54 tobacco: its use and abuse. 



cially those who employ short pipes and cigars, are sai^ 

 to be liable to cancerous affections of the lips. But it 

 happens with tobacco, as with deleterious articles of 

 diet, the strong and healthy suffer comparatively little, 

 while the weak and predisposed to disease fall victims 

 to its poisonous operation. Surely, if the dictates of 

 reason were allowed to prevail, an article so injurious to 

 the health, and so offensive in all its forms and modes 

 of employment, would speedily be banished from com- 

 mon use." 



67. Professor Petit-Radel is said to have died of cancer 

 of the pylorus, consequent on smoking tobacco. 



68. Bouissiron states that he has seen many smokers 

 perish of atrophy. 



69. Pereira, in his valuable work on Chemistry and 

 Materia Medica, page 1426, states, that " Nicotina is an 

 energetic poison, almost equalling in activity hydrocy- 

 anic acid." 



70. In the Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales for 

 1821, two brothers are said to have smoked until they 

 died of apoplexy — the one after smoking seventeen 

 pipes, the other eighteen pipes. Fourcroy cites several 

 instances of the destructive effects of tobacco in his 

 translation of Ramazzani. The little daughter of a to- 

 bacco merchant died in frightful convulsions, from 

 having slept in a chamber where a great quantity of 

 tobacco had been rasped. An intoxicated soldier swal- 

 lowed his saliva impregnated with tobacco, awoke in 

 strong convulsions, and nearly became insane. I have 

 strong suspicions that such a melancholy event as the 

 latter must have occurred frequently. 



