4 TOBACCO, INSANITY AND NERVOUSNESS. 



by modern physiologists, that fosters its spread, especially 

 amongst those who can least afford to offer any insult to 

 their nervous systems. And unfortunately it is just this 

 class of persons who delude themselves into the belief, that 

 tobacco is indispensable to them. With advancing civili- 

 zation it is considered necessary by many to use a sedative 

 or a stimulant of some sort as a kind of a safety-valve for 

 the growing nervousness of our age. 



Thus, by many smokers it is thought that after bodily 

 or mental exertion an equilibrium of all the functions is 

 re-established by the pipe, cigar, or plug. Its action,, 

 therefore, is somewhat like that of coca * in its pleasant 

 effects, 



This is the case in the healthy smoker as long as he keeps 

 within certain limits. But it is quite different with the 

 vast and ever-increasing army of neurasthenics and psycho- 

 paths of our days. 



Our ancestors were evidently not so deleteriously 

 affected either by alcohol or tobacco, as modern man is,, 

 with the strain of the requirements of a more complicated 

 life weighting upon him, and handicapped, as he frequently 

 is, in his nervous and psychical make-up. 



It is specially of the effect of tobacco on this latter class 

 that I wish to speak in the following remarks, and to start 

 with, I venture the broad assertion, that, whereas the 



* The pernicious influence of this drug is also spreading at an alarm- 

 ing pace among the well-to-do. The various proprietary preparations 

 which go by the name of '« Wine of Coca " and which, to the detriment 

 of many, have been indorsed by physicians in good standing, are con- 

 stantly working havoc among neurotic persons who believe they can take 

 this kind of wine with the same impunity as they can alcohol in some 

 form. Only too late they find that one tablespoonful of the stuff calls 

 for another and that a constant vague, half-conscious feeling of misery 

 pushes them with the relentlessness of fate to the baneful bottle. Why 

 do not the physicians, if coca is indicated, use the reliable fluid extract 

 and have it taken in Madeira wine instead of v^i U g and abetting a nefa- 

 rious traffic, which they do by prescribing rietary wines of coca? 



