488 The Physiological Position of Tobacco. [October, 
Difficulty of breathing approaching asthma has also been 
recorded. Blatin gives a case of a young officer whose 
asthma could be attributed to no other cause, and who was 
cured by simple abstinence and tonic medicines.* 
Tobacco, aéting upon the cardiac and pulmonary branches 
of the pneumogastric, is not likely to leave untouched its 
gastric terminations. In an animal under the influence of 
small doses of nicotine the gastric juice is secreted with 
increased rapidity, and the action of the walls of the 
stomach is more noticeable. With strong doses or long- 
continued usage this secretion is very considerably 
diminished, and the peristaltic motion enfeebled. ‘That is 
to say, the tobacco acts upon the pneumogastric, excites it 
in small, and paralyses it in large, doses. The smoker takes 
his after-dinner pipe or cigar to aid digestion. Undoubtedly, 
it excites the par vagum, increases the gastric secretion, and 
accelerates the peristaltic motion. Undoubtedly, also, this 
daily stimulation enfeebles the nerve, and digestion becomes 
more difficult. The swing back from the excitement causes 
a reaction, which only an increase in the doses can overcome. 
The nerve is partially paralysed. The appetite fails, nutri- 
tion is impeded, dyspepsia reigns conqueror. 
A military man of 37 years fell into a consumption with- - 
out any other affection antecedent or concomitant than 
distaste for food, and salivation. Dr. Roques, after various 
essays, learned that he was a great user of tobacco, which 
had led to a sort of chronic fluxion of the salivary glands, 
and an almost total cessation of the digestive funétions, 
and consequently caused the feeble and consumptive state 
into which he had fallen. Gradual diminution and ultimate 
abandonment of tobacco led to a cure in about three 
months.t 
The influence of tobacco upon vision is well known. 
One of the symptoms produced in acute nicotism is 
blindness, and chronic nicotism gives rise to similar 
affections. Thus Mackenzie found that patients afflicted 
with amaurosis were mostly lovers of tobacco in some form. 
Sichel found cases of complete amaurosis, which, incurable 
by other means, were easily conquered by cessation from 
the weed. Hutchinson found, out of 37 patients, 23 were 
inveterate smokers. ‘The observations of Wordsworth and 
others have so clearly established the fact that the continued 
excitement of the optic nerve by tobacco sometimes pro- 
duces amaurosis, that it is now generally cited in text-books 
as one of the causes of that disease. 
* BLATIN, p. 159, from l’Abeille Méd., t. iii., 1846. 
+ Ibid., p. 165, from Mémoire de Med., et de Chir. Prat., t. v. 
