480 The Physiological Position of Tobacco. [October, 
in the case of chewing and snuffing, and to that combined 
with the empyreumatic oil in smoking. Nicotine, as this 
essential principle is called, is so deadly an alkaloid, that the 
amount of it contained in one cigar, if-extracted and admi- 
nistered in a pure state, would suffice to kill two men. 
According to the experiments of Vohl and Eulenberg, the 
nicotine is decomposed in.the process of smoking into pyri- 
dine, picoline, and other poisonous alkaloids, which can 
also be obtained in varying quantities by the destructive 
distillation of other vegetable substances. 
Nicotine, as for convenience we may continue to call the 
poisonous principles of tobacco, can enter the body through 
various channels—by the stomach, by the lungs, by sub- 
cutaneous injection, and by the skin itself. But in what- 
ever manner it enters the human system, its effects are, in 
the main, uniform. 
The most immediately noticeable symptom following 
smoking is the undue acceleration of the labouring forces of 
the heart. Under the stimulus of tobacco the heart beats 
more quickly, as is evidenced by the rising pulse. We have 
not the mass of detailed evidence as to this fact which 
exists in relation to alcohol, but the experiments made by 
Dr. Edward Smith, and related to the British Association 
in 1864, are full of interest. ‘‘ The experiments were made 
at 10 p.m., when the rate of pulsation naturally declines (as 
he had proved by hourly experiments published in his work 
on the ‘‘ Cyclical Changes of the Human System”), and at 
least four hours after any fluid or solid food had been taken. 
They were made in the sitting posture, after it had been 
maintained fifteen minutes, and with the most absolute 
quietude of body and mind; and thus all influences were 
eliminated but those due to the tobacco. ‘The rate of the 
pulsation was taken every minute for a period beginning 
two or three minutes before the smoking began, and con- 
tinuing during twenty minutes or until the pipe was 
exhausted. 
The following are the chief results obtained :— 
Experiment I. 
Pulsation before smoking was 74} per minute. 
Smoking 6 minutes—79, 77, 80, 78, 78, 77 per minute=78'I 
average. 
Smoking 7 minutes—83, 87, 88, 94, 98, 102, 102 per minute 
= 93 Andverage. 
Smoking 8 minutes—I05, 105, 104, 105, 105, 107, 107, 110 
per minute = 106 average. 
