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beyond a doubt, and its effects on man and other animals are similar to those of henbane, hemlock, deadly nightshade, prussic acid, &c. In every instance, when taken to excess, it produces nausea, vomiting, dizziness, indigestion, mental depression, and death. To those unaccustomed to its use these symptoms are produced with greater rapidity, and with tenfold force. The great objection to its use is, that it vitiates or wastes the saliva, and thus influences hunger and digestion; the glands of the mouth are certainly somewhat affected, for the saliva becomes bitter, and the breath foetid; the teeth are rendered yellow and black; and, without excessive caution, in carefully washing the mouth after each indulgence, the gums are liable to become diseased, and the teeth consequently to decay; the sight very often is impaired; and if the habit be carried to excess, the mental faculties are often injured. Smoking is decidedly injurious to the thin, to the hectic, and to hypochondriac persons; it creates an unnatural thirst, and too often leads to drinking spirituous liquors; it also gives a taste for indolent habits, and to a general torpor, Excessive smoking is, of course, neither warranted by good sense, nor can it be indulged in without detriment to the functions of important organs. In confirmation of these, I could cite numerous authorities of the highest ability. Professor Hitchcock says, "I group alcohol, opium, and tobacco together, being equally poisonous; alike to be rejected, because they agree in their effects, producing stupor and insensibility; and the effects of tobacco cannot be easily distinguished from those violent vegetable poisons so well known." The celebrated Dr. Rees, in proving the violence of tobacco as a poison, says, a drop or two of the oil placed on the tongue of a cat, will kill it in the space of a minute. Dr. Hassock calls Tobacco a fashionable deadly poison; maintaining that the great increase of dyspepsia, the alarming frequency of apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases, is attributable, in a great measure, to the use of tobacco and snuff.

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Dr. Waterhouse says, that Linnæus, in his natural arrangement, has placed tobacco in the class Lurida, which signifies pale, ghastly, livid, dismal, and fatal. "To the same ominous class," he adds, "belong foxglove, henbane, deadly nightshade, lobelia, and other poisonous plants, bearing the tremendous name, Atropa,' one of the furies." He says, "When tobacco is taken into the stomach for the first time, it creates a nausea and extreme disgust. If swallowed, it excites violent convulsions of the stomach and bowels, to eject the poison either upward or downward. If it be not very speedily and entirely ejected, it produces great anxiety, vertigo, faintness, and prostration of all the senses; and, in some instances, death has followed." The oil of this plant, he adds, is one of of the strongest vegetable poisons, insomuch that we know of no animal that can resist its mortal effects. "Moreover," says Dr. Waterhouse, after a long and honourable course of practice, "I never observed so many palid faces, and so many marks of declining health; nor ever knew so many hectical habits and consumptive affections, as of late years; and I trace this alarming inroad on young constitutions principally to the pernicious custom of smoking cigars. Dr. Marshall Hall gives a case of a young man, after indulging himself with two pipes, was seized with nausea, vomiting, syncope, stupor, stertorous breathing, spasms, and an insensible pupil.

The watery infusion of tobacco has a violent effect on many; when applied externally, it cannot however be denied, that, in some diseases of the skin, it has been of service, when judiciously applied; but the following cases will prove how necessary it is to watch, with the most anxious care, lest any untoward symptoms should present themselves. The vomiting, overpowering nausea, the sudden torpor of the brain, the deathlike swooning, and even death itself rapidly occurring, should be borne in recollection.

A little boy, aged eight years, had long been afflicted with tinea capitis, (or scald head) which had proved very obstinate. His father applied over his head the expressed juice of tobacco, obtained by wetting the dried tobacco-leaves, then placing them between two iron plates, and pressed, by which means the juice is extracted. This fluid was applied at five minutes before two o'clock in the afternoon; the child almost immediately complained of giddiness and loss of sight, so that his father smilingly observed, "the boy is drunk;" he soon afterwards became sick, vomited frequently, and in large quantities; he had, also, an inclination to go to stool, but could not evacuate; his limbs tottered, his face was pale, and covered with a cold sweat; his mother assisted him to bed, into which he had no sooner entered than he had an involuntary discharge of fæces; his countenance now appeared sunk; his limbs were motionless, excepting now and then, when his legs were drawn towards his belly convulsively; he complained of thirst, and of violent pain in his bowels; his whole body was bedewed with a cold sweat; at half-past five he expired, only three hours and a half after the application. On dissection no organic change was perceptible.

