universal concussion to the body, and promote a more free circulation of the blood; but of this benefit snuff-takers are deprived, from being familiar with its use." When the stimulus of snuff ceases to be sufficient, recourse is immediately had to certain admixtures, by which the necessary excitement is procured; thus pepper, euphorbium, hellebore, and even pulverised glass, are made use of to give it additional pungency. Snuffing is also a frequent cause of blindness. Nature has appointed certain fluids to nourish and preserve the eye, which, if withdrawn, cause the sight to become prematurely old, impaired by weakness, and sometimes totally destroyed. We are also told that it dries up and blackens the brain, and gives the stomach a yellow hue;* that it injures the moral faculties, impairs the memory, and, indeed, debilitates all the intellectual powers, and that it taints the breath with the rank odour of a tobacco cask." "We read in the Ephemerides des Curieux de la Nature, that a person fell into a state of somnolency, and died apoplectic, in consequence of having taken by the nose too great a quantity of snuff." In fine, snuffing is said to bring on convulsions, promote pulmonary consumption, and to cause madness and death! Napoleon is thought to have owed his death to a morbid state of stomach, superinduced by snuffing to excess. Dr. Rush relates that Sir John Pringle was afflicted with tremors in his hands, and had his memory impaired by the use of snuff; when, on abandoning the habit, at the instance of Dr. Franklin, he found his power of recollection restored, and he recovered the use of his hands. ‡

When the habit of snuffing is once contracted, it becomes almost impossible to divest ourselves of it. It becomes as necessary as food, or any of those first wants of life "quibus negatis natura doleat." The following story we translate from a French medical writer :

"Qu'on ne pense pas, malgré l'usage immense et presque general du tabac, qu'il n'y ait aucun inconvenient a s'en servir. Les auteurs rapportent des faits qui prouvent le contraire, et sans ajouter foi a ce que raconte Borrichius (dans un lettre ecrite a Bartholin) d'une personne qui s'etait tellement desséché le cerveau a force de prendre du tabac, qu'aprés sa mort, on ne lui trouva dans le crâne, au lieu d'encephale, qu'un petit grumeau noir; ni meme à ce que dit Simon Pauli, que ceux qui fument trop de tabac ont le cerveau et la crâne tout noirs, nonplus qu'a l'assertion de Van Helmont qui a vu, affirme-t-il, un estomac teint enjaune par la vapeur du tabac; tout le monde sait qu'il affaiblit l'odorat par suite de ses irritations répétées sur la membrane olfactive, qu'il nuit a l'integrité du gout, parce qu'il en passe toujours un peu dans la bouche et jusque sur la langue. Ce que l'on n'ignore pas nonplus c'est qu'il dérange la memoire, la rends moins nette, moins entière; il produit de plus des vertiges, des cépha lées et meme l'apoplexie.”—Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales, art. Tabac. † Orfila's Toxicology, p. 291.

Essays, p. 265.

"I recollect, about twenty years since, while gathering simples one day in the Forest of Fontainebleau, I encountered a man stretched out upon the ground; I supposed him to be dead, when, upon approaching, he asked in a feeble voice if I had some snuff; on my replying in the negative, he sunk back immediately, almost in a state of insensibility. In this condition he remained till I brought a person who gave him several pinches, and he then informed us that he had commenced his journey that morning, supposing he had his snuff-box with him, but found very soon he had started without it; that he had travelled as long as he was able, till at last, overcome by distress, he found it impossible to proceed any farther, and without my timely succour he would have certainly perished."

The consumption of time and great expense of this artificial habit, almost surpass belief. "A man who takes a pinch of snuff every twenty minutes," says Dr. Rush, "(which most habitual snuffers do), and snuffs fifteen hours in four-and-twenty, (allowing him to consume not quite half a minute every time he uses the box,) will waste about five whole days of every year of his life in this useless and unwholesome practice. But when we add to the profitable use to which this time might have been applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes

and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate than Dr. Rush; "Every professed, inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker," says he, "at a moderate computation, takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes a minute and a half. One minute and a half out of every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff-taking day, amounts to two hours and twenty-four minutes out of every natural day, or one day of every ten. One day out of ten amounts to thirty six days and a half in a year. Hence, if we suppose the practice to be persisted in forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be devoted to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it." The same author proposes in a subsequent essay to show, that from the expense of snuff, snuff-boxes, and handkerchiefs, a fund might be formed to pay off the English National debt!

