132 TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



tlie anus, by means of a bellows of a peculiar construe tion, 

 in cases of suspended animation, with a view to stimulate 

 the rectum " .... " annually recommended for such pur- 

 poses by those who professed to instruct the profession and 

 the public upon these important topics ; this may lie con- 

 sidered one of the most stupendous errors that ever occurred 

 in the exercise of the medical art." * 



Tobacco, as a remedy, died out by the disas- 

 trous deaths which it was made to inflict by the 

 ignorance of the faculty. If corrosive sublimate, 

 arsenic, opium, prussic acid, strychnine, aconite, 

 and other frightful poisons, can be made subser- 

 vient to the healing art by internal administra- 

 tion, so, by suitable management, in skilful 

 hands well acquainted with its properties, even 

 tobacco may become a useful assistant in some 

 diseases. True, in Dr. Pereira's ' Materia 

 Medica ' we find notices of such possible exhibi- 

 tions of tobacco ; but until the physician is accu- 

 rately acquainted with his remedy, and the 

 specific purposes to which it may be applied, 

 perhaps the public have reason to congratulate 

 themselves that tobacco is a dead letter in the 

 pharmacopoeia. For a certainty, in administering 



* Dr. Paris, 'Medical Jurisprudence,' ii. 418 and 



