It plainly appears,
That in a few years,
Tobacco more custom hath gained
Than sack or than ale,
Though they double the tale,
Of the times, wherein they have reigned."

"When, sir, I see the pale and sallow faces of habitual smokers; when hear them deplore the habit (or rather the necessity); when I hear them confess that they are unable to begin their day's work without a pipe (or, at least, they would be miserable without the indulgence); when I see our College servants aping their masters, and thinking it fine to be seen with a villainous cigar or 'short clay' in their mouths; when I see the boys of Oxford (and even the little white-robed choristers of our College chapel) taking up the odious habit, making their little faces thin and pale, and running their constitutions; when I see all this, what conclusion can I come to but that tobacco is an evil—a tremendous evil; that Sir Walter Ralegh has been a curse to his country; that to him the sickly faces, stunted forms, and shortened lives of so many of our once sturdy countrymen, are in a great degree owing."

"To commence the downward course is too easy—to retrace the false step is too difficult; the risk is too great, the advantage too infinitesimally small, the interests at stake too supremely important, to allow the student once to begin. It is no sign of manliness to toy with danger, and sport upon the brink of a precipice. The impulse which may plunge the unreflecting boy into ruin may come, he knows not when, nor with how great force; let him prove his strength by avoiding, not by courting, danger.

"Let us enquire further, whether the physiological effects produced in the course of smoking afford any indications to what constitutes excess. Profuse salvation can hardly be compatible with the idea of moderation. Perpetual irritation of a mucous membrane can hardly be kept up with impunity. A large proportion of smokers must be aware that heartburn, eructations and apepsia surely follow one or two pipes, or one or two cigars, beyond the wonted allowance. The same excess is certainly followed by loss of appetite, and especially by loss of morning relish of food. Let the pulse be watched. Does it not decline in frequency below the normal standard, and is it not irregular after a very slight excess? Do not palpitation and prœcordial anxiety much oftener annoy the habitual smoker than he would exactly like to confess? Is not the inclination to seek the recumbent posture, or to respire cold air, of frequent occurrence, when the smoker would hardly like to own it? Do not giddiness, dimness of vision, tremors, nausea, clammy perspirations, and tinnitus aurium frequently occur in the course of a long smoke? And do not each and all of these effects clearly and irrefragably establish excess in every case? We affirm most unhesitatingly that, setting aside idiosyncrasies, there is hardly an habitual smoker to excess who cannot be

"It is almost unnecessary to make a separate inquiry into the pathological conditions which follow upon excessive smoking. They have been referred to by the way. Moreover, abundant evidence has been adduced in the correspondence in our columns of the gigantic evils which attend the abuse of tobacco. Let it be granted at once that there is such a thing as moderate smoking, and let it be admitted that we cannot accuse tobacco of being guilty of the whole of Cullen's "Nosology," it still remains that there is a long catalogue of frightful penalties attached to its abuse.

"Let us briefly recapitulate:

"(1) To smoke early in the day is excess.

"(2) As people are generally constituted, to smoke more than one or two pipes of tobacco, or one or two cigars daily is excess.

"(3) Youthful indulgence in smoking is excess.

"(4) There are physiological indications which, occurring in any individual case, are criteria of excess.

"We most earnestly desire to see the habit of smoking diminished, and we entreat the youth of this country to abandon it altogether. Let them to give up a dubious pleasure for a certain good. Ten years hence we shall receive their thanks."

"Most of these results I have selected from authors of some locus standi, amongst whom I may mention Doctors Prout, Brigat, Laycock, Radcliffe, Ranking, Pereira, Orfeila, Trousseau, Johnstone, Sir Benjamin Brodie, and Professor Lizars."

"The quantity of this poisonous weed entered for 'home consumption,' in the eleven months ending November 1856, was 29,776,082 pounds. The deleterious

"The tendency of Germans to diseases of the lungs may be traced to their incredible passion for smoking, and our principal medical men and physiologists compute that out of twenty deaths of men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, ten originate in the waste of the constitution by smoking.

"So frequently is vision impaired by the constant use of tobacco, that spectacles may be said, to be a part and parcel of a German, as a hat is to an Englishman.

"In America, likewise, where my practice has extended, I have noted the same pernicious effects, and it is a well attested fact that the Americans wear themselves out by the use of tobacco."

"For several years past the discussion of what has been called the 'tobacco question' has engaged the attention of medical, as well as non-medical writers in Great Britain, and my quondam fellow-student, Mr. Solly, now a surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital, London, has taken a prominent part in the discussion, and although the evils of excessive smoking prevail as extensively in Quebec, as in Great Britain, the medical profession to which the public looks as the rational exponent of sound principles in relation to man's health and physical habits, has hitherto been almost silent on the subject. If any medical man feels that by simply raising his voice he may

"'The profession,' says Mr. Solly, 'have no idea of the ignorance of the public regarding the nature of tobacco. Even intelligent, well educated men stare in astonishment when you tell them tobacco is one of the most powerful poisons we possess. Now is this right? Has the medical profession done its duty? Ought we not, as a body, to have told the public that of all our poisons, it is the most insidious, uncertain, and in full doses the most deadly?'

