186 Review. 



are at least fifty years of age. As a sedentary man 

 advances in life, he perspires less, while his lungs 

 labour more. There is an accumulation of viscid 

 phlegm among the inert and almost insensible solids 

 of the lungs, in elderly people, which, in our cold 

 months, especially in February and March, produces 

 a kind of chronic catarrh, or humoral asthma ; for 

 which smoking is beneficial. Here tobacco is a safe 

 and efficacious pectoral. There is, however, a dole- 

 ful difference between the case of a man of sixty-five 

 taking three or four pipes of tobacco in twenty-four 

 hours, and a boy of seventeen, who uses ten or a 

 dozen cigarrs in that time. In one, the cold and in- 

 ert fibre is warmed and animated to throw off an of- 

 fensive load ; in the other, it is adding fuel to fire ; 

 and irritating glands already sufficiently stimulated by 

 his youthful nature. 



" The gentlemen of the clergy drink sparingly even 

 of wine, but many, who indulge in smoking, drink 

 enormous quantities of hot tea, which Boerhaave ob- 

 serves to be one of the pernicious consequences of 

 smoking tobacco ; as it assists to bring on hypochon- 

 driac, and other dismal disorders. By forbearing to 

 do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly 

 new vigour to resolution. I can hardly believe there 

 ever was a rigidly virtuous man, who became a slave 

 to tobacco. To set the mind above the appetite, 

 says the British moralist, is the end of abstinence ; 

 and abstinence is the groundwork of virtue. For 

 want of denying early and inflexibly, we may be en- 



