126 PHYSIC 



for an explanation of its physiological effects on their 

 minds and bodies, but have not hitherto been gratified to 

 receive an answer which would satisfy non-smoking curi- 

 osity ; in the dim light, therefore, of our inexperience, 

 and what might, therefore, be called our unsuitability for 

 the task, we would very cautiously venture to say that 

 our own ideas, as above deduced, are somewhat as follows : 



Tobacco, belonging as it does to a narcotico-sedative 

 class of vegetable substances, charged, it may be, with 

 essential oils and other elements of a diffusible nature, 

 requires, for its full enjoyment, that it should be burned, 

 vaporised, and diffused throughout the air passages of 

 the head and body, including more especially the spaces 

 under consideration, and absorbed by the structures lining 

 these passages or spaces the absorption being accom- 

 plished by direct diffusion of the gaseous part of the 

 smoke, by liquefaction and osmosis of the more solid part 

 of the smoke, and by the infiltration of the mucous lining 

 of these passages and spaces, and the direct invasion of 

 the underlying blood and lymphatic vessels and nerve 

 terminals by what of the residuum has not been already 

 disposed of. 



The slow burning of the tobacco, effected by the many 

 fashionable methods in use for accomplishing that process, 

 lends itself to the correspondingly slow and gradual intro- 

 duction of the nicotine and other volatile and absorbable 

 constituents of the drug into the system of its votary, 

 and so to the gentle and more or less complete saturation 

 of those parts of the system amenable to its narcotic 

 influences, and thus to the production of a more or less 

 complete narcosis with the accompanying feelings of more 

 or less full enjoyment of the effects, physical and mental. 



Thus produced, the effects of tobacco are experienced 

 over a wider area of the organism and with more intensity 

 than can be possible in the cases of the snuffer or chewer 

 of the article. 



A somewhat fine drawn, if not quite exact, method of 

 differentiating and estimating the height and depth, the 

 length and breadth, of the possibilities of extracting the 

 real and full enjoyment of the weed by the three classes 

 of its uses may be possible as follows : The smoker may 



