Tobacco, by J. C. Jackson, M. D.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 13, 1863

Tobacco,

By J. C. Jackson, M. D.

And its Effects upon the Health and Character of those who Use it.

A LECTURE, BY J. C. JACKSON, M. D.

(Concluded.)

The diseases produced by the use of tobacco are different in their exhibitions from those produced by alcoholic drinks. As, for instance, all poisons which in their effects are directly depressant, abnormalize the nervous system, while poisons which in their direct effects are excitant or stimulating, affect the circulatory system. These differences are exhibited in marked degree in Paralysis and Apoplexy. I have never known a man to have apoplexy from the use of tobacco.

I have had over fifty cases of paralysis, induced, as I think, mainly by the use of tobacco, aided by habits and manners of living directly calculated to produce derangements of the nervous system. On the other hand, apoplexy is acknowledged by the Profession to be more frequently than otherwise the result of the use of alcoholic liquors in connection with habits and methods of living directly calculated to produce derangement of the circulation of the blood. Starting from this point, then, one can readily diagnosticate those diseases which are produced by the use of tobacco and kindred poisons, as he can those diseases which are produced by the use of alcohol and poisons of a similar nature. One class will be seen to be diseases of the nervous system, or the product of derangements of that system; the other will be found to be diseases of the circulation, or the result of derangements of the circulation. Some very remarkable instances of disease, produced by the use of tobacco, have passed under my observation,—of which I offer the following:

CASE NO. I.

A few years since I was called by a gentleman to visit his son professionally. The lad was about fourteen years of age, naturally a boy of more than ordinary talent. His father, distinguished in public life, was absorbed in his calling, and gave the care of the lad in his younger years almost entirely to his mother. She, a fashionable woman, with but little of the domestic in her nature, weak and quite indulgent to her child, allowed her son to do pretty much as his appetites prompted, and at the age of nine years the father was astonished to learn that his boy was a tobacco chewer and smoker. Immediately he brought to bear all the restraints possible; but these were of no use, and as the relations between him and his son had never been those of familiar affection, persuasion had no influence over the child to induce him to forego his habit.

When I was called to see him he was tall, with a large head, indicating the ideal temperament, and his organs of nutrition broken down to such degree as to render them incapable of making blood sufficient to sustain the body, as against the daily wastes which were going on. I have never known but one case of a youth so thoroughly given up to the use of this poison as this lad was. He always had two quids of tobacco in his mouth when not smoking. He was known repeatedly, under conditions of excitement, to chew two three-penny papers of tobacco in one day, besides smoking several cigars. The result of the habit was his death, but before he died, such disorganization of tissue took place as to breed vermin all over his body, and he expired in the most horrible tortures. In the latter stages of his disease, he would exhibit the most violent nervous paroxysms, if for the space of two hours he was kept from indulgence, and showed most decided aberration of mind.

CASE NO. II.

But a little while after this, I received a letter from a gentleman living on the banks of the Mohawk, requesting me to make a professional visit at his house, with a view to see a son of his. I did so, found a lad ten years of age, and so worn and wasted in flesh as to be disgusting to look at. As often as twice in twenty-four hours, for more than two years he had had epileptic fits, which had ended nearly in the destruction of his intellect.

As soon as I saw him I turned to his father and said to him that there was no hope in his case; and without making a single inquiry, or knowing anything about it, I remarked that I should say, from my knowledge of the effects of the poison of tobacco, that his child was dying therefrom. With tears in his eyes he said it was so. Not being able to do anything except to sympathize with the father, I returned home, and in the course of a fortnight the boy died. In both of these instances the children had the example of chewing and smoking tobacco set them by their parents.

CASE NO. III.

Early in my professional practice I was visited by a clergyman who wished to place himself under my care, with a view to be relieved of diseases with which he was afflicted, and upon examination of his case I said to him that I thought he could not be cured, that his nervous system had become so deranged by infiltration of some poison into his blood that I feared his constitutional power to react under its disuse would fail him. He then told me his history.