The subject of snuffing having employed more of our time than we anticipated, the two following heads of smoking and chewing will be more briefly noticed. On the subject of smoking, Mr. Beloe has preserved the following old epigram. †

* M. Merat.

† Sketches of Literature and Scarce books, vol. ii. p. 130.

which modern physicians are pleased to consider so pestiferous and baleful, let us attend for a few moments to what has been said concerning its culture and manufacture. Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes, says that its culture is productive of infinite wretchedness; that it is found easier to make 100 bushels of wheat than 1000 pounds of tobacco, and that they are worth more when made. Davies, in his History of the Carriby Islands, after giving an account of the culture and preparation of tobacco, adds, "that if the people of Europe who are so fond of it, had themselves seen the poor servants and slaves who are employed about this painful work, exposed the greatest part of the day to the scorching heat of the sun, and spending one half of the night in reducing it to that posture wherein it is transported into Europe; no doubt they would have a greater esteem for, and think much more precious that herb which is procured with the sweat and labours of so many miserable creatures. "t

Numerous medical writers, of the justest celebrity, have assured us, that endless and dreadful evils are the portion of all who are engaged in the manufacture of tobacco; that the workmen are in general meagre, jaundiced, emaciated, asthmatic, subject to colic, diarrheas, to vertigo, violent headach, and muscular twitchings, to narcotism, and to various diseases of the breast and lungs. They have also declared that some of these evils have befallen families from the fact alone of being in the neighbourhood of a tobacco manufactory. § Ramazzini says that even the horses employed in the tobacco mills are most powerfully affected by the particles of the tobacco. Now if these things be true, when we call to mind the countless multitudes employed in this "dreadful trade," what a throng of evils present themselves upon the very threshold of our subject. In this view of the case, one could not pass such a manufactory without an involuntary shudder, regarding it as a charnel house, or rather as a Pandora's box, to those wretched beings who are doomed to work or dwell within its pestilential precincts. But in spite of the various and

Notes on Virginia, pp. 278, 279.

Davies' Hist. of the Carriby Islands, fol. p. 192.

Ramazzini also says that the breath of those who labour at tobacco is intolerably offensive, “efficit, ut tabacariarum semper fœteant animæ.”

"Tanta enim ex illâ tritura partium tenuim," says Ramazzini, "æstate præsertim, diffunditur exhalatio, ut tota vicinia tabaci odorem, non sine querimonia, et nausea persentiat."

Puellam hebræam novi, quæ tota die explicandas placentas istas ex tabaco incumbens, magnum ad vomitum irritamentum sentiebat, et frequenter alvi subductiones patiebatur, mihique narrabat, vasa hemorroidalia multum sanguinis profudisse, cum super placentas illas sederet.

Tourtel, in his Elémens d'Hygiène tom. ii. p. 410, assures us it is very dangerous to sleep in tobacco magazines. He cites an observation of Buchoz, who says that a little girl, five years old, was seized with frightful vomitings, and expired in a very short time from this sole cause.

respectable testimony which has been produced by writers opposed to the use of tobacco, we cannot help regarding their statements as exceedingly exaggerated. We have not space to enter into a more minute examination of this portion of our subject, but to such of our readers as may feel desirous of prosecuting the inquiry, we take great pleasure in recommending a very able memoir by Messieurs Parent-Duchatelet and D'Arcet,* in which the whole subject of the effects of tobacco upon the persons connected with its manufacture, is most satisfactorily discussed, and the opinions and assertions of those who have gone so far as to declare that it was even necessary to the public health that the manufactories of tobacco should be removed out of large towns because of their great insalubrity, shown to be either without any just grounds, or the results of prejudice and ignorance.

