126 tobacco: its use and abuse. 



important subject for any legislature to consider, which 

 looks beyond the accepted rule of expediency. 



^^ The medical profession in France bear similar testi- 

 mony; for the * Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales' — 

 a work of which it would be high treason in Paris to 

 aoubt the authenticity — after detailing at length the 

 effects of tobacco amongst the workmen employed in the 

 government factories (for in France it is a monopoly of 

 the State), goes on to say : " The abuse of tobacco is the 

 same as of all other pleasures of excitement, whether 

 excesses of various kinds, strong liquors, and so forth 

 (comme de celui de toutes Us jouissances par irritation, 

 comme de la masturbation, de Vahus des femmesy des 

 Jliqueurs fortes, &c.), and that it is astonishing that more 

 numerous evils are not the result/ Again : '■ Parents 

 cannot too much oppose the fearful custom of using to- 

 bacco; often they allow it to begin with a culpable 

 facility, and they do not appear to foresee all the evils to 

 which they deliver the youth whom they permit to con- 

 tract this baneful habit; often thoughtlessly recommended 

 for some trifliag ailment, the use of it is continued for 

 the remainder of his days/ 



" The Queen's Tobacco Pipe. — We have seen pipes 

 of all sorts and sizes in our time. In Germany, where 

 the finest cnaster is but twenty pence a pound, and ex- 

 cellent leaf tobacco only five pence, we have seen pipes 

 that resembled actual furnaces, compared with the 

 general race of pipes, and have known a man smoke out 

 half a pound of cnaster, and drink a gallon of beer at a 

 sitting. But this is perfectly pigmy work when com 

 pared with the royal pipe and consumptive tobacco 



