, NICOTINE 



away by the natives under the orders of an English 

 manager. Chinese coolies are then imported. The estate 

 provides each coolie with tools, tea, a barber, and sufficient 

 cash to buy rice, fish, or pork, as well as a little over for his 

 opium, to spend in fireworks, and to propitiate his demons. 



The coolie grows the tobacco, which is bought from him 

 and manufactured by the estate. Some of it goes to India, 

 where it is used as the outer wrapper of cigars.^ 



For adulterating tobacco all sorts of leaves are occasion- 

 ally employed, such as those of the dock, chicory, burdock, 

 foxglove, comfrey, elm, coltsfoot, plantain, beech, cabbage, 

 lettuce (steeped in tar oil), etc., etc. 



The substance nicotine is a deadly and dangerous poison. 

 When young people smoke tobacco, it has been quite con- 

 clusively proved that they will very probably not reach their 

 full growth, but be miserable weaklings, stunted, half- 

 developed, and below the proper standard of a man. 



This is not surprising, if one reflects on the constitution of 

 tobacco smoke. This contains "nicotine, empyreumatic 

 resin, oil, ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, hydro- 

 cyanic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, 

 and paraffin.'^ ^ 



^ Dunning, Tobacco, 1876. 



■^ Journal Society of Arts, March, 1896. 



130 



