80 TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



puffing many cubic feet of smoke from many 

 " hundred grains of slowly-burning Virginia to- 

 bacco," each hundred containing " three-quarters 

 of a grain of nicotin," " scarcely inferior to prussic 

 acid, a single drop being sufficient to kill a dog ! " 

 Yet in these close, ill-ventilated laboratories of 

 " volatile oil," " oil empyreumatic," and " vola- 

 tile alkali" — in which men, women, children, 

 cats, and dogs, enjoy a periodic respite from the 

 toils of day — not a single case of poisoning has 

 ever been seen, and night after night this experi- 

 mentum crucis on a large scale has been tried, 

 with the same result ! " I recollect seeing," 

 says Dr. Elliotson, " a young woman who could 

 eat the hardest salt beef, and digest it well ; but 

 if she took a raspberry, or currant, or any other 

 fruit, she was instantly thrown into the most 

 violent spasms of the stomach, so that a stranger 

 would have fancied her life in danger ! " * But 

 here is not a case of currants and strawberries, 

 but " one of the most subtle of all known poisons," 

 confessedly concocted and administered " broad- 



Practice of Medicine, p. 38. 



