
 
 one form or another — that are continually coming before 
 the physician for his attention. I do not suppose that a 
 practising physician can be found who will not admit that 
 if no tobacco in any form were used during ten years 
 within the sphere of his observation and practice, a most 
 noticeable change would take place in the character of 
 the diseases presenting themselves for treatment." 
 
 Question ii. "What effects have you observed result- 
 ing from the constant use of tobacco among professionrJ 
 men and students generally?" 
 
 Of those answering this question, twenty-five per cent 
 said that they had noticed none ; fifty-five per cent made 
 a great diversity of replies, some of which are given 
 below, the tendency of all being in the same direction ; 
 and from the rest no answer was received. 
 
 " I beheve that the habit of using tobacco, in various 
 forms, is not only laying the foundation for many diseases 
 of serious character, and not easily removed, but that it is 
 damaging the moral fibre of many of our students." 
 
 "It is a rigorous rule of athletic regimen that the 
 oarsman must put away his cigar and the pugilist his plug 
 when they go into training. This is the smoker's frank 
 confession that tobacco robs him of strength, that he is 
 in better condition without it ; he cannot smoke when he 
 would be at his best, when he would have every nerve and 
 muscle at its steadiest. But is there ever a time when it 
 is not worth while for a man to be at his best ? Success 
 in the supreme endeavor of life would seem to be worth 
 as much as success in a prize-ring or regatta, and by the 
 same system of analogy it is evident that if the student 
 would be at his best he must put away his cigar." 
 
 " All our professional men should know that the ill
 
 112 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS, 
 
 effects of tobacco upon the system are less easily observed 
 and more insidious than is usually supposed. I am sure 
 that the habit is incompatible with great and long con- 
 tinued intellectual activity ; and since we physicians as a 
 class know its harm physiologically, it appears to me that 
 it is our duty to discourage a habit that is not conducive to 
 health, and that we are criminal if we give countenance to 
 a habit which is known to engender nervous troubles of a 
 very serious kind. Professional men and students should 
 be made more fully aware than they sometimes are of the 
 tendency of the habit and its results." 
 
 " During the last ten or fifteen years the consumption 
 of tobacco has so increased, especially among young 
 people, that we can hardly hope to comprehend its influ- 
 ence. It is my belief that its use among the young 
 cannot be too strongly condemned ; very few students 
 who make a free use of tobacco stand at the head of 
 their classes." 
 
 " It is not often that one great catastrophe overthrows 
 the mental health of the student ; it is the constant 
 recurrence of unfavorable circumstances or acts, the 
 gradual accumulation of adverse surroundings, the steady 
 disregard of healthful conditions, which heap misfortune 
 upon the individual ; the often repeated disregard of the 
 common laws of hygiene, deviations from estabhshed 
 principles, the thousand and one little things which tend 
 to depress vitality and produce disease, — all these are the 
 operating causes ; and prominent among them stands the 
 increasing use of tobacco among the younger students at 
 the present time." 
 
 " Nervous prostration, and a strong tendency to the use 
 of stimulants and narcotics, as alcohol and opium, are
 
 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. II3 
 
 among the evils likely to overtake the student of tobacco- 
 using habits." 
 
 " An unsound mind is ever the outcome of an unsound 
 body, caused by a violation of law committed through 
 ignorance, which was not accepted, however, as a reason 
 for exemption from the penalty. What seems needful 
 for the medical profession to teach at the present time 
 is how best to maintain the mental faculties in a state of 
 health. The insidious effects of the tobacco-habit should 
 be pointed out and kept in mind if we would look to the 
 welfare of the professional man and student, and to the wel- 
 fare of society at large. The youth of our land should be 
 taught that the use of tobacco arrests the growth and 
 development of the body, producing low, dwarfish stature, 
 paUid and sallow hue of the surface, insufficient and 
 Unhealthy supply of blood, and diminution of both bodily 
 and mental power. Children should under no circum- 
 stances be allowed to use tobacco in any form." 
 
