The Hygiene of Tobacco 305 



smoke. Only one smoker is attacked by diphtheria to 

 twenty-eight non-smoking victims. When cholera 

 was raging in Southern Europe in 1885, and people 

 were dying by thousands, not one of the 4,000 women 

 engaged in the National Tobacco Factory at Valencia 

 was attacked. Tobacco is not the deadly enemy of 

 man — it is surprising with what eagerness man takes 

 so kindly to his ' deadly enemies ' — but his great 

 friend, not only in solacing his woes, but as a 

 guardian and as a destroyer of the germs that insist 

 on colonizing his body. 



Lastly, even if smoking is indulged in to excess, 

 the habit never kills, never renders a man unfit for 

 work, and never punishes anyone but the delinquent 

 himself. The chewing of calamus root is said to 

 remove the appetite for tobacco. 



Which is the best and least injurious mode of 

 taking tobacco is a vexed question. One authority 

 holds that the pipe is the best, the cigar second, and 

 the cigarette third. Another doctor places them 

 thus : (i) Long pipe of clay or meerschaum ; (2) short 

 pipe ; (3) cigar ; (4) cigarette. Superior to all these, 

 he holds, is snuff, as the quantity taken must be kept 

 within limits. As a rule, however, snuff-takers are 

 far more intemperate than smokers, and the fact that 

 a considerable portion of the dust actually enters 

 the body and cannot be sneezed away makes snuff 

 apparently the most injurious. Another doctor like- 

 wise awards the palm to snuff as the best form of 

 tobacco, while chewing he regards as the worst. 

 Smoking he classes in the happy medium betwixt 

 good and ill. 



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