A close student in early life, resulting in a fine education, he had learned to use tobacco. This was followed by the habit of using intoxicating liquors; but soon after the establishment of the latter habit he was induced to sign the pledge of total abstinence against all intoxicating drinks, and so abandoned the use of ardent spirits, but kept up his tobacco. Smoking in early life was his favorite method of using the poison; but as he grew older and came to have large ministerial responsibilities upon him, he substituted chewing for smoking. When he came to consult me he was about fifty years of age. He first became alarmed in regard to the effect upon him, after having had an interview with a brother clergyman in respect to the propriety of organizing a simultaneous movement on the part of all the clergymen in the city where he resided by preaching sermons on the same Sabbath in their pulpits against the use of tobacco. When requested by his clerical brother to unite in such a movement he distinctly declined. When asked why, his reply was, that he did not believe in preaching against sin of which he himself was guilty. When still farther questioned why he did not abandon the sin his answer was, that he was unable to do it. When his brother almost indignantly inquired if he, a Christian minister, felt himself at liberty to say that he was guilty of a sin of which he could not repent, he replied in the affirmative. To show his inability he then related the following circumstances:

For a month previous to this interview his mind had been greatly impressed with his sin and his shame in this matter of the use of tobacco, and he had sought privately to abandon it. On the Sabbath preceding the visit of his clerical friend he had determined to enter the pulpit free from his usual indulgence. On arising to open the church services he found himself blind, and his organs of articulation paralyzed so that he could not utter a word. He came very near falling down in a fit. Some of the members of his congregation, seeing that he was sick, took him home, services being dispensed with, and a physician immediately attended him. Asking all the persons who were around him to leave him alone with the physician, who was scarcely less frightened than they, he said to him, "My friend, you need not be at all troubled. Just hand me my tobacco case, that lies in the pigeon hole in my book-case, and I shall be all right in two minutes. This is simply a reaction of my nervous system consequent upon my abstinence from my usual indulgences."

The physician gave him his tobacco; he took a chew, and was in fifteen minutes as well as he ever was—so well, that in the afternoon the services were continued.

The feeling of mortification that came over him when he found that his whole intellectual and moral nature was enslaved by a physical habit, he told me he had no language to describe, and then and there he made me promise, as a physician and a Christian gentleman, to pledge myself to be faithful in season and out of season in my rebukes and reproofs of the use of tobacco, saying that though he had himself become the victim of it, and for many years during his use of it had had no idea that he was doing wrong thereby, within the last month he had felt that there was no evil in our entire land, not excepting that of the habitual use of intoxicating liquors, so much to be deplored and so thoroughly to be dreaded in its effects upon our youth as the habit of chewing and smoking tobacco.

A few weeks after this interview he died. A post mortem examination was held. No evidences of diseased structure were exhibited in any of the internal organs except the heart. When the operators reached the heart and took it out they found it nearly disorganized. The tenacious coherence of its fibres had entirely disappeared and one of the physicians present at the examination wrote me that it could be "picked to pieces with as much ease as a piece of fried liver."

CASE NO. IV.

A distinguished lawyer in this State came to my house a dozen years since to be treated for rheumatism. Upon inquiry I found him to be an inveterate chewer and smoker. Not doubting that the effect of this indulgence culminated in rheumatism I said so to him, and added that I did not think any treatment I could give him would be effectual unless he could make up his mind to abstain from the use of tobacco; to which he replied that although he had used it for many years, never supposing that it hurt him at all, and while he was sensible that he derived a good deal of satisfaction from the habit, if I thought that it had anything to do with his rheumatism, he would cheerfully give it up. I raised the question, whether he could readily give it up, and he said there was no difficulty about it, he thought. So I asked him to give me his tobacco-box and cigar case which he did, and I laid them away.

The treatment administered to him was very mild, not changing his dietetic habits at all, and only giving him three baths a week. After he had been with us some ten days, or perhaps a fortnight, he entered the bath-room one morning, and as his eyes fell upon the running water and his ear took in its sound, he passed instanter into a cataleptic state, his tongue running out of his mouth rigidly and pointedly, his body becoming rigid, and giving a sort of half groan, he fell to the floor.