 Here I close my extracts from the abundant testimony 
 given by our numerous correspondents. The following 
 conclusions appear to be established as the judgment of 
 the representative, thinking portion of the medical men of 
 Wisconsin, a class including by far the larger part of the 
 profession : 
 
 I St. That smoking, even in what is usually considered 
 moderation, is, to say the least, injurious indirectly, most 
 especially to the young ; inasmuch as it is notorious that 
 the habits of drinking and smoking are very intimately 
 associated, and that the practice of the latter may easily 
 lead to the former — that the use of tobacco may become 
 an inducement to the excessive use of intoxicating liquors, 
 with all its accompanying evil results.
 
 114 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 
 
 2d. That beginning the use of tobacco in early Hfe 
 cannot be too strongly condemned, as producing most 
 pernicious effects upon the constitution of the young, and 
 as impairing greatly, if not wholly destroying, the chances 
 of success as students and scholars. 
 
 3d. That whatever may be said in favor of the use of 
 tobacco in moderation, its employment in excess, es- 
 pecially if long persisted in, is injurious to any one, 
 physically, mentally, and morally.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 TOBACCO IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 
 
 THE " Boston Journal " of November i8, 1882, stated that 
 seventy-five per cent of the school boys, over 12 or 13 
 years of age, were habitual smokers of cigarettes. This called 
 out replies and provoked investigation, which resulted in de- 
 veloping the following : 
 
 Mr. Billings, of Cambridgeport, placed the age at from 8 
 to 15. He had induced more than 300 out of 350 in his school, 
 to sign a simple pledge to abstain during 1882. About fifty 
 per cent had proved faithful. In the upper classes of the 
 Latin School, one-half the pupils use tobacco. In the Eng- 
 lish High School there is comparatively little smoking. 
 East Boston placed the per cent of tobacco users at from 10 
 to 30. 
 
 Roxbury had been fighting the evil since 1866, but the num- 
 ber of smokers had doubled. All these schools "prohibit " 
 the use of tobacco, but indifference, and bad example on the 
 part of the parents, render it impossible to control the boys. 
 
 In New York and Brooklyn the evil has become so great 
 that petitions are being circulated, asking for a law by the 
 State to prohibit the sale of tobacco to minors. Such a law 
 ought to exist and be enforced in every State.
 
 Il6 APPENDIX. 
 
 II. 
 
 TOBACCO VS. RELIGION. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Smiles estimates that the sum expended every 
 twelve months in the United Kingdom on cigars and tobacco 
 exceeds eleven millions of pomids sterling. This sum is more 
 than ten times as much as all the Missionary and Bible socie- 
 ties raise in the same period. 
 
 III. 
 testimonies of physicians, scientists, and others. 
 
 Dr. Boerhaave, of Germany, says that since the use of 
 tobacco has been so general in Europe, the number of hypo- 
 chondriacal and consumptive complaints has increased by its 
 use. 
 
 Liebig, the celebrated German chemist, says that ** smok- 
 ing cigars is prejudicial to health, as much gaseous carbon is 
 injuriously inhaled, that robs the system of its oxygen." 
 
 Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, says of tobacco, " It impairs 
 appetite, produces dyspepsia, tremors, vertigo, headache, and 
 epilepsy. It injures the voice, destroys the teeth, and imparts 
 to the complexion a disagreeable dusky brown." 
 
 Dr. Darwin, of England, says of tobacco, that "it produces 
 diseases of the salivary glands and the pancreas, and injures 
 the power of digestion by occasioning the person to spit off 
 the sahva, which he ought to swallow." 
 
 Dr. Franklin said that he never used tobacco, and that he 
 never met with a man who did use it, that advised him to 
 follow his example. 
 
