A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 4 1 



is so enslaved by them that abstinence is a terrible 

 privation, is none the worse for them. 



"The constituent part of tobacco which makes it at 

 once so agreeable and so dangerous to health is nicotine. 

 . . . One tenth of a grain of it will kill a middle-sized 

 dog in three minutes ; and ... it has been calculated 

 that in a single cigar there is enough nicotine, if given 

 pure, to kill two men." ^ Persons have died in a few 

 hours after accidentally swallowing tobacco or a little 

 snuff.^ The oil formed in burning it is used by savages to 

 poison their arrows. "A little brother and his sister 

 amused themselves by making soap-bubbles with their 

 father's old pipe ; the boy died from imbibing the essen- 

 tial oil that was in it, and the girl was dangerously ill." ^ 

 In 1879 ^i^ inquest was held on a boy of fourteen, who 

 had been smoking a much-used tobacco-pipe, and died 

 the next morning.^ A man in Paris had been cleaning 

 his pipe with a knife with which he accidentally cut one of 

 his fingers ; in a few hours his hand and arm became 

 inflamed, and amputation afforded the only chance of 

 saving his life.^ Many cases are recorded in which the 

 votaries of tobacco have put the scrapings of their pipes 

 on children's sores as a remedy, and have caused their 

 death. All poisons have certan medicinal qualities, and 

 infusions of tobacco are used in some skin diseases ; 



1 " Tobacco, and the Diseases it Produces," by C. R. Drysdale, 

 M. D., &c., 1880, p. 5. 



2 "Monthly Letters of the Anti-Tobacco Society," &c., October, 

 1879, and April, 1880. Dr. C. Clay's "Two Lectures on Tobacco," 

 1842, p. 12. 



3 " The Workman's Pipe." A Lecture by the Rev. Dr. Ritchie. 

 Third edition, 1878, pp. 49, 50. 



4 " Monthly Letters," p. 168. ^ Ibid. p. 159. 