I was not in the bath-room at the time, but being close by, one of my attendants immediately called me and I went in. The man lay as if he were dead. The door of the bath-room opened on to a piazza where the warm rays of the sun fell, and we took him out there, unbuttoned his clothes, and placed the body in the best possible posture for reaction to commence, we chafed and rubbed him, and pretty soon he came back to partial consciousness. When he did so we lifted him and carried him to his room, and soon as might be took off his clothes and laid him in bed. I took a seat by his side and stayed there for an hour, at the end of which time he had so far recovered consciousness as to be able to converse. He then said:

"Dr. Jackson, at the outset, I wish to say to you that I have great respect for you personally, and my short acquaintance with you has given me a favorable impression of your abilities. I do not for a moment propose to hold your administration of my case responsible for this attack. Water-cure under your hands, I have no doubt is entitled to all the repute which intrinsically belongs to it; and while without question it is good in many cases it will not answer for me. As soon, therefore, as I am able, I wish to settle my bill and return home."

Comparatively young as a practitioner at that time, I greatly regretted the circumstance, and was very much puzzled to account for such an abnormal exhibition of his nervous system. I told him that I thought it could not be the result of the water treatment he had taken; that he had had but some four or five baths since he had come, and they were very gentle; that while I could not account for it myself, I was not willing that he should attribute the paroxysm through which he had passed to the application of water in his case.

The only answer that I could get out of him was that "Water-cure was undoubtedly good for many people, but it would not do for him." I combated his determination to go home, but he met me with firmness which ran into obstinacy.

Dispirited I sought counsel of Mrs. Jackson. I had hardly stated the case to her before she said, "Why I think that has all resulted from your taking his tobacco away."

It flashed like lightning on my consciousness that her exposition was the true one; and, seizing his cigar-case, I ran back to his room, and with joy on my face said to him, "I have found out what is the matter with you."

"Well," said he, "what?"

"Why!" said I, "your fit has not resulted from the baths we have given you, but it is owing to your entire and sudden disuse of tobacco."

"Oh!" said he, "that has nothing to do with it. I told you that I could give up tobacco, and you see I have, without any difficulty."

"Well, my good friend," I rejoined, "are you willing to test the question for the purpose of pleasing me? Will you smoke a cigar?"

"No," said he, "on that point I am firm. You have said you are satisfied tobacco hurts me. Reflection has confirmed the correctness of your judgment and I shall never smoke any more."

I then said to him, "You think this paroxysm of yours this morning is in consequence of the baths you have taken. I think it is in consequence of your entire abstinence from tobacco. Now my reputation is at stake. If you go away without giving me an opportunity to test that question I shall always feel as if you were a thoughtless man, and heedless of any injuries you might do to the reputation of your fellows. I am sure you are mistaken, and I ask you to give me an opportunity to prove it. It may seem paradoxical to you that I should urge on you the smoking of a cigar, but I do it because I think that whereas now you lie here with your hand shivering as if you had the shaking palsy, and your tongue so thick that you can scarcely talk so as to be understood, the pupil of your eye twice its usual size and your whole face showing a suffering aspect, and your pulse fluttering at your wrist as if you had been nearly frightened to death, if you would but let me light your cigar and you smoke it, I believe that in twenty minutes you would be in a sweet sleep."

He laughed me to scorn; but I was serious, and, looking at him said:

"You must do this thing. You ruin me, if you refuse. You are a man of high position. You have voluntarily placed yourself in my hands. You have no right to make an ex parte issue with me as to my method of treatment. Give me an opportunity to prove my statement to be true and yours to be untrue. It certainly cannot hurt your conscience very much to smoke a cigar. So please take it, and let us see what the effect will be."

"Very well," said he, "to please you I will; but you will find I am right, and that while water-cure is good for some persons, it is not good for me."

Without farther words I lighted his cigar. He put it into his mouth, smoked a while, and I watched him. In fifteen minutes his pulse had dropped down twenty beats, and a much steadier tone of the circulation became evident. The pupils of his eyes began to contract, the face lost its aspect of suffering. In twenty minutes he spoke: "Well I did not think that a cigar would taste so good."

In twenty-five minutes his eyes were closed, and he actually fell asleep inside of thirty minutes, with his cigar burning in his lips. I took it from his mouth, and he slept four hours as quietly as a child. On waking up the first words he said to me were, "Doctor, I ask your pardon. You were right and I was wrong. This, then, is the proof of the deleterious influences of tobacco on my nervous system. Now my moral sense is roused up against its use, and as soon as I can safely dispense with it I shall never use more."

