INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 125 



" Did you eat them all ? " asked the half-sick 

 commodore. 



" Yes, we eat all but one." 



" And why did you spare one ? " 



" Because he taste too much like tobacco. 

 Couldn't eat him no how." 



If the tobacco-chewer should happen to fall 

 into the hands of New Zealand savages, or get 

 shipwrecked somewhere in the Feejee group, he 

 will have the consolation of knowing that he will 

 not be cut into steaks and buried in the uncon- 

 secrated stomach of a cannibal, and thus find at 

 least one advantage in the use of tobacco.* 



* London Journal. Dr. Pidduck, of the 'Lancet' con- 

 troversy, corroborates this curious phenomenon. I quote 

 verbatim: — "The extraordinary fact is this: that leeches 

 were killed instantly by the blood of the smokers, so sud- 

 denly that they dropped off dead immediately they were 

 applied ; and that fleas and bugs, whose bites on the children 

 were as thick as measles, rarely, if ever, attacked the 

 smoking parent. It may be said, ' But why may not this 

 poisonous effect upon leeches, fleas, and bugs, be owing to 

 gin, and not to tobacco ? ' The answer to this objection is, 

 that the Arabs and Bedouins, who drink neither wine nor 

 strong drink, are protected from the onslaught of the insects 

 which swarm in their tents by poisoning their blood with 

 tobacco, whilst the wine-drinking Europeans are attacked 

 without mercy. What is so fatal to insect life (sic) cannot 

 be otherwise than most formidable to the life of persons 

 whose blood is thus poisoned." (!) And the frantic doctor 

 avers that this "pathological fact cannot fail to settle the 



