The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1880-01-08

armory OF toXlcology, but the human
system, by continued use, may at
length be brought to tolerate it.
One-ffth grain Of strychnia, or one
grain of morphia, will destroy life,
yet, by constant and long continued
use, the blunted susceptibilities of the
nerve centers may be made so to toll
crate those and like poisons that event
ually enough may be taken to destroy
fifty men. It is demonstrated in the
observation Of every one that the use
noxious agents, especially tobacco, be-
gets morbid appetite which demands
that continually more of it may and
must be employed to produce the same
impression.
Such we know are facts respecting G
what is noxious, but is not the case
with what is nutritious. Medical sci
ence is not satisfied with statements,
but sounds the depths in search Of a
philosophy for asserted facts, and she
declares, in this regard, that nutritious
agents create and renew nerve cells
and structures, and endow them with
the finest physiological sensibilities,
while noxious agents disturb the con-
ditions essential to their renewal, and
so benumb and paralyze their normal
sensibilities, and produce inevitably
the pathological and characteristic
condition of requiring continually more
of the disturbing poison to produce
the same impression. With these
truths we enter the most fascinating
field in nature to consider the conduct
of this agent in the laboratory of life.
Nowhere has Deity evinced such eyi-
dences Of an intelligent, divine super
natural as here presented in the adap-
tation of means to ends-in the per-
feet play Of affinities and forces ever
operative in the construction and de-
struction, the waste and renewal, of
this physical citadel that enshrines an
immortal SOUL The whole sublime
but sensitive train of transition in
volved in the conversion of solid food,
first into fuidity, and under the
auspices Of vital force, transformed
upward through intricate gradations
till it attains the climax of its course
in other solid forms, either of flesh or
bone or brain, and then the oxidation
of these and the evolution of heat and
force, is the perfect process of what
we term digestion. The brain is the
depot Of ife's dynamics! 1t is the
sun of the physiological system which,
with its accessory centers and nerve
cords, receive and transmit to the sys-
tenn force that propels the mightiest
and minutest processes of physical life.
But the ability Of these organs-as
instruments of the mind-thus to re-
ceive and transmit this vital force, de-
pends essentially on their structural
health and perfection. Paralyze or
impair the perfection or structural in
tegrity of the brain, disturb the subtitle
harmony of those changes Of waste
and renewal ever operative and essen
tial to its structural perfection, and at
once its power is impaired to forcibly
and healthily perform its functions;
and this adverse influence is precisely
the action of tobacco as a depressing
poison. The proposition is plain, the
truth is self-evident and irresistible,
that, with the nerve centers thus be-
and blighted, and the vital
force impaired, then every digestive
process dependent on the harmonious
action of vital force is weakened and
discordant, and the physical and men
tai man is deranged to the extent that
the physical machinery is injured.
The noxious influence of tobacco is
more actively operative upon one class
Of persons than upon others. [ may,
therefore, for convenience, divide the
victims Of tobacco into two classes, as
signing to the first class all those who