Instead of leaving the Cure, he stayed with me until I not only broke up his habit of using tobacco, but of drinking strong tea and coffee, of eating highly seasoned foods at irregular hours, and cured him of his rheumatism and sent him home to resume his profession, with twenty years added to his life.

Now though his hair is silvered with gray he is as firm a friend as I have in the world. He afterward told me that as far as his recollections would allow, it seemed to him that he had been bitten by a mad dog. He said the sight of the water was what upset him; that as soon as he saw it and heard its murmur, there went a thrill all through him, and he felt just as he had a hundred times supposed persons bitten by mad dogs must feel at the sight of water.

In two other cases which I have had, where violent reactions of the nervous system showed themselves, the same or like simulations of hydrophobia were present. I think no delirium tremens caused by the presence of any other poison in the blood, ever forces the organism to exhibitions of suffering and distress similar to those produced by the canine virus, as does tobacco. In a good many cases within my knowledge where its abandonment has been sudden, while the usual taxations of energy have been kept up in the performance of business, these peculiar abnormal exhibitions have shown themselves in larger or lesser degree. I do not know how many men and boys have said to me, when under my suggestion they have ceased to use tobacco, that for a number of days they felt as if their tongues were stiff and as if they must involuntarily thrust them out of their mouths.

CASE NO. V.

I was visiting, some years since, at the house of a gentleman who was an excessive tobacco chewer,—a man of very large brain, and whose nutritive organs were only of moderate vitality. I readily discovered in him signs of failing health. Upon his acknowledging this and asking my advice I said to him, "The first thing you should do should be to cease the use of tobacco. It is killing you. I notice that one of its effects is inordinate excitement of the salivary glands. It seems to me that you must secrete and eject not less than half a gallon of saliva every day."

He admitted that he did, and thought probably that he secreted a much larger quantity, but did not think that it hurt him at all. On the whole he rather thought it did him good. Formerly he said, he was troubled with waterbrash, or rising of water from his stomach, and upon counseling with his physician, the latter advised him to use tobacco, saying that it would act as a cure for that difficulty. So he adopted its use and soon found relief, as the doctor suggested he would.

I told him that the remedy was worse than the disease, that he had but jumped "out of the frying-pan into the fire," and that I presumed already the evil effects upon his nervous system from the use of tobacco must be such that were he to cease suddenly from the habit he would find himself incapable of performing the most ordinary duties. Like the majority of tobacco chewers and smokers he declared his ability to break off whenever he should have a mind without any particular difficulty, to which I rejoined by saying that inasmuch as it was, in his estimation, so easy a thing to be done, I would consider it a personal favor if he would immediately commence, so that while I was his guest we might have mutual evidence of the correctness or incorrectness of my view of its effects upon him, saying that my professional observation had led me to the conclusion that the deleterious effects of all poisonous substances taken in small quantities, and continued for a length of time, were to be seen in reflex, and not in direct action of the nervous system;—that I suspected this was true in his case; and that, while under the narcotic influence of tobacco he thought or supposed himself to be able to break off without any difficulty, the breaking off would introduce him to a new experience altogether, and one which would astonish him, and for which he would find himself little prepared. He laughed at me, but I returned to the point and urged upon him the making of the experiment. Taking out his tobacco box he handed it to his wife and told her to keep it till he called for it. This was at ten o'clock in the morning. At twelve o'clock when called to dinner I noticed that he ate with less relish, and there was an evident uneasiness while at the table. A fervent Christian, member of the Methodist church, zealous in all good causes,

pious at the heart and not a mere formalist, I found than when he came to ask grace at the table his method of expression was somewhat confused. I said nothing. At night he retired early, giving as a reason that he did not feel very well, to which I made no reply except that I trusted he would find himself better in the morning. But when morning came and he rose and I met him, I saw that the demon was in possession of him. He told me he thought he was going to be sick. He could not tell what ailed him. He never felt so before in his life. Yesterday he felt perfectly well; and in his allusions to his immediate condition he never gave me the least impression that he was conscious that what he was suffering from, was the want of his constant and habitual narcotics. I did not allude to it. When we sat down to breakfast I noticed that he ate but little, but drank three or four cups of strong coffee, and for a while was better. When noon came, however, he could eat no dinner. While sitting at the table, holding his head in his hands and looking very woe-begone, one of his apprentices came in and said a man wanted to buy a double harness. He told the boy to ask the gentleman to wait a few minutes and he would be out to the shop. As soon as dinner was finished we took our hats and went to the shop and found a customer who said to him he wanted to buy a double harness. My friend took from a peg a saddle, presented it to the man and said, "There is a first-rate article." Said the man, "I do not wish a saddle—I wish a double harness."

