680 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



drink often to give themselves heart, murderers especially ; while 

 there is not a case known, as M. Aurelian Schole has observed, of 

 a crime committed with pipe or cigar in the mouth. The author 

 himself confesses that he dulled his conscience with tobacco for a 

 long time. It had not, it is true, many reproaches to address to 

 him. Sometimes it reproved him for idleness, or admonished him 

 for a neglect, or a want of punctuality, or an excess of passion in 

 which he had not measured his tone. To quench his remorse he 

 lighted a cigar, and all was forgotten. If tobacco had never com- 

 mitted worse misdeeds, nobody, I believe, would have thought of 

 quarreling with it. 



Other modes of voluntary intoxication have the common char- 

 acteristic of deranging the reason and the moral sense. Hashish 

 produces hallucinations and delirium, and plunges persons into a 

 condition like madness. Opium puts to sleep, and procures for 

 some persons agreeable dreams ; but one becomes quickly habitu- 

 ated to it, the doses have to be increased, all the functions flag, 

 and the opium-smoker falls into a condition of inanity, at times 

 interrupted by fits of homicidal furor. Morphinomaniacs do not 

 suffer the same perversion of mind, but they become false, dis- 

 simulating, indifferent to all that is foreign to their passion, ex- 

 tending to family feeling and even to honor. Their health is in- 

 jured more quickly than by opium-smoking, and their life is 

 shortened as much. Alcoholism is still worse. I have studied its 

 effects in all their phases in another work, and will not repeat 

 my conclusions now. It is sufficient to recollect that the ignoble 

 and degrading vice attacks nations in all their vital forces ; fami- 

 lies in their honor, fortune, and prosperity ; that it peoples hospi- 

 tals, insane asylums, and prisons ; and costs France a milliard and 

 a half of francs a year. 



Tobacco can be reproached with no such mischief. It has 

 never led the reason astray, destroyed the will, or perverted the 

 sensibility of any one. The most hardened smoker enjoys at all 

 times the most perfect clearness of mind. Even at the moment 

 when he is under the influence of nicotine he talks, reasons, stud- 

 ies, and works with a freedom of thought that proves that his in- 

 telligence has not received any harm. One might say that tobacco 

 had disengaged him from physical impressions, and that, as Dr. 

 Richet says, it mollifies the sensibility of the organs only to leave 

 the psychical functions greater freedom of evolution. 



There is another characteristic difference between tobacco and 

 other voluntary poisons. A person can break up the habit of 

 using tobacco, while alcoholism and morphinomania are almost 

 incurable. At the end of my long career I can not recollect having 

 witnessed more than two or three cures from alcoholism, and I 

 can not affirm that they would have been permanent if the sub- 



