94 tobacco: its use and abuse. 



the question of tobacco was not immediately in contem- 

 plation ; but I have no doubt whatever, from the result? 

 of my observations in India and at home, that of the 

 habits which led to this sad end, the abuse of tobacco 

 was, amongst these young officers, the most banefully 

 influential. 



" I dispute the alleged benefits of even moderate to- 

 bacco smoking as a preventive of damp or of malaria j 

 and seriously anomalous symptoms I have seen to arise, 

 in the progress of malarious fevers, from the abuse of 

 it — such symptoms as may lead to the most grave mis- 

 takes in the treatment of fevers, if the medical officer 

 be not careful to inquire into the habits of his patient. 

 Of this also I have seen the most emphatic examples. 

 Those who urge the prophylactic benefits of tobacco, 

 carry the habit from the swamps of Burmah into the 

 arid plains of Hindostan, in defiance of geographical 

 differences. 



^' I can state of my own observation, that the miseries, 

 mental and bodily, which I have witnessed from the 

 abuse of cigar-smoking, and chiefly in young men, far 

 exceeded any thing detailed in the ' Confessions of an 

 Opium Eater ; ' and I feel assured that the abuse of to- 

 bacco, however employed, may be classified amongst 

 those habits which produce chronic poisoning." 



110. In the Laiicet for 14th March, 1857, page 281, 

 there is an appalling account of the death of a woman 

 who had become paralytic, apparently from excetssive 

 smoking of tobacco, and whose death was occasioned by 

 her clothes having taken fire from her pipe. 



