Xll PKEFACE. 



tortures ; a lady hears people talk of magnetism, 

 and she attributes her restless nights, her suffer- 

 ings, to the mesmerists ! " * I refer these doctors 

 to the same author for a summary respecting 

 these "dominant ideas" — idees dominantes — flung 

 suddenly upon the minds of nations, and again I 

 tell them to beware lest they actually produce 

 psychologically what has never been produced 

 physically by the sole and proper use of tobacco. 

 One word more on this tobacco-phohia of the 

 doctors. Do they really expect to persuade the 

 public to believe that they, the doctors, feel inte- 

 rested in the continued liealth of nations ? If we 

 paid them, like the Chinese, for keeping us icdl^ 

 the case would be altered : but our health would 

 be their starvation ! And, if the immense majority 

 of our habitual ailments originate in corroding 

 cares and anxiety, the use of the soothing weed 

 is clearly the very arch-enemy of the doctors : — 



" ^\\.Q 'pa^&ions of the mind" says Dr. Elliotson, *'are a 

 frightful source of disease, — much more so than is com- 

 monly imagined. An immense number of cases of disease 



* Esquirol, ' Des Maladies Mentales,' i. 43. 



