TOBACCO serves to scare away moths, carpet-bugs and other vermin.
It affords absolute security against being devoured by wolves, buzzards and cannibals, of which advantage its defenders are at liberty to make the most.
By excluding ladies from many a breakfast and dinner party, it withdraws from gentlemen a disagreeable restraint.
An advantage is suggested on the score of economy, in that it impairs the appetite so that less food is required. This reminds one of Mr. Squeers' custom, in Dotheboys Hall, of dosing his boys every morning with sulphur and treacle, that they might have less capacity for eating. As for the cost of tobacco in money, time, health, and doctors, in comparison with that of nourishing food, judge ye!
Still another benefit, according to a Doctor of Divinity whose experience entitles him to implicit credit, is that the habit gives to a man "a sense of deep self-humiliation, of which his unpartaking brethren can know very little."
It is pleaded that it is a safeguard against malarial diseases. But Doctor Solly makes answer: "I dispute the alleged benefits of even moderate tobacco-smoking as a preventive of damp or malaria."
There are some who claim that it is an aid to digestion. Says Dr. Alcott:—
"The reverse would be more true. Indeed I have never known a dozen tobacco-users—and my acquaintance has been extended to thousands—whose digestive energies were not, in the end, more or less impaired by it."
Dr. Grimshaw writes:—
"Tobacco is injurious by depressing the nervous power, by injuring the salivary glands, and by creating an undue secretion of saliva."
To the same effect is the testimony of Dr. Harris, of New York Dispensary:—
"The functions of digestion and nutrition are impaired; and though, in some cases, tobacco may for a time appear to relieve irritability of the stomach, it eventually cripples and almost destroys the digestive powers."
The sum and substance of this argument, medically interpreted, seems to be that this drug acts like a whip to an overburdened beast, forcing the stomach to efforts which exhaust and enfeeble it, till at last it gives out and dyspepsia ensues.
It is urged that tobacco stimulates the mental powers. On this point Dr. Harris writes:—
"A moderate indulgence may, for a brief period, enliven the imagination, accelerate the thoughts, and give a pleasing sense of intellectual vigor; but under such unnatural stimulus the intellect works neither reliably nor safely; and the reaction and stupor which necessarily succeed more than counterbalance the largest measure even of apparent gain. And he who resorts to such expedients will soon find that not only has he been fascinated and deceived, but that he has literally sold himself into a physical and mental bondage from which escape is almost impossible."
In regard to the arguments of those who have raised the lance in defense of tobacco as a helpful stimulant, quoting Dr. Anstie and his followers, I have taken pains to consult many wise ones, and may venture to report from high authority a brief reply to this defense:—
"Physiologists, and the medical profession generally, accept as axioms the principles that, in small doses, all the narcotics represented by opium, tobacco, the deadly nightshade, strychnine, and other similar drugs, are stimulants, not tonics; that is, in these small doses, they increase the rate of action or living, without adding to the strength or means of living; that the degree of stimulation varies in different members of the group of narcotics, it being very slight and transient in tobacco, the 'soothing,' that is, the narcotic effect being the result usually sought and speedily reached; that the assertion that 'food and stimulus are equally indispensable' is an utter fallacy; that any drug stimulation in health is unnecessary and mischievous; that all such stimulation is followed by a gradual loss of healthful vigor in the tissues and the organs involved; and that, while these effects may accumulate slowly, the aggregate result of many years of even moderate indulgence is almost inevitably seen in broken health and lessened efficiency, as well as in the presence of positive disease."
"I have never known a habitual consumer of tobacco to have the typhoid fever." So, by way of consolation, says one of the doctors. But what say others of the fraternity?
A Bay State doctor reports the case of a "habitual" smoker, "who has had typhoid fever every summer for five years." And a physician from the State of New York knows a confirmed user of tobacco who, "for a series of years, has had an annual attack of this fever." Another physician living in a mining country, where all use the weed, affirms that he could report hundreds of similar cases. Indeed, so far from tobacco's being a protection against typhoid fever, it is the opinion of eminent doctors that, by enfeebling the system, it renders men more susceptible to this as well as to other diseases.
"Tobacco smoke is not a vile, noxious exhalation," declares some one. "It does not contaminate the air, but tends to purify it. It is an antiseptic principle, taking up and destroying poisons in the air."
As to the remarkable negative assertion in the above passage, let it be referred to those whose senses have not been impaired by the use of the weed. Just what the writer means by terming tobacco smoke "a principle," we can only guess. But what of the benefit he claims?
There is abundant evidence to prove that tobacco in all its forms—snuffing, chewing, and smoking—is itself one of the most fatal of poisons. If this evidence is not convincing, let it be challenged. I might ask, if "tobacco smoke tends to purify the air," how does it happen to destroy animal life? But I choose to make my appeal to Cæsar.
To the assertion made above, Dr. Cate, of Poughkeepsie, replies:—
"I have never heard the claim presented even by the most inveterate smoker, among medical students or physicians, that tobacco smoke has antiseptic or protective properties. No authority on sanitation or disinfection, whether medical or non-medical, classes tobacco among disinfectants or antiseptics or protectives, in any mode or degree; and those who have written most, and most vigorously, against the use of tobacco, are physicians."—Meta Lander.