TOBACCO | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 23, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 12.

TOBACCO.

ILLS FOR WHICH THE WEED IS RESPONSIBLE.

Tobacco leaves contain principles common to all vegetable substances, such as starch, sugar, organic acids, salts, etc., and a peculiar alkaloid to which the plant owes its special qualities, called nicotine. Among the volatile principles that pass into the smoke along with nicotine are hydrocyanic acid and carbonic oxide. Of these a notable amount is absorbed by rapid smokers swallowing this smoke, the gas passing into the circulation. These facts go far to explain the accidents that sometimes occur after hours passed in a medium saturated with tobacco, and even

without smoking, and also explain the phenomena of intoxication produced by eating food left for a long time in a similarly vitiated air.

The decoction of tobacco destroys life in a time short in proportion to the strength of the dose. Tobacco may also poison through the lungs and through the skin. Smoking, which has had many imaginary ills laid to its door, is really responsible for attacks of suffocation, like angina pectoris, for nicotine amblyopia, for glandular pharyngitis, for a special form of asthma, and for epithelioma in the predisposed. Nearly all excessive smokers are dyspeptics. Smoking is bad for everybody, especially for women and children.—New York Medical Record.