A LECTURE ON TOBACCO. 43 



heart beats more rapidly from the paralyzing effects of the 

 nicotine on the minute vessels of the system, which no 

 longer offer their usual resistance to the force-pumps of 

 the circulation." Dr. E. Smith found his pulse rise from 

 74 to 112, after smoking eleven minutes. Another physi- 

 cian took count of his pulse every five minutes during an 

 hour's smoking, and computed that it had beat 1,000 

 times in excess.^ Dr. Townson, a physician to insurance 

 companies, stated that nearly every one of those whom he 

 had rejected, after examining them for life policies, had 

 brought on an affection of the heart through excessive 

 smoking.^ Brain diseases, and those that result from im- 

 paired digestion, are frequently produced by tobacco. It 

 is no proof of its harmlessness that many who use it are as 

 healthy as, or even more healthy than others who abstain. 

 Many soldiers live longer than others who have never 

 endangered their lives in war. No one now doubts that 

 foul air is noxious ; yet in ill-drained towns, where hun- 

 dreds every year fall its victims, others are to be found 

 enjoying better health, and reaching a greater age, than 

 many who have wholesome abodes. Thousands die every 

 year from alcoholic poisoning, and the probabilities of life 

 are, on the whole, far better for abstainers than for drinkers ; 

 and yet there are drinkers who are more healthful than 

 many abstainers. There is a great difference in the sus- 

 ceptibility to poisonous influences in different persons ; 

 and those who offend against the laws of nature in one 

 respect may be obsen-ant in others ; yet any habit that is 

 unwholesome must be more or less hurtful. The first time 



1 " Narcotism," No. 20. 



2 " Monthly Letters/' p. 267. See also p. 259, " The Tobacco 

 Heart." 