"Dr. Lizars enumerates the constitutional effects of tobacco by stating that they are 'numerous and varied, consisting of giddiness, sickness, vomiting, dyspepsia, vitiated taste of the mouth, loose bowels, diseased liver, congestion of the brain, apoplexy, palsy, mania, loss of memory, amaurosis, deafness, nervousness, emasculation, and cowardice.'

"Frightful as is this list of ills, I can from my own experience endorse its accuracy, and yet how large a number of our own profession are addicted to the vice, and how fatal must be the effect of their example upon the unthinking.

"Professor Laycock, of Edinburgh University, says in a most temperate paper in the Medical Gazette, October 2, 1846: 'I have known many instances in which I was unable to prove that the ordinary use of tobacco did any harm; I have known many more in which I could prove that it did do harm; and I have not known any good from it that might not have been obtained by other less objectionable means.'

"I will only make a few more extracts from Dr. Lizar's paper, in order to support the view I have enunciated that tobacco is the fruitful source of paralytic affections:

"'Congestion of the brain, which is a frequent precursor of palsy, occurs almost only in those much addicted to smoking, in whom a cigar is never out of the mouth. It is denoted by headache, want of sleep, or rather restless nights, and occasionally flushing of the countenance. Apoplexy has been noticed by several authors supervening the smoking of tobacco, also the immoderate use of snuff.

"'I lately visited a gentleman in a lunatic asylum,' says Dr. Lizars, 'labouring under general paralysis, and his mind becoming idiotic. On corresponding with his former medical attendant, I understand his habits were temperate as regarded drink, but he worked hard in a mercantile house and smoked to excess.'

"Dr. Webster cites among the causes of mental diseases the great use of tobacco, and he supports this opinion by a reference to the statistics of insanity in Germany.

"'Loss of memory,' says Dr. Lizars, 'takes place in an extraordinary degree in the smoker, much more so than in the drunkard.'

"A valued and talented medical friend, whose pipe is scarcely out of his mouth when at leisure, is an instance of the foregoing condition, and who, besides, suffers from fearful neuralgic attacks of the head; but alas! I have failed to convince him that tobacco is in any way the cause. To all who have suffered or may be suffering under the pernicious influences of tobacco, I cannot give any more useful or proper advice than is contained in the stereotyped phrase of Dr. Lizars, in the treatment of the different species of disease, induced by the use of tobacco, 'Throw away tobacco for ever.'

"The effects of tobacco on the body are both general and local; it acts on the nervous centres and on the heart, as well as on the parts with which the smoke or the juice comes immediately in contact. It usually finds expression in what is vaguely called 'nervousness,' the pulse becomes flurried, and the muscles more or less relaxed and unsteady: this is why smoking is so strictly forbidden to men training for athletic feats.

"An occasional pipe or cigar would probably not be hurtful, but trainers are unanimous in forbidding tobacco in any form. The cause of their attitude in this matter is, no doubt, the fear that moderation might lead to excess, and convinced as I am of the deplorable effects of over-indulgence in smoking on steadiness and precision of muscular movement, I cannot say that I feel surprised at the apprehension of trainers.

"So marked is the effect of tobacco in relaxing the whole of the muscular system, that before the days of chloroform it was employed in surgical operation, in which it was necessary that the muscles should be perfectly limp.

"It will thus be readily understood that under the influence of a drug possessing these properties, the delicate adjustments of the complicated vocal machinery are to some extent disordered, and the voice is out of tune and harsh.

"Something analagous to what takes place in the eye as the result of the abuse of tobacco occurs in the larynx, or in the part of the brain which governs the movement of that organ. Oculists are familiar with "tobacco amblyopia," that is, dimness of sight, due to what may be called figuratively, blurring of the retina by tobacco smoke.

"The tongue often suffers severely from the effects of tobacco. Small excoriations, blisters, superficial inflammation, and white patches are formed on the surface of the organ, and a permanently unhealthy condition is

"The same observation applies to the superficial ulceration which affects the sides of the root of the tongue. In this situation there are a number of delicate projections, or so-called "papillœ," the exquisitely fine points of which readily become inflamed when exposed to irritation. It is in this situation that cancer of the tongue is exceedingly apt to commence.

"Smoking at times causes chronic inflammation of the lips, which gives rise to cracks which are always very troublesome, and not infrequently end in deadly disease.

"The effects of smoking on the throat, when the habit has not been too long indulged in, can as a rule be easily cured by the simple remedy of discontinuing the practice which engenders them. In considering the evils produced by smoking, it should be borne in mind that there are two bad qualities in the fumes of tobacco: the one is the poisonous nicotine, and the other is the high temperature of the burning tobacco. The Oriental hookah, in which the smoke is cooled by being passed through water before reaching the mouth, is probably the least harmful form of indulgence in tobacco; and the cigarette, which is so much in vogue now-a-days, is most certainly the worst. It owes this 'bad eminence' to the very mildness of its action, people being tempted to smoke all day long, and easily accustoming themselves to inhale the fumes into their lungs, and thus saturating their lungs with poison.

"If smoking is indulged in to excess the habit is always injurious, and I am sure that a great many persons either cannot see, or wilfully shut their eys to, the 'scientific frontier' which separates moderation from abuse.

"To conclude with a little practical advice: Let him who wishes to keep in the 'perfect way' refrain from inhaling smoke, and take it as an axiom, that the man in whom tobacco increases the flow of saliva to any marked degree is not intended by nature to smoke."