"This is a double harness," said he.

The man looked at him and laughed—"Now," said he, "no joking. I am in a little hurry. I have waited while you ate your dinner. I want a new harness. Show me what you have on hand."

Said he "I am not joking. I have no other double harness than this. If this does not suit you, you will have to go somewhere else."

The purchaser, knowing my friend to be a man always prompt and attentive to his customers, and not given by any means to jesting in matters of business, was quite indignant at the supposed attempt to burlesque him in a trade, and said, "I ask you respectfully once more to show me a double harness. I have bought harnesses of you for years. I want a new one—one of the best you have got—and have the money in my pocket."

To which he got no reply other than this:—"I have no other harness. If this does not suit you, you must go elsewhere."

The man turned on his heel to leave the shop, feeling that he was insulted; but I laid my hand on his shoulder and said to him, "Do not go, my friend, until I have had a word with you. Our mutual friend here has been trying an experiment. Perhaps you are aware of his habit of using tobacco."

"Yes," he said, "I have often told him that it would kill him if he did not stop it."

"Well," I said, "I induced him to stop it yesterday for the simple purpose of giving him a lesson in the direction to which you say you had previously called his attention. He now has been without it twenty-four hours, and he does not know a saddle from a harness. His nervous system has suffered so that he has lost the power of association, and is as essentially in a delirium as ever any liquor drunkard was."

The man's sympathies were excited in a moment. "Now," said I, "let me try him;"—and stepping up to my friend I said, "Do you know this man?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what you have been doing?"

"Yes."

"What have you been doing?"

"I have been trying to sell him this harness."

"That is not a harness—that is a saddle."

"That is what he says," my friend replied: "but I do not think it becomes him or you to undertake to tell me what is a saddle, or what is a harness. I understand my business. If the man wants this harness, I shall be happy to sell it to him."

Said I, "You come with me into the house." I took him by the arm and led him out, took him into the house, asked his wife into give me his tobacco box, and when she did I said to him, "Fill your mouth full as you can get it of tobacco, and then come back to the shop."

He allowed me to do with him as I pleased. I brought him back into the shop, sat him down upon a chair, conversed on indifferent things, watched his face for five minutes, and then said to him, "Here is a friend who wants to buy a harness of you."

He raised his countenance, looked around, as if he had awakened from a sleep, said "Good afternoon" to the gentleman who wanted to purchase the harness, said he should be very happy to sell him a harness, but before he did so, would like to introduce him to his friend Dr. Jackson, and going through the formality of introducing me to this gentleman, stepped into his back room, opened the window, let in the light, called the gentleman in, sold him the harness, got his money, resumed the business of giving directions in the shop without ever alluding in any way to the fact that he had for a time been entirely oblivious of what had transpired in the presence of his journeymen, his apprentices and myself, with the man who had sought to buy a harness of him. When told of it, only with the greatest difficulty could he be made to believe it.

CASE NO. VI.

A gentleman living in one of the central counties in the State of New York called upon me a few years ago, saying that he had been taken suddenly with dizziness of the head amounting to decided vertigo, that accompanying this dizziness was a trembling of his hands so that he could not write. A distinguished lawyer, having a very large business, he wanted to know if I could diagnosticate his case. I told him I would try, and the first question I put to him was whether he used tobacco. He said he did all the time. "Well," said I, "what do you mean by 'all the time'?"

Said he, "I mean all the time except when I am eating."

"Do you mean when you are sleeping?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean when you are asleep?"

"Yes."

"Do you go to sleep with tobacco in your mouth?"

"Yes."

"What do you do with the saliva?"

