TOBACCO. 695 
fe in ia a ae cara eS lat 
tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, 
lands, and health, the ruine, and overthrow of body, and soul.” 
In stories told about smokers C. 8. Calverley has given it as his 
opinion, humorously conveyed :— 
** How they who use fusees 
All grow by slow degrees 
Brainless as chimpanzees, 
Meagre as lizards ; 
Go mad, and beat their wives, 
Plunge (after shocking lives) 
Razors, and carving-knives 
Into their gizzards.” 
Recent experiments have shown, concerning the antiseptic 
powers of Tobacco in smokers, that the microbes of some infec- 
tious diseases become destroyed (if inhaled) by the nicotine 
products which permeate the inside of the smoker’s mouth, and 
fauces; but that other microbes (notably those of diphtheria) 
resist the nicotine odours, and the Tobacco products, these 
microbes continuing to be virulent, and morbidly active. Thus 
those doctors who are habitual smokers, without excess, certainly 
acquire a measure of protection against several of the infectious 
diseases which they are called upon to encounter. But the 
evil effects of Tobacco are intensified in immoderate smokers 
who at the same time indulge in alcoholic drinks. The chief 
poisonous constituent of Tobacco-smoke is pyridin, and not 
nicotine, this pyridin being a poisonous base more readily 
dissolved by alcohol than by water. Pyridin bases can be 
readily traced in the mouth of an immoderate smoker, especially 
in a smoker of cigars. An alcoholic drink is therefore calculated 
to quickly wash out this poisonous oil, and to carry it into the 
stomach; then absorption of the poison ensues, and definite 
toxic symptoms occur, which are due not so much to alcohol, 
or pyridin bases alone, as to the combined action of both 
unitedly in the manner now indicated. Smokers, therefore, 
should abstain from taking any form of alcohol at the same 
time as when making a free use of Tobacco. Ata dinner given 
recently to Mr. Beerbohm Tree by the “ Aborigines Club,” New 
York, after the repast there was supplied, according to the menu, 
“a blackened drink of Savages, hotte, and with sweet flavoure ; 
also coyles of a most strange herbe, ye smoak of which smelleth 
wyth such a magikal, and grevous smelle; ye menne doe be 
strucken wyth rare merryment, and laughter, smoakynge it, 
