12 TOBACCO, INSANITY AND NERVOUSNESS. 



Some, however, labor under the delusion that it increases 

 their working power, that the flow of thought becomes 

 easier, and that without tobacco they are unable to do any 

 mental work. Instances are cited by them of great men, 

 inveterate and excessive tobacco consumers, who left their 

 mark in the history of civilization as savants, artists, etc. 

 They do not consider the possibility that these men accom- 

 plished what they did in spite, but not in consequence of, 

 or aided by, their habit. 



Students of chronic nicotine-intoxication are convinced 

 that the great men among the tobacco slaves would have 

 been still greater, had they never used the drug. Thus, 

 Kant, the most eminent of German philosophers, is said to 

 have written such an obscure and unintelligible style, be- 

 cause he smoked and snuffed to excess. I myself know 

 of a medical man who wrote a great book, which labors 

 under the same defect as Kant's works, because of his 

 slavery to tobacco. 



But these things are trifles when compared with the de- 

 structive and degenerative influences the drug exerts on 

 the broad masses. 



that tobacco is at the bottom of all their ailments. The question 

 naturally arises in this connection: why do people smoke, when they 

 know that as soon as they touch tobacco, they experience immediately its 

 toxic effects? Many a smoker rises in the morning bright and energetic : 

 the nicotine absorbed during the previous day has been eliminated from 

 his tissues — thanks to his well-meaning and powerful excretory organs. 

 He smokes his first cigar after breakfast, becomes at once restless, dis- 

 satisfied, peevish and disagreeable; the cigar stamps its siguatureon his 

 mind for the rest of the day. This is the experience of many a neurotic 

 smoker, and yet he will resume the practice clay after day, making his 

 own life a burden and rendering everybody around him miserable. It is 

 easily intelligible why some persons take alcohol: this is primarily a stimu- 

 lant and secondarily a paralyzant, but tobacco paralyzes at once : it 

 lowers all the faculties except those of fancy, and tobacco-phantoms are 

 not of much value. The downfall and general backwardness in civiliza- 

 tion so characteristic in the Oriental people is largely due to their 

 dreamy disposition engendered by abuse of tobacco. 