"I swallow it. I cannot sleep if I have no tobacco in my mouth."

"Why can't you sleep?"

"I see devils, hobgoblins, all monstrous things."

"Do you smoke?"

"Yes."

"Well; this, then, is the cause of your dizziness. Your nervous system is breaking down under the effects of the poison introduced into your blood by your use of tobacco. Now there is about an equal probability of your having apoplexy and paralysis, unless you are protected against the former by abstinence from ardent spirits."

"I do not drink hard," he replied, "but I am in the daily use of liquor."

"Well, sir, you have reached the length of your tether in the direction in which you have been going, and unless you turn about you will die."

"But I cannot stop," he said. "I have queried whether this might not be owing, in part at least, to my use of tobacco, and I have tried once or twice to stop; but the remedy is worse than the disease. I lose my balance and rave like a madman."

"Rave you must, then. It is better that you should rave, than that you should be an imbecile. Your ravings are Nature's reactions. If you give yourself into my hands before you have an apoplectic or paralytic stroke,—either of which is imminent,—I pledge myself to bring you through."

He cried like a child. He made his arrangements, placed himself in my hands and in four weeks' time he had passed the crisis. He recovered, is now in good substantial health, and one of the firmest supporters of the hygienic system I have the pleasure to know.

I could relate hundreds of cases like unto these specified; for in our Establishment we have treated persons of every age, temperament, position, and condition in life, so that the philosophy we hold as to the effects of tobacco and the abnormal or diseased conditions of the nervous system induced by its long-continued and free use, brings to its defense all the evidence which the largest observation and the widest experiment can possibly afford.

Deplorable, however, as are the effects on the mere physical conditions of confirmed tobacco chewers, in the breaking down of their health and the inducement of a great variety of diseases,—many of which are organic in their nature, and of course incurable,—they melt all into nothingness by the side of the destruction to the higher faculties caused by its use. It is hard enough to have a debilitated body, but to have a mind and soul made drunk by drugging is terrible. Pathological investigations go to show that different poisons show different effects upon the nervous system, that different portions of the brain are affected by different poisons, and that corresponding difference in mental and moral conditions, under the administration of different poisons, are exhibited.

Alcohol, for instance, in producing abnormal conditions of the responsible faculties, specifically affects those which we describe as Intellectual; while Narcotics—as tobacco, for instance—affect those which are usually described as Moral Faculties. Watch closely the changes of character through which persons respectively pass as their Vital Forces come to act on these respective poisons, and it will be seen that while alcohol disturbs those departments of the brain through which the Intellectual Faculties find manifestation, tobacco affects those portions of the brain through which the Moral Sensibilities normally express themselves. Drunkards, unless when in a state of decided insensibility or wild delirium, retain their moral sense when compared with their loss of judgment, most remarkably. In truth, if but partially intoxicated, their moral forces seem to be quickened and excited, while their reasoning powers are in a great state of perturbation. The tobacco-user, however, finds himself in such relations to the use of his higher faculties as not to have his reason particularly disturbed. You see men on the street, in their studies, in public and private intercourse, who are users of tobacco, who show no less intellectual shrewdness or profundity, where the intellect takes cognition of subjects that are mainly within the province of the reason, than they would if they did not use it; but the moment that they pass that line, and step into the department of the affections or the higher emotions, or proceed to the examination of questions which for a right decision depend upon large spiritual discrimination, they exhibit a degree of abnormality indicative of decided obtuseness or positive aberration.

I do not think there is a poison which is in use in this country, or of the habitual use of which we have record in Oriental countries, whose legitimate effect upon the nervous system is to induce moral obliquity more decidedly than does tobacco. Men who have used it for years, until it has infiltrated itself into every tissue of their physical frames, (and it does lodge itself in the tissues; for I have had persons under treatment in my Establishment who, upon being put into a wet sheet pack and lying for an hour and a half, after this process had been in operation for a few days, would emit so decided a tobacco odor, upon being stripped to take a bath, as to make all the persons in a very large room as sensible thereof as though a cigar had been smoked in the room,) are as insensible to nice spiritual discernment, or clear discrimination in respect to all spiritual entities as a man in the depths of intoxication from ardent spirits is to keen and critical intellectual acumen.

