TOBACCO AND INSANITY

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 27, 1881

TOBACCO AND INSANITY.

A PARTY of clergymen were discussing this subject when the case of Rev. Mr. B. was mentioned, a graduate of Andover, of high standing, and for a time very successful. "He was made a raving maniac twenty years ago by the use of tobacco!" remarked one of the party. Another gave his account of the man whom he recalled vividly to mind "with his pale face, stained lips, repulsive breath, and quivering hand." The abject slave of tobacco, he chewed negro-head tobacco, a match for any man who has not the iron nerves of an African goat or horse. He preached three years with unexampled popularity and success. His health then failed and no one knew the cause. A few months rolled away, and he utterly broke down, yet still no one knew the cause. In a few months more he became a maniac, relinquished his pulpit, and was as wild as the man found "cutting himself with stones among the tombs," and no one knew the cause. He was then taken to an asylum for the insane, and remained twenty years! He there breathed a fetid atmosphere, paced the floor of confined walls, stared upon the outside world through iron gates, cursed himself, cursed his wife and children, and in his wild ravings "dealt damnation round the land," thus day and night champing tobacco as a fretted horse champs his bit. He once was pacing his room as he had aforetime, year by year, when a change came over him. He stopped abruptly, and in a sort of soliloquy exclaimed, "Why am I here? What brought me here? What binds me here?" His soul bursting with indignation, he cried aloud, "Tobacco! Tobacco!" He walked backward and forward; then bursting into tears, he cast the foul plug through the iron gates, and looking upward to God, he said, "O God, help, help! I will use no more."

Now, we believe in no miraculous cure in this case. Mr. B. dropped his tobacco, and the sad, dark eclipse fled from his beautiful mind, and it came out from the horrible storms and tempests of insanity clear as the sun and fair as the moon. He soon regained his health and vigor, again preached the gospel of the blessed God, in the Presbyterian connection, and after ten years of arduous service he died, revered and beloved.—Prof. Twing's Facts about Tobacco.