In another instance, an infusion of this herb, made according to the "London Pharmacopeia," was used as a fomentation for a young man who was infected with the itch, for which tobacco had been strongly recommended; the application was made from head to foot. In the course of twenty minutes after this operation sickness came on, and, soon after, headache, vertigo, stupor, and universal debility, and his sufferings were very severe, and evidently, had not proper means been taken, he would have been poisoned. A countryman and his wife applied an infusion of tobacco to their skins, for the cure of the same disease; in less than an hour, they felt as if they were intoxicated with spirituous liquor; this sensation was very speedily followed by violent head-ache, dry hot skin, excessive vomiting and purging, spasmodic contractions of the hands and arms, and considerable dyspnoea; these symptoms continued so long as the solution of tobacco remained on the skin, which was removed by the warm bath.

I have frequently 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 by fatal results.

The leaves of the tobacco, whether they be in the entire state, or reduced to powder, as we commonly find them in commerce, are endued with the most poisonous energetic powers, and life has been extinguished by a few grains of snuff taken into the stomach. Of this, one of the most melancholy instances on record is the death of the celebrated

SANTEUIL, into whose glass of wine a small quantity of Spanish snuff was dropped by some of his companions, at a dinner party. He was seized with most excruciating pain, and violent vomiting, which not being sufficient to clear his stomach, he died in the most agonising suffering. It is said that thenegro women, in the West India islands, place a small quantityof tobacco, prepared for the purpose, under the thumb nail, and that they contrive to drop it into a liquid, when they offer drink, and thus produce death. The symptoms which are induced are the most depressing state of nausea, vomiting, cold sweats, giddiness, fainting, and one symptom which is the peculiar characteristic of this poison of the nightshade tribe, a general tremor of the whole body, succeeded by convulsions, which generally terminate in death.

The objections against smoking are surely worth serious consideration. The following announcement is taken from an American paper, published in Massachussets:- Died in Salem, Master James Berry, aged 12, a promising youth, whose early death was brought on by the excessive smoking of cigars." Mr. Tauseu, during his travels in the United States, saw an infant, not four years old, the son of a cigar maker, smoking a large cigar, made of the strongest tobacco; his father said he had acquired the habit the year previous, and that his custom, always of the afternoon, was three, four, or more cigars. Gmelin relates two instances of death from smoking excessively, the one having accomplished seventeen pipes, the other nineteen at a sitting. A German author states, that, in Germany, one half of the deaths occuring between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, is attributable to smoking and chewing. The largest quantity that has been smoked, with which I am acquainted, occurred in the treatment of an affection of the teeth, by Dr. Buller, about the year 1600. He directed a patient to smoke, without intermission, an ounce of the herb. The man was an habitual smoker, and he took twenty-five pipes at a sitting. Extreme sickness first came on, then a flow of saliva, which ran off to the quantity of two quarts, and the pain gradually abated. Brown seems to have been aware that it was a desperate remedy, as he says, "that a hard knot must be split by a hard wedge."

I knew a young man (married but a short time) who became so addicted to smoking, that the daily average of his consumption was twelve cigars, amounting to nearly 4,400 in one year. On being shown the quantity consumed by him in one year, he was so struck, that he immediately gave up the habit entirely, to the great comfort of his wife, who had become disgusted with him on account of it.

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Smoking invites thirst; and, there can be no doubt, that whatever superinduces an unnatural indulgence in the use of liquids, is itself extremely injurious to the human system, even if the liquors resorted to are of an innocent description; but how seldom do cigar smokers appease their thirst by taking these! On the contrary, they drink those of the most intoxicating nature, which, aided by the loss of the salival fluid, and the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system, cause pale faces and emaciated figures, such as we see in tobacco con

sumers.

The following is an interesting account of the effects even of the smell of tobacco. It occurred to Mr. Howison, on a voyage. When the

