The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-03-18
Temperance.
Tobacco and Its Use.

ana CdnnlDalS, OF WHICH advantage luS |
defenders are at liberty to make the
most.
BY excluding ladies from many a
breakfast and dinner-party, it withdraws |
from gentlemen disagreeable re-
straint.
An advantage is suggested on the |
score of economy, in that it impairs the |
appetite so that less food is required.
This reminds one of Mr.. Squeers' GUS
tom in Dotheboys Hall of dosing his |
boys every morning with sulphur and |
treadle that they might have less capac-
ity for eating. AS to the cost of tobacco
in money, time, health and doctors, in
comparison with that of nourishing food,
judge vel
Still another benefit, according to a
doctor of divinity whose experience en-
titles him to implicit credit, is that the
habit gives to man "a sense of deep
standardization of which his unpartak-
ing brethren can know very little"
1t is pleaded that it is safeguard
against malarial diseases. But DR..
Solly makes answer {" dispute the
alleged benefits of even moderate to-
bacco-smoking as a preventive of damp
or malaria"
There are some who claim that it is
an aid to digestion. Says DIR. Alcott:
"The reverse would be more true. In
deed l have never known dozen
tobacco users-and my acquaintance
has been extended to Observation-Disclosures
digestive energies were not, in the end,
more or less impaired by it,
DR.. Grimshaw writes "Tobacco is
injurious by depressing the nervous
power, by injuring the salivary glands,
and by creating an undue secretion of
saliva"
To the same effect is the testimony
of DR.. Harris of the New York dis
pensary: The functions of digestion
and nutrition are impaired; and though,
in some cases, tobacco may for a time
appear to relieve irritability of the
stomach, it eventually cripples and al
most destroys the digestive powers"
The sum and substance of this argu-
ment, medically interpreted, seems to
be that this drug acts like a whip to an
Overburdened beast, forcing the stomach
to efforts which exhaust and enfeeble
it, till at last it gives out and dyspepsia
ensues.
1t is urged that tobacco stimulates the
mental powers. On this point DR.. Har-
ris writes: "A moderate indulgence
may, for a brief period, enliven the i'm
agination, accelerate the thoughts, and
give pleasing sense of intellectual
vigor; but, under such unnatural stimu-
lus, the intellect works neither reliably
nor safely; and the reaction and stupor
which necessarily succeed more than
counterbalance the largest measure
even of apparent gain. And he who
resorts to such eXpedients will soon find
that not only has he been fascinated
and deceived, but that he has literally
sold himself into physical and mental
bondage from which escape is almost
impossible"
In regard to the arguments of those
who have raised the lance in defence
of tobacco as helpful stimulant, quot
ing DR.. Anstie and his followers, l have
taken pains to consult many wise ones,
and may venture to report from high
authority brief reply to this defence:
Psychologists, and the medical pro-
fession generally, accept as axioms the
principles that, in small doses, all the
narcotics represented by opium, tobacco,
the deadly nightshade, strychnine, and
other similar drugs, are stimulants, not
tonics; that is, in these small doses
they increase the rate of action or liv-
ing, without adding to the strength or
means of living; that the degree of
stimulation varies in different members
of the group of narcotics, it being very
slight and transient in tobacco-the
soothing that is, the narcotic effect,
being the result usually sought and
speedily reached; that the assertion
that food and stimulus are equally in
dispensable is an utter fallacy: that
any drug-stimulation in health is unnec-
essary and mischievous; that all such
stimulation is followed by gradual loss
of healthful vigor in the tissues and the
organs involved; and that, while these
effects may accumulate slowly, the ag-
gregate result of many years of even
moderate indulgence is almost inev-
itably seen in broken health and less
ened efficiency, as we'll as in the pres
ence of positive disease"
| have never known an habitual
consumer of tobacco to have the typhoid
fever" So, by way of consolation,
says one of the doctors. But what say
others of the fraternity?
A Bay State doctor reports the case
of an habitual - smoker "who has
had typhoid fever every summer for
five years" And a physician from
the state of New York knows a con-
firmed user of tobacco who, "for a
series of years, has had an annual at
tack of fever" Another physician
living in a mining country, where all
use the weed, aflirms that he could r6
port hundreds of similar cases. Indeed
so far from tobaccos being protection
against typhoid fever, it is the opinion
of eminent doctors that, by enfeebline
the system, it renders men more sus-
ceptible to this as well as other diseases
Tobacco smoke is not vile, noxious
exhalation," declares some one. {" II
does not cOntaminate the air, but tends
to purify it. 1t is an antiseptic princi
ple,, taking up and destroying poisons
in the air."
AS to the remarkable negative asser
ton in the above passage, let it be re
ferred to those whose senses have MOI
been impaired by the use of the weed
Just what the writer means by termins
tobacco smoke "a principle" one car
only guess. But what of the benefit
There is abundant evidence to prove
that tobacco in all its forms-snufling
chewing, and smoking-is itself one o
most fotal Of po;onpo tb;o NV;