154 TOBACCO: ITS HISTORY. 



the precocious use of tobacco ; for, after all, that substance 

 has no hygeinic value in itself ; on the contrary, it is a 

 poison. 



" Its influence must be necessarily injurious on youth, 

 on the young apprentice of the trades, on the students of 

 colleges, who cultivate the pipe and cigar as signs of man- 

 hood and emancipation. It depraves their appetites ; it 

 may compromise their development. 



" The habit of almost incessant smoking in the East, 

 where the pipe is the prelude of all official acts, of all con- 

 versations, of all social relations, is detestable and bnital- 

 ising. The Oriental seizes his pipe in the morning, and 

 never quits it until he goes to bed. A special functionary 

 — the pipe-bearer — is an appendage of all officials. In 

 families of respectability the care of the pipes is the exclu- 

 sive attribute of one or many servants who occupy the 

 higher grade of the domestic establishment. It is in the 

 East and in the taverns of Flanders that we behold the 

 stupifying effects, the intellectual and moral degradation 

 which result from the combined use of beer, tobacco, and 

 the harems. There is no family there. The inert enjoy- 

 ments of the smoking-rooms take the place of the family 

 and cause the abandonment of the household hearth. The 

 excessive use of tobacco enervates the intellect, plunges it 

 into vagueness, blunts perception, weakens the memory. 

 Smoking is, at least, a mode of cerebral idleness, which, 

 by constant repetition and long continuance, ends in ren- 

 dering the mind unfit for anything, in the irremediable 

 torpor of the mental faculties. 



" Amongst Europeans, excess in smoking almost always 

 accompanies excess in the use of alcoholic drinks. Then 

 Asiatic torpor alternates with the violence and brutality of 

 the English prizefighter. 



" In the East smoking is an obstacle to the regular 



