COMMUNICATIONS AND EXTRACTS. 135 



professional friends, strongly indicating the strength and 

 extent of medical testimony against the use of the poi- 

 sonous weed, and out of these I have selected one sent 

 to me by a physician, who has long enjoyed extensive 

 opportunities of witnessing the very prejudicial effects 

 which tobacco smoking exercises on the digestive organs. 

 *' In the coarse of my professional experience," he writes 

 me, " two or three cases of decided carcinoma of the 

 under-lip, all of which terminated fatally, have come 

 under my care, and which could be unmistakeably traced 

 to a sore, occasioned by a burn from a hot cutty-pipe. 

 But I have had ample opportunities of observing the 

 evil effects which tobacco-smoking produces on the 

 health of the working-classes, and particularly how it 

 operates by disordering the organs of digestion, in occa- 

 sioning very bad forms of dyspepsia. Several inveterate 

 smokers have been committed to my charge, on whom 

 every species of persuasion, from remonstrance on the 

 part of their relations, to admonition on that of their 

 clergymen, had been used in vain, to induce them to 

 relinquish the habit of smoking, to which they had been 

 long unhappily addicted. They had the sallow, sickly 

 look of individuals in bad health, were attenuated in 

 body, and labored under anorexia, painful digestion, and 

 an irritable state of the nervous system, harassing to 

 their own feelings, and most distressing to those of their 

 family. Although they had resisted every argument 

 and advice tendered by unprofessional parties, I have 

 never failed to succeed in making the most obstinate 

 smoker a convert to my opinion, upon reasoning with 

 him upon the subject^ and showing the modus operandi 