Of all classes of persons in society, the tobacco chewer and smoker is the least amenable to the Moral Proprieties. Subjects which come up for investigation having moral relations to individual or public welfare, however elaborately and clearly elucidated, are not readily apprehended by the tobacco-drunkard. He walks surrounded by those great affectional and emotional relations into which God always introduces the sincere spirit, as one walks in a vain show. Delicate distinctions which necessarily exist oftentimes between right and wrong, dividing them as by a hair, cannot be seen and understood by the tobacco-drunkard. From the first day of the year to the last he is under immoral conditions. The Passional Forces, or those that find their point of efficient action at the base of his brain, are uppermost in him. The Moral Forces, or those which work themselves up into vigor through the action of that portion of the brain which

is mapped out by the coronal region, are benumbed, or nearly dead. Gradually the Manly and Divine die out of him, steadily the Beastly develops itself in him till at length those sentiments and affections, impulses and inspirations, which are well described as the Intuitive Forces of his nature, go into the shadow and have no directing power in the shaping of his life or the exhibitions of his conduct. At length, though naturally endowed with more than ordinarily intimate relations to the True, the Noble and the Good, he becomes intimately associated with the False, the Ignoble and the Mean, and unless vicarious effort is made for him he is a lost man.

I do not believe there is a minister occupying any pulpit in the United States, who, having the courage to go into an investigation of this subject at this point, will not find those church members and members of his congregation who habitually use tobacco in any of its forms,—no matter what are their natural endowments, or conditions of intellectual culture,—to show decidedly inferior moral perceptions to such other members of his church and congregation as do not use it.

If this view be true,—and I have not the least question of it,—then all right-minded persons who have the welfare of individuals and of society at heart, may readily discern what is the chief obstruction to the progress of all such Reforms, as, for their success, are dependent upon a well-educated and well-instructed moral sense. So well satisfied am I of the truth of this view, that I cherish not the least hope that Christianity can make any very decided and marked progress in controlling human affairs, whether these relate to private or to public life, while the physical habits of living of our people remain as they are. Clothed with Divine power as Christianity is, and amply sufficient to reach all the ills on earth to which human life is heir, provided she can have her regenerative forces expended in right directions, as matters go, she is comparatively impotent. Only such classes of our people as by natural organization and endowment are more favorably related to the perception of truth, and its absorption into their higher natures, feel the benefits of the Gospel and work up into their lives its great practical benignities. The masses of mankind lie outside of the sweep of Christian influence, and while they retain their present habits of life must be, in the very nature of the case, subjected to the control of their appetites and passions, rather than of their higher faculties, and as a consequence in great numbers become the victims of mere animal indulgence.

In the production of results so greatly to be deplored, there is no single habit which is so efficient as that of using tobacco. I call, therefore, upon all good people,—men and women who appreciate the worth of human nature, and are engaged in efforts to elevate, and so far as it is given unto them to save it,—to place themselves,—not individually, but collectively—against the use of this poison.

The past generation is already ruined by it; the present generation is being ruined by it; and God, who is entirely just, and whose Laws are his testimonies in behalf of right doing, and everywhere against the doing of wrong, will assuredly visit the sins of the fathers, in this respect, upon the children, to the third and fourth generation.

Considered from this point of view alone, the evil effects of the use of tobacco are incalculable. No man who uses it can ever hope to be the father of a child whose relations to life can be considered as favorable as they might be, had not his father been addicted to its use; whereas had his father not used it, the child might have been born with vigorous physical constitution, and in time, under proper opportunities, have grown to be a vigorously intellectual and moral man, rightly proportioned, harmoniously developed, and well balanced. He now finds his life from the start to be abnormal, his body constitutionally feeble, his appetites and passions energetic and difficult to control, his intellect erratic, his moral sense dull and not readily impressible, and thus his parents are compelled to address themselves to the formation of his character under circumstances which relate him unfavorably to society, and to the shaping and the working out of his more important and higher relations.

When shall we learn how to live? May the Divine Spirit, whose office it is to quicken the human soul, and change it till it be transformed and swallowed up, O Christ, in thee, teach us all the way of wisdom; for her ways are ways of pleasantness and her paths are peace.