 John Ouincy Adams, former President of the United States, 
 after using tobacco in early life, and giving up the habit, re- 
 marked: " I have often wished that every individual of the
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 117 
 
 human race, affected with this artificial passion, would prevail 
 upon himself to try, but for three months, the experiment 
 which I have made, and am sure it would turn every acre of 
 tobacco land into a wheat-field, and add five years to the 
 average of human life." 
 
 Dr. Woodward, former superintendent of the State Lunatic 
 Asylum at Worcester, says : " Tobacco is a powerful narcotic 
 agent, and its use is very deleterious to the nervous system, 
 producing tremors, vertigo, faintness, palpitation of the heart, 
 and other serious diseases. That tobacco certainly produces 
 insanity, I am not able positively to observe; but that it 
 produces a predisposition to it, I am fully confident." 
 
 Dr. Amos Twitchell, of Keene, says, in a lecture on the 
 habitual use of tobacco, that it produces its most pernicious 
 effects by paralyzing the action of the nerves of involuntary 
 motion, — those whose function it is to carry on the action 
 of the lungs, heart, and stomach. The habitual use of to- 
 bacco is a most fruitful source of disease. Among the 
 diseases caused by tobacco the doctor enumerated palsy, — 
 which he thought was produced by tobacco more frequently 
 than by all other causes, — inveterate nervous headache, pal- 
 pitation of the heart, disease of the liver, indigestion, ulcera- 
 tion of the stomach, piles, and many others. 
 
 Cmversity Press : Jolin Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
 
 MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTHEES' PUBLIOATIONS. 
 
 JFamous SUomen ^tms. 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 By MATHILDE BLIND. 
 
 One vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i.oo. 
 
 " Messrs.- Roberts Brothers begin a series of Biographies of Famous 
 Women with a life of George Elio^, by Mathilde Blind. The idea of the 
 series is an excellent one, and the reputation of its publishers is a guarantee 
 for its adequate execution. This book contains about three hundred pages in 
 open tj-pe, and not only collects and condenses the main facts that are known 
 in regard to the history of George Eliot, but supplies otlier material from 
 personal research. It is agreeably written, and %vith a good idea of propor- 
 tion in a memoir of its size. The critical study of its subject's works, which 
 is made in the order of their appearance, is particularly well done- In fact, 
 good taste and good judgment pervade the memoir throughout." — Saturday 
 Eve?iing Gazette. 
 
 " Miss Blind's little book is written with admirable good taste and judg- 
 ment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with 
 critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flov%'n meanings 
 and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and ' nay ' of life. It is a graceful 
 and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning 
 one of the greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not 
 fascinating woman whom Miss Blind presents," says the New York 
 Trib^ine. 
 
 " Miss Blind's little biographical study of George Eliot is wTitten with 
 s>Tnpathy and good taste, and is very welcome. It gives us a graphic if not 
 elaborate sketch of the personality and development of the great novelist, is 
 particularly full and authentic concerning her earlier years, tells enough of 
 the leading motives in her work to give the general reader a lucid idea of the 
 trae drift and purpose of her art, and analyzes carefully her various writings, 
 with no attempt at profound criticism or fine writing, but with appreciation, 
 insight, and a clear grasp of those underlpng psychological principles which 
 are so closely interwoven in every production that came from her pen." — 
 Traveller. 
 
 " The hves of few great writers have attracted more curiosity and specula- 
 tion than that of George Eliot. Had she only lived earlier in the century 
 she might easily have become the centre of a mythos. As it is, many of the 
 anecdotes commonly repeated about her are made up largely of fable. It is, 
 therefore, well, before it is too late, to reduce the true story of her career to 
 the lowest terms, and this service has beeu well done by the author of the 
 present volume." — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 Sold by all book.sellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price, by the publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
 Messrs, Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 FAMOUS WOMEN SEEIES. 
 
 EMILY BRONTE. 
 
