28 TOBACCO: ITS USE AND ABUSE. 



degree of interest." The history of the case is thua 

 related by Dr. Corson, of New York : 



"A highly intelligent man, aged sixty-five, stout, 

 ruddy, early married, temperate, managing a large busi- 

 ness, after premising that he commenced chewing to- 

 bacco at seventeen, swallowing the juice, as is sometimes 

 customary, to prevent injuring his lungs from constant 

 ppitting, and that years after he suflfered from a gnaw- 

 ing, capricious appetite, nausea, vomiting of meals, ema- 

 ciation, nervousness, and palpitation of the hearty dic- 

 tated to Dr. Corson, recently, the following story : 



" ' Seven years thus miserably passed, when, one day 

 after dinner, I was sudaenly seized with intense pain in 

 the chest, gasping for breath, and a sensation as if a 

 crowbar were pressed tightly from the right breast to the 

 left, till it came and twisted in a knot round the heart, 

 which now stopped deathly still for a minute, and then 

 leaped like a dozen frogs. After two hours of death- 

 like suffering, the attack ceased ; and I found that ever 

 after my heart missed every fourth beat. My physician 

 said that I had organic disease of the heart, must die 

 suddenly, and need only take a little brandy for the 

 painful paroxysms ; and I soon found it the only thing 

 that gave them any relief. For the next twenty-seven 

 years I continued to suffer milder attacks like the above, 

 lasting from one to several minutes, sometimes as often 

 as two or three times a day or night; and to be sickly 

 looking, thin, and pale as a ghost. Simply from revolt- 

 ing at the idea of being a slave to one vile habit alone^ 

 and without dreaming of the suffering it had cost mc^ 



