86 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 



There seems to be little room for doubt that tobacco 

 perpetrates a most successful deception upon its users, by 

 inducing them to believe that its effects are exhilarating, 

 when the so-called exhilaration is in fact only the sensation 

 ofreHef from its primary effects, and a hallucination brought 

 on by the narcotic and perverting action of tobacco on 

 the sympathetic nerves. Had I not used tobacco my- 

 self to excess during fifteen years, I should not be able 

 to speak so definitely with regard to its effects. 



The dangers and the injuries already discussed, as re- 

 sulting from the use of tobacco, are manifest ; but there 

 is an effect not yet mentioned, which threatens ultimately 

 to produce a great national calamity — nothing less than 

 a tendency to gradual enfeeblement of mind, progres- 

 sive loss of intellectual power and vigor. That this is no 

 chimera, known and well-proven facts will testify. 



In 1862 Napoleon III. of France had his attention 

 called to the facts that there were more than five times as 

 many paralytics and lunatics in the hospitals of France as 

 there were in proportion to the population thirty years 

 before, and that the government revenue from the tobacco 

 monopoly had increased during that time in about an 

 equal ratio. He appointed a commission of scientific 

 men, to examine whether this were a case of cause and 

 effect or only a coincidence. This commission devoted 

 much time and attention to the young men in the govern- 

 ment training-schools, dividing the students into two 

 classes — the smokers and the non-smokers. The latter 

 were found so much superior physically, mentally, and 

 morally, that the Emperor at once prohibited the use of 

 tobacco by students in all the schools under govern- 

 mental supervision throughout the country. 



