20 ANTI-TOBACCO. 



" Sichel, of Paris, found some cases of blindness easily 

 cured by cessation from the use of tobacco. Hutchinson 

 narrated, before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society 

 of London, thirty-seven cases of a species of amaurosis, 

 where twenty-three of the patients were great smokers; 

 and Wordsworth has confirmed these views of Mackenzie 

 and Hutchinson. In one week I saw, in 1874, at the 

 Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, two cases of tobacco 

 amaurosis in young men, neither of whom had attained 

 the age of thirty. The first had chewed continually ; and 

 the other smoked the enormous quantity of one ounce of 

 shag tobacco daily. Both were completely and irretrievably 

 blind, from this dangerous habit. But weak sight is also 

 commonly caused by snuffing, as well as by smoking and 

 chewing. Tobacco amaurosis is much commoner now 

 than it used to be." . 



Mr. John Couper, of the Royal Ophthalmic Hospital, 

 says that " patients with tobacco amaurosis describe them- 

 selves as always living in a dim light even at noonday." 

 Mr. George Critchett, the great London authority on 

 diseases of the eye, tells me that he is constantly consulted 

 by gentlemen for commencing blindness, caused solely by 

 great smoking. He accordingly condemns smoking in 

 most unqualified terms, as most dangerous to human 

 health. 



Dr. Kostral, physician to the Royal Factory of Tobacco 

 at Iglau ("Ann. d'Hygiene," published in 1871), brought 

 before the Medical Society at Vienna, in 18 71, some sta- 

 tistics relating to the workers in that government tobacco- 

 factory. '' There were 1,942 of these workers, of ages from 

 thirteen to fifty-six. They are only taken into the factory 

 if they are likely to live there for twenty years. The 