evening was pretty far advanced, the master of the schooner conducted him to the cabin, which was almost full of large packages, and, pointing out where he was to sleep, left him alone. He felt a heavy suffocation, but did not examine the contents of the bales, and immediately went to bed, soon afterwards he was harrassed by wild and frightful dreams, and suddenly awoke about midnight, bathed in a cold dew, and totally unable to speak or move; however, he knew perfectly well where he was, and recollected every thing that had occurred during the day, only he could not make any bodily effort whatever, and tried in vain to get up, or even change his position. The watch on deck struck four bells, and he counted them, though he did not hear the beats, but received the vibration through his body. About this time a seaman came into the cabin with a light, and carried away an hour glass that hung upon a nail, without observing him, though he made several efforts to attract his attention; shortly after a pane in the sky-light was broken by accident, and he saw the fragments drop on the floor. These circumstances actually occurred, as he found on inquiry the next day, and he mentioned them to prove that the sensations he describes were realities, and not the offspring of perturbed dreams. The inability to move was not accompanied by pain or uneasiness, but he felt as if the principle of life had departed from his frame; at length he became totally insensible, and continued so until an increase of wind made the sea a little rough, which caused the vessel to roll. The motion had the effect of awakening him from his trance, and he contrived somehow or other to get up, and go on deck. His memory was totally lost for about a quarter of an hour, and he had no idea connected with any thing that was not present before him. He knew that he was in a ship, but nothing more. While in this state he observed a man drawing water from the sea in buckets, and requested him to pour one on his head; after some hesitation the man did so, and all his faculties were immediately restored, and he acquired a most vivid recollection of a vast variety of ideas and events which appeared to have passed through his mind and occupied him during the time of his supposed insensibility. All this singular derangement had arisen from a copious inhalation of the fumes of tobacco, for, on examining the cabin, he found that the piles of packages consisted of that narcotic plant, and that quantities of it even lay under his bed; in short, that the sloop contained nothing else It has been stated, that the odour and the particles from the tobacco produce, amongst the workmen in snuff manufacturies, bronchitis, dysentery, and ophthalmia.

Of the fatal effects, within a very short time, of using large quantities, there are many cases on record. Dr. Grahl, of Hamburgh, narrates an instance where death occurred in three quarters of an hour, after dreadful convulsions and vomiting, in consequence of a female, who merely suffered from indigestion and costivenesss, following the recommendation of a woman who advised her to boil an ounce of tobacco in water for fifteen minutes; and the " Journal de Chimie Médicale" contains a case of apparent intoxication, and rapid death succeeding a decoction of two

ounces.

The smoke has likewise produced bad effects when injected. Dr. Paris tells us, that he witnessed a lamentable instance of effects, where a patient

had been exhausted by previous suffering: a medical practitioner, after repeated trials to reduce a strangulated hernia, injected an infusion of tobacco, and shortly afterwards sent the patient in a carriage to Westminster Hospital for the purpose of undergoing the operation, but the unfortunate man arrived only a few minutes before he expired.

Sir Astley Cooper and Sir Charles Bell record fatal cases from its injudicious use; the latter surgeon, speaking of a case of hernia, says,"The patient's strength held up until the tobacco glyster was administered to him, after which he very suddenly fell low and sank." Fuller gives us an instance of death by an enema of tobacco, infused in sack, for cholic:"Mr. Obeston, he fell presently into horrid burning pain, convulsions, faintings, and so perished miserably upon the spot, as it were all in flames." In the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal is to be found a case of convulsions and death, an hour or two after the injection of two drachms of tobacco, infused in eight ounces of water. A single drachm, the same proportion as that to which I have directed your attention as the formula of the pharmacopoeia, proved fatal in the case of a female, mention of which is made in the "Acta Helvetica" for 1762.

The legitimate use of tobacco is as a medicine, and, as such, let us briefly examine its merit. Even as a medicine, it has frequently been followed by fatal results, by being applied injudiciously. It has been found to be of use in various affections of the skin, when carefully exhibited, but the fatal cases I have recorded are quite sufficient to prove that none but a medical man should advise when and how it should be used. It has been given extensively in Epilepsy, but although some cases for a short time put on favourable appearances, yet, on the whole, I look upon it too much as a general cause of that fearful disease, to recommend it in the cure of it. It has been frequently effective in worms, particularly the tape worm, on the principle that it rapidly proves fatal to many of the lower orders of animals. In spasms, colic, &c., the infusion and smoke of this herb have, in some cases been attended with success. In lockedjaw it has been given with advantage, and has been strongly advised in hydrophobia, in which, however, its success is not sufficient to establish it a character. By some it has been used in dropsy; and, when the plague raged in London, Dr. Mead and others tried to preach up its powers as a preventive to that fatal malady, but the celebrated Dr. Russel found, after the most rigid enquiries, that smokers and chewers of tobacco in Aleppo, where its ravages were very destructive, were just as liable to its attack, and as few of that class as of any other recovered. As a cosmetic perhaps tobacco is best known: the Balm of Columbia, of which it forms the base, is spoken highly of in making the hair grow where it had disappeared; and, though its powers cannot be said to equal Rowland's Kalydor, or Atkinson's Bear's Grease, the latter of which, in a few rubbings, converted a deal box into a hair trunk, yet, as a cosmetic, tobacco will stand the test of examination.

Such are briefly the medicinal effects of tobacco; it would be an endless task to follow all the pros and cons of medical authors on this part of our subject. What has been advanced may be relied on; to go further would lead us into uncertainty, if not error.

Such then are the effects of tobacco on man, when used injudiciously as

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