Deadly Effects of Tobacco.
It is admitted by the most competent authorities on medicine that tobacco contains a strong, very strong poison; much stronger than many people suppose, or have any idea of. The Quarterly Journal of Science instructs us that "nicotine, the essential principle of tobacco, is so deadly an alkaloid that what is contained in one cigar, if extracted and administered in a pure state, would cause a person's speedy death. Tobacco belongs to the narcotic and exciting substances which have no food value. Its stimulating adds no vital force, but abstracts or takes it away. It involves the narcotic paralysis of a portion of the functions whose activity is essential to healthy life. Let it be clearly understood that the temporary stimulus and soothing power of tobacco are gained by destroying vital force; and that the drug contains nothing of use to the tissues of a healthy life. Nor is the poison easily expelled from the system; it remains sometimes years after persons have ceased to use the weed. Indeed, nicotine has been detected in the tissues of the lungs and liver after death." The following are some of the experiments made by Fontana: 1. "I made," says he, "a small incision in a pigeon's leg, and applied to it the oil of tobacco. In two minutes it lost the use of its foot. 2. I repeated this experiment on another pigeon, and the event was exactly the same. 3. I made a small wound in the pectoral muscles of a pigeon, and applied the oil to it. In three minutes the animal could no longer support itself on the left foot. 4. This experiment, repeated on another pigeon, resulted in the same way. 5. I introduced into the pectoral muscles of a pigeon a small bit of wood covered with this oil. The pigeon in a few seconds fell insensible. 6. Two other pigeons, to whose muscles I applied this oil, vomited several times. 7. Two others with empty stomachs, treated in the same mode, made every effort to vomit." Put a victim of this habit into a hot bath; let full and free perspiration arise; then drop a fly into that water—and it dies at the instant of contact. Cannibals will not eat human flesh which contains the flavor of tobacco. Even the turkey-buzzards of Mexico refused the flesh of soldiers addicted to this indulgence! Kæmpfer ranks it with the strong vegetable poisons. A thread dipped into the oil of tobacco, and drawn through a wound made by a needle in an animal, killed it in the space of seven minutes. Rees' Cyclopedia says a drop or two of the oil placed on the tongue of a cat produces convulsions and death in the space of a minute. One drop suspended in an ounce and a half of mucilage, and thrown into the rectum of a dog, produced violent symptoms, and a repetition of the experiment killed him. A college of physicians has said that not less than twenty thousand in our own land annually die by the use of this poison. A German periodical says that of twenty deaths of men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, one-half originate in the waste of the constitution by smoking. The same periodical says, "Tobacco burns out the blood, the teeth, the eyes, the brains." Dr. Shaw names some eighty diseases, and says they may be attributed to tobacco. Governor Sullivan says, "My brother, General Sullivan, used snuff, and his snuff lodged him prematurely in his grave." The French poet Santeuil was killed by a little snuff being thrown into his wine-glass, at the prince of Conde's table. Bocarme, of Belgium, was murdered in two minutes and a half, by a little nicotine, or alkali of tobacco. A very moderate quantity introduced into the system—even applying the moistened leaves over the stomach—has been known very suddenly to extinguish life. Dr. Twitchell believed that sudden deaths and tobacco, among men, were usually found together, and he sustained this opinion by an array of facts altogether conclusive. Says the Rev. George Trask, of the United States, "I can give the names of scores of men, who were found dead in their beds, or fell dead in the streets or elsewhere, who had been the victims of this poison." Such is the rankness of the poison of tobacco that even to sleep with an inveterate smoker is very dangerous. The above-quoted authority gives a striking case in proof of this. "The young wife of a great smoker grew pale, lost her appetite, became affected with palpitations of the heart, trembling of the limbs, and a death-like sinking at the pit of the stomach; her sleep was often interrupted with darting pains and frightful dreams; she became nervous with symptoms of hysteria. At first her physician was unable to account for this medley of distressing pains, but at length it occurred to him that they resembled the effects of tobacco; he communicated his suspicions to the husband, who immediately cast away the cigar, and had the satisfaction of seeing his wife recover in a short time without the use of medicine." If such are the properties of tobacco, it is no wonder that it has destroyed many thousands of lives, and permanently injured the constitutions of an almost incredible number of smokers and chewers. To give an elaborate description of all the manifold injuries the use of tobacco does to health, would be impossible in a work of this size, but we append the following, which is the result of a long and careful investigation of medical statements on the subject in question:— 1. Partial paralysis of the nerves distributed to the heart; from this proceeds hurried and enfeebled action of that organ. This induces palpitations, and is frequently a chief cause of those organic derangements ending in fatal heart disease. That thousands of tobacco smokers have brought on a very serious state of nervousness by the use of the weed, themselves, with others, will frankly admit. How many of them we see scarcely able to put the pipe into their mouths without trembling like a leaf! That shaking of the hands shows too plainly what the much-loved narcotic has done for them. In how many cases have sudden death resulted from the heart having been diseased by the pernicious habit. We give the following account of tobacco poisoning in New York, as communicated by a gentleman to a public journal:— "The victim was exactly of my own years, and a companion from early boyhood. For thirty years at least he had been a daily smoker of the choicest cigars, but in all his other habits temperate and regular, and of excellent constitution—one who of all men would have laughed at the suggestion that tobacco was killing him. A week ago last Sunday night he was stricken with the progressive paralysis characteristic of nicotine, and on Sunday night he died. His death was most pitiful. First, sight was lost, then speech, then motion of the neck, then motion of the arms, and so on throughout the body, and he lay for a week unable to move or make a sign, save a pitiful, tongueless, inarticulate sound, which sometimes rose to almost frantic effort, all in vain to make known what he wished to say to the family and friends; for his consciousness and mental faculties were left unimpaired until two hours of the last, to aggravate to the utmost the horror of his situation,—a living soul in a dead body,—the sense of hearing was left unimpaired, so that he was conscious of all around him, while as incapable of communication with them as if dead, save by"