Waterbury Democrat., 1902-05-19
TOBACCO TRADITIONS.

The belief that tobacco smoke is disinfectant has long been popularly held. As long ago as 1888 Dr Paul Tassinari of Pisa subjected the germs of verious deadly diseases (such as anthrax, shOlera and typhus fever) to the action of dense clouds of imprison- ed tobacco smoke during periods of 100 to 15O hours and he came to the conclusion that in most cases, and eS- pecially when large cigars had been employed as generators, the develop ment of pathogenic bacteria was ei- ther partially or wholly arrested But nobody retains smoke in his mouth for 100 hours at a time, An occasional pipe, indeed, scarcely counts in com parison with Dr Tassinari's intense soaking process. Besides, under the conditions imposed by the Italian in vestigator, would not the smoke of as that of cigars.
 It is recorded that during the Great Plague children were told to smoke in their schoolrooms. The idea was probably borrowed from the custom of the buriers of the dead on their way, in charge of dead-carts, to Holywell Mount. We read in s'A Brief Abstract of the Virtues of the American Tobac- co Plant" published in 17S3, that at first these persons only used tobacco as deodorizer, little thinking that what they used for momentary relief would prove a constant preventive When the plague was happily stayed the virtues of tobacco began to be in- vestigated; it was found that those persons who plentifully used it, either in smoking or snufing, had most won- derfully escaped the dire contagion: for though they visited the chambers of the sick, attended the funerals of carloads at a time. they unexpectedly avoided the Infection The writer even goes so far as to advance the theory that since Europe took to smok- ing epidemics had greatly decreased and we find him stating the belief that dealers in tobacco were secure from plauge-in-infection Yet he can assign no reason why tobacco should prove so valuable as disinfectant ex- cept in so far as it fortifies the head against calculations.
 Workmen in tobacco factories are often cited as being immune from cholera and other epidemics It is in- teresting to trace this belief back Abroad it probably received it's first impetus in Toulouse, where shortly before the revolution the workmen in the state tobacco factory are said to have remained immune during a dead- ly epidemic of suette Sweating sick ness). The belief may. perhaps, be of the nature of folklore. The med- tory the poorer parts of Bordeaux state factory thought that this local industry was a veritable blessing to a damp and foggy town. .sThe piq- uant and ammoniacal emanations arising from the tobacco qualify the air and diminish ts insalubrity. Be fore the establishment of this fac tory the poorer parts of Bordeaxu had been ravaged by epidemics and contagious now unknown. The-de rate among the tobacco workmen is, he adds, very low, while very few cases of illness occur among them, al though they are in general ill-1odged and clothed and even worse fed.'' s We have no new facts to add in evil dence of the value of tobacco smok- ing in epidemic disease. As yet, at any rate. thereSis nothing authoritative to be saids From the Lancet.
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