TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH 65 



sulphuric acid to the water, and distils with quicklime; 

 soon there is dislodged from the hidden cells of the leaves 

 a small quantity of a volatile, oily, colourless, alkaline fluid, 

 the prince of the genii nicotine. The odour of an old 

 clay pipe grown black with age hangs about it : it is acrid, 

 burning narcotic, and scarcely less poisonous than prussic 

 acid, a single drop having the power to kill a dog. It boils 

 at a temperature of 482 Fahr., and rises into vapour at a 

 point below that of burning tobacco, consequently it is 

 always present in the smoke. Evaporating one drop of this 

 subtle essence you are at once seized with a feeling of suffo- 

 cation, and experience difficulty in breathing. Distilled 

 alone in a retort yet another element is called up of an oily 

 nature, which resembles in its chief characteristics an oil 

 obtained by a similar process from the leaves of the fox- 

 glove (Digitalis purpurea). This also is acrid and poisonous ; 

 one drop applied to the tongue of a cat brought on convul- 

 sions, and, in two minutes, death. All these evil things the 

 chemist tells us dwell in the heart of the Indian herb, and, 

 mingling with other unseen elements, lure men on to their 

 fate. In the mystical glare of his laboratory there looms 

 into shape before our mental vision the spectral form of the 

 King of Denmark, in Hamlet, telling of the dark deeds done 



With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, 

 And in the porches of my ears did pour 

 The leprous distilment ; whose effect 

 Holds such an enmity with blood of man 

 That swift as quicksilver it courses through 

 The natural gates and alleys of the body.* 



* Possibly hebenon is here employed for henbane, a name 

 sometimes applied to tobacco by writers in Jacobean times. 

 William Strachey, in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia 



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