 By a. MARY F. ROBINSON. 
 One vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " Miss Robinson has written a fascinating biography. . . . Emily Bronte is 
 interesting, not because she wrote ' Wuthering Heights,' but because of her 
 brave, baffled, human life, so lonely, so full of pain, but with a great hope shining 
 beyond all the darkness, and a passionate defiance in bearing more than the 
 burdens that were laid upon her. The story of the three sisters is infinitely sad, 
 but it is the ennobling sadness that belongs to large natures cramped and striving 
 for freedom to heroic, almost desperate, work, with little or no result. The author 
 of this intensely interesting, sympathetic, and eloquent biography, is a young lady 
 and a poet, to whom a place is given in a recent anthology of living English poets, 
 which is supposed to contain only the best poems of the best writers." — Boston 
 Daily A dvertiser. 
 
 "Miss Robinson had many excellent qualifications for the task she has per- 
 formed in this little volume, among which may be named, an enthusiastic interest 
 in her subject and a real sympathy with Emily Bronte's sad and heroic life. 'To 
 rej^resent her as she was,' says Miss Robinson, ' would be her noblest and most 
 fitting monument.' . . . Emily Bronte here becomes well known to us and, in one 
 sense, this should be praise enough for any biography." — Neiv York Times. 
 
 " The biographer who finds such material before him as the lives and characters 
 of the Bronte family need have no anxiety as to the interest of his work. Char- 
 acters not only strong but so uniquely strong, genius so supreme, misfortunes so 
 overwhelming, set in its scenery so forlornly picturesque, could not fail to attract 
 all readers, if told even in the most prosaic language. When we add to this, that 
 Miss Robinson has told their story not in prosaic language, but with a literary 
 style exhibiting all the qualities essential to good biography, our readers will 
 understand that this life of Emily Bronte is not only as interesting as a novel, but 
 a great deal more interesting than most novels. As it presents most vividly a 
 general picture of the family, there seems hardly a reason for giving it Emily's name 
 alone, except perhaps for the masterly chapters on ' Wuthering Heights,' which 
 the reader will find a grateful condensation of the best in that powerful but some- 
 what forbidding story. We know of no point in. the Bronte history — their genius, 
 their surroundings, their faults, their happiness, their misery, their love and friend- 
 ships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride, 
 — which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sym- 
 pathy." — The Critic. 
 
 " ' Emily Bronte ' is the second of the ' Famous Women Series,' which Roberts 
 Brothers, Boston, propose to publish, and of which ' George Eliot ' was the initial 
 volume. Not the least remarkable of a very remarkable family, the personage 
 whose life is here written, possesses a peculiar interest to all who are at all familiar 
 with the sad and singular history of herself and her sister Charlotte. That the 
 author. Miss A. Mary F. Robinson, has done her work with minute fidelity to 
 facts as well as affectionate devotion to the subject of her sketch, is plainly to be 
 seen all through the book." — IVashifigton Post. 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers, or mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price, by the Publishers, 
 
 T) r^-m7'r>'x<c" "DTi rAT^T^rTTT) c
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. 
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 'By bertha THOMAS. 
 One volume. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $i.oo. 
 
 " Miss Thomas has accomplished a difficult task with as much good sense as 
 good feeling. She presents the main facts of George Sand's life, extenuating 
 notliing, and setting naught down in malice, but wisely leaving her readers to 
 form their own conclusions. Everybody knows that it was not such a life as the 
 women of England and America are accustomed to live, and as the worst of men 
 are glad to have them live. . . . Whatever may be said against it, its result on 
 George Sand was not what it would have been upon an English or American 
 woman of genius." — Neiv York Mail and Express. 
 
 *' This is a volume of the ' Famous Women Series,' which was begun so well 
 with George Eliot and Emily Bronte. The book is a review and critical analysis 
 of George Sand's life and work, by no means a detailed biography. Amantine 
 Lucile Aurore Dupin, the maiden, or Mme. Dudevant, the married woman, is 
 forgotten in the renown of the pseudonym George Sand. 
 