The fecundity of this plant is marvellous. Linnæus has calculated that a single plant of tobacco contains 40,320 grains, and says that if each seed came to perfection, the plants of tobacco in vegetation in the course of four years, would be more than sufficient to cover the whole surface of the earth. We are elsewhere informed that these seeds preserve their germinative properties for six years and even longer. "Sir Thomas Browne observes," says Mather, "that of the seeds of tobacco, a thousand make not one grain, (though Otto de Guericke, as I remember, says, fifty-two cyphers with one figure would give the number of those which would fill the space between us and the stars,) a plant which has extended its empire over the whole world, and has a larger dominion than any of all the vegetable kingdom."'+ Our readers may very easily amuse themselves by making calculations on the immense consumption and value of this plant. The following account from a French medical writer, will be sufficient. On a rough calculation, the tobacco sold yearly in France amounts to 40,000,000 pounds weight, which at three francs per pound, the ordinary price, will make the enormous annual sum of 120,000,000 francs. One-fourth of the French population use tobacco, so that of 8,000,000 of human beings, each individual consumes annually, in the various forms of snuffing, chewing, and smoking, about six pounds. This quantity may seem too great for some persons, but it should be remembered that there are many who use a dozen or twenty pounds in the course of the year.

If we contemplate man in connexion with tobacco as a necessary, the juxtaposition cannot fail to strike us as exceedingly

This memoir is entitled "Influence du tabac sur la santé des ouvriers," and is published in the "Annales d'hygiène publique et de medecine legale,” fir volume, April, 1829-p. 169.

† Mather's Christian Philosopher, p. 128.

+ M. Merat.

ludicrous. From the earliest ages of philosophy, it has been a favourite employment of the wise to propose such definitions of man as should fully distinguish him from the rest of animated nature, and yet no definition of ancient times will, we are satisfied, appear so excellently discriminative as one which grows out of our present subject, and which denominates him the only tobacco loving animal, for (to pass over the tobacco-worm) the only creature known beside man, whose nature does not abhor tobacco, is, as Dr. Rush informs us, the solitary rock goat of Africa, one of the wildest and most filthy of animals. Were it possible," says he, "for a being who had resided on our globe, to visit the inhabitants of a planet where reason governed, and to tell them that a vile weed was in general use among the inhabitants of the globe it had left, which afforded no nourishment; that this weed was cultivated with immense care, that it was an important article of commerce, that the want of it produced real misery, that its taste was extremely nauseous, that it was unfriendly to health and morals, and that its use was attended with a considerable loss of time and property, the account would be thought incredible."* It is idle to speak of tobacco, as being "extremely nauseous," that it is the "meanest and most paltry of all gratifications," &c. Had not man discovered in it a delight and comfort which was to be derived from few other sources, the habitual use of tobacco would long since have been neglected. To say man uses tobacco for no other reason but its offensiveness, is a solecism; scarcely would it be more absurd to adopt the habitual use of castor oil as a cordial, or assafoetida as a perfume. On this subject Mr. Chamberett has a very interesting passage, which, as it is so well expressed by the author, we take the liberty of offering to our readers in his own language.

"Observons," says he, "que l'homme, en vertu de son organization a sans cesse besoin de sentir, que presque toujours il est malheureux, soit par les fleaux que la nature lui envoie, soit par les tristes resultats de ses passions aveugles, de ses erreurs de ses prejugés, de son ignorance, &c. Le tabac exercant sur nos organes une impression vive et forte, susceptible d'etre renouvelée frequemment et a volonté, on s'est livré avec d'autant plus d'ardeur a l'usage d'un semblable stimulant qu'on y a trouvé a la fois le moyen de satisfaire le besoin imperieux de sentir, qui caracterise la nature humaine, et celui d'etre distrait momentanément des sensations pénibles ou douloureuses qui assiégent sans cesse notre espèce, que le tabac aide ainsi a supporter l'accablant fardeau de la vie. Avec le tabac, le sauvage endure plus courageusement la faim, la soif, et toutes les vicissitudes atmospheriques, l'esclave endure plus patiemment la servitude, &c. Parmi les hommes qui se disent civilisés, son recours est souvent invoqué contre l'ennui, la tristesse; il soulage quelquefois momentanement les tourmens de l'ambition déçues de ses esperances, et concourt a consoler, dans certains cas les malheureuses victimes de l'injustice."

Dr. Walsh says that tobacco used with coffee, after the Turk

• Rush's Essays, p. 261.

Flore Medicale, tom. six. p. 205.