 *' Altogether, George Sand, with all her excesses and defects, is a representative 
 woman, one of the names of the nineteenth century. She was great among the 
 greatest, the friend and compeer of the finest intellects, and Miss Thomas's essay 
 will be a useful and agreeable introduction to a more extended study of her life 
 and works," — Knickerbocker. 
 
 " The biography of this famous woman, by Miss Thomas, is the only one in 
 existence. Those who have awaited it with pleasurable anticipation, but with 
 some trepidation as to the treatment of the erratic side of her character, cannot 
 fail to be pleased with the skill by which it is done. It is the best production on 
 George Sand that has yet been published. The author modestly refers to it as a 
 sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating 
 analysis of George Sand's life, tastes, occupations, and of the motives and impulses 
 which prompted her unconventional actions, that were misunderstood by a narrow 
 public. The difficulties encountered by the writer in describing this remarkable 
 character are shown in the first line of the opening chapter, which says, 'In nam- 
 ing George Sand we name something more exceptional than even a great genius.' 
 That tells the whole story. Misconstruction, condemnation, and isolation are the 
 penalties enforced upon the great leaders in the realm of advanced thought, by 
 the bigoted people of their time. The thinkers soar beyond the common herd, 
 whose soul-wings are not strong enough to fly aloft to clearer atmos]iheres, and 
 consequently they censure or ridicule what they are powerless to reach. George 
 Sand, even to a greater extent than her contemporar}-, George Eliot, was a victim 
 to ignorant social prejudices, but even the conservative world was forced to recog- 
 nize the matchless genius of these two extraordinary women, each widely different 
 in her character and method of thought and writing. . . . She has told much that 
 is good which has been imtold,and just what will interest the reader, and no more, 
 '"x» the same easy, entertaining style that characterizes all of these unpretentious 
 Jiographies." — Hartford Times. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by tJte publis/ters, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brotheri Publications. 
 FAMOUS WOMEN SEEIES, 
 
 MARY LAMB 
 
 By ANNE GILCHRIST. 
 One volume. 16ino. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 
 
 " The story of Mary Lamb has long been familiar to the readers of Elia, but 
 never in its entirety as in the monograph which Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has just 
 contributed to the Famous Women Series. Darkly hinted at by Talfourd in his 
 Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, it became better known as the years went on 
 and that imperfect work was followed by fuller and franker biographies, — became 
 so well known, in fact, that no one could recall the memory of Lamb without 
 recalling at the same time the memory of his sister." — New York Mail and Ex- 
 press. 
 
 " A biography of Mary Lamb must inevitably be also, almost more, a biogra- 
 phy of Charles Lamb, so completely was the life of the sister encompassed by 
 that of her brother ; and it must be allowed that Mrs. Anne Gilchrist has per- 
 formed a difficult biographical task with taste and ability. . . . The reader is at 
 least likely to lay down the book with the feeling that if Mary Lamb is not famous 
 she certainly deserves to be, and that a debt of gratitude is due Mrs. Gilchrist for 
 this well-considered record of her life." — Boston Courier. 
 
 " Mary Lamb, who was the embodiment of everything that is tenderest in 
 woman, combined with this a heroism which bore her on for a while through the 
 terrors of insanity. Think of a highly intellectual woman struggling year after 
 year with madness, triumphant over it for a season, and then at last succumbing to 
 It. The saddest lines that ever were written are tiiose descriptive of this brother and 
 sister just before Mary, on some return of insanity, was to leave Charles Lamb. 
 * On one occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little 
 foot-path in Hoxton F'ields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, 
 that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum.' What pathos 
 is there not here ? " — New York Times. 
 
 I' This life was worth writing, for all records of weakness conquered, of pain 
 patiently borne, of success won from difficulty, of cheerfulness in sorrow and 
 afifiiction, make the world better. Mrs. Gilchrist's biography is unaffected and 
 simple. She has told the sweet and melancholy story with judicious sympathy, 
 showing always the light shining through darkness." — Philadelphia Press, 
 
 Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
 the price, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
 MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' 
 
 A collection of world-renowned works selected from the 
 literatures of all nations, printed from new type in the best 
 manner, and neatly and durably bound. Handy books, con- 
 venient to hold, and an ornament to the library shelves. 
 
 READY AND IN PREPARATION. 
 Sir Walter Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
 "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake." The 
 three poems in one volume. 
 
 " There are no books for boys like these poems by Sir Walter 
 Scott. Every boy likes them, if they are not put into his hands 
 too late. T/iey sicrpass everything for boy reading.''^ — Ralph 
 Waldo Emerso7t. 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield." 
 With Illustrations by Mulready. 
 
 Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe." With Illustrations by 
 Stothard. 
 
 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's " Paul and Virginia." 
 With Illustrations by Lalauze. 
 
 Southey's "Life of Nelson." With Illustrations by 
 Birket Foster. 
 
 Voltaire's "Life of Charles the Twelfth." With 
 Maps and Portraits. 
 
 Maria Edgeworth's "Classic Tales." With a bio- 
 graphical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 
 
 Lord Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome." With 
 a Biographical Sketch and Illustrations. 
 
 Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." With all of the origi- 
 nal Illustrations in fac-simile. 
 
 Classic Heroic Ballads. Edited by the Editor of 
 " Quiet Hours." 
 
 Classic Tales. By Anna Letitia Barbauld. With a 
 Biographical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 
 
 Classic Tales. By Ann and Jane Taylor. With a 
 Biographical Sketch by Grace A. Oliver. 
 
 AND OTHERS.
 
 Messrs, Roberts Brothers'" Publications^ 
 
 > — — . , 
 
 BITS OF TALK 
 
 ABOUT HOME MATTERS. 
 
 By H. H. 
 
 Author of " Verses^^ and '■^ Bits of Travel^ i^quart 
 iSmo, Clothy red edges. Price $i.oo. 
 
 "A Nzw GosPKL FOR Mothers. — We wish that every mother in 
 tlse land would read 'Bits of Talk about Home Matters,' by H. H., and 
 that they would read it thoughtfully. The latter suggestion is, however, 
 wholly unnfcessary: the book seizes one's thoughts and sympathies, as 
 only startling truths presented with direct earnestness can do. . . . The 
 adoption of her sentiments would wholly change the atmosphere in muny 
 ft house to what it ought to be, and bring almost constant sunshine and 
 bliss where now too often are storm and misery." — Lawrence {Kansat) 
 Journal 
 
 " In the li:tle book entitled ' Bits of Talk,' by H. H , Messrs. Roberta 
 Brothers have given to the world an uncommonly useful collection o( 
 essays, — useful certainly to all parents, and likely to do good to all chil. 
 dren. Other people have doubtless held as correct views on the subjects 
 treated here, though few have ever advanced them ; and none that we are 
 iware have made them so attractive as they are made by H. H.'s crisp 
 and sparkling style No one opening the book, even though without rea- 
 son for special interest in its topics, could, after a glimpse at its pages, 
 lay it down unread ; and its bright and witty scintillations will fix many a 
 precept and establish many a fact. ' Bits of Talk ' is a book that ought 
 to have a place of honor in every household ; for it teaches, not only the 
 true dignity of parentage, but of childhood. As we read it, we laugh and 
 cry with the author, and acknowledge that, since the child is father of ths 
 man, in being the champion of childhood, she is the chsn>pion of the 
 whole coming race. Great is the rod, but H. H. ie not its prophet I" — 
 Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in Neivburypori Herald. 
 
 Sold everywhere. Mailed^ postpaid^ by the Pub- 
 fishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
 Messrs* Roberts Brothers* PubL^attons, 
 
 Our New Crusade. 
 
 A TEMPERANCE STORY. 
 
 By E. E. Hale. 
 Square i8mo. Price $i.oo. 
 
 Front the Southern Churchman* 
 ** It has all the characteristics of its brilliant author, — unflagging entertam< 
 tnent, helpfulness, suggestive, practical hints, and a contagious vitality that sets 
 erne's blood tingling. Whoever has read 'Ten Times One is Ten' will knew just 
 what we mean. The fact that thirty thousand copies of this last-named volume 
 have l>een sold gives one some idea of its hold on the popular mind. We predia 
 thai the new volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a 
 parish of readers. The gist of the book is to show how possible it is for the best 
 spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form themselves into a lever 
 by means of which the whole tone of the social status may be elevated, and tin 
 good and highest happiness of the helpless many be attained through the sei» 
 denying exertions of the powerful few." 
 
 From the Louisville Daily Ledger. 
 *• Mr. Hale thinks, rightly, that this movement of the women of the land ts 
 put down an undeniable evil was not a wisely directed one. He is willing enough 
 to have a Crusade, but let it be more in the line of women's work, and let it ap- 
 peal to all the best instincts of our nature, — not the resistant ones. Men are not 
 going to be brow-beaten into being good, especially by the sex that has hitherto 
 been styled the ' gentler ; ' and we don't much wonder at it. To come and for- 
 cibly take possession of a man's place of business, and insist upon prajnng and 
 "inging him out of it, may have, at bottom, a very commendable motive to insti- 
 gate it ; but there is a right and a wrong way of doing every thing. This is the 
 (vrong way. Now, in his ' New Crusade,' Mr. Hale gives us the clew to a mucli 
 better, more reasonable, and altogether more popular way of exalting the aodai 
 Status in any given community." 
 
 Sold everytuhere by all Booksellers, Mailed^ postpaid^ op 
 ihs Publishers^ 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston.
 
 Messrs, Roberts Brothers* Publtcaftom. 
 
 IN HIS NAME. 
 
 A Slory of the Waldenses, Seven Hundred Years Apo. 
 
 By E. E. hale. 
 
 Square i8mo. Price $i.oo. 
 
 From the Liberal Christian. 
 "One of the most helpful, pure, and thoroughly Christian books of which ^po 
 have any knowledge. It has the mark of no sect, creed, or denomination upon it, 
 but the spirit pervading it is the Christly spirit . . . We might well speak of the 
 aumors great success in giving an air of quaintness to the style, befitting a story 
 or life 'seven hundred years ago.' We do not know exactly what lends to it this 
 flavor of antiquity, but the atmosphere is full of some subtle quality which removes 
 the tale from our nineteenth century commonplace. In this respect, and in its 
 dramatic vividness of action, * In His Name,' perhaps, takes as high a rank as any 
 d Mr. Hale's literary work." 
 
 From the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, 
 "A touching, almost a thrilling, tale is this by E. E. Hale, in its pathetic sim- 
 plicity and its deep meaning. It is a story of the Waldenses in the days when 
 Richard Coeur de Lion and his splendid following wended their way to the Cni- 
 tades, and when the name of Christ inspired men who dwelt in palaces, and men 
 •ho sheltered themselves in the forests of France. 'In his Name' wa.s the 
 Open Sesame ' tc the hearts of such as these, and it is to illustrate the power of 
 this almost magical phrase that the story is written. That it is charmingly writ- 
 «n, follows from its authorship. There is in fact no little book that we have seen 
 of late that offers so much of so pleasant reading in such little space, and coo- 
 Tcys so apt and pertinent a lesson of pure religion." 
 
 **TIic very loveliest Christmas Story ever written. It has the ring ol an old 
 Troabadour in it." 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers, Mailed^ postpaid^ 
 Py the Publishers f 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
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