354 Reviews. [April, 



nicotine ; upon the ear, confusion and inability to appreciate distinctly 

 sounds that are either very soft or unusually loud ; with occasional 

 sharp ringing in the ears ; and it is probable that after long smoking 

 both smell and taste may, to a certain extent, be impaired ; but the 

 rule is not general, though snuff-taking does destroy the sense of smell. 

 With regard to its effects upon the mental faculties, most contradictory 

 statements have been made, it being too often inferred that because 

 certain symptoms occur in persons that smoke, therefore those symptoms 

 are due to the tobacco, and to nothing else. That it tends to produce 

 insanity, without predisposition, Dr. Richardson firmly denies, and 

 even where predisposition is present, he believes that the damages 

 committed by tobacco are fully and even more than met by the ad- 

 vantages which occasionally follow. As a rule, the mischief produced 

 upon the nervous system is transient and evanescent. 



Can smoking excite locally — as in the lips, tongue, or throat — the 

 disease cancer ? To this the author replies that he has never met 

 with a single instance in which tobacco smoke could be said to have 

 brought on the acute disorder ; and epithelial cancer of the lower lip 

 appears to be due, not to the tobacco, but to the mode of smoking it — 

 viz. in short pipes, which press habitually upon the lip. It does not 

 become developed in cigar smokers, nor in those who smoke long 

 smooth pipes. 



Neither consumption nor chronic bronchitis can be produced 

 primarily by smoking, but the indirect effects are harmful to those in 

 whom the disease is developed, and the author insists on every con- 

 sumptive patient yielding up the pipe or cigar, and has found a rigid 

 adhesion to this rule worth many a formal prescription. 



Dr. Richardson's essay is impartial and philosophic, his results 

 often at variance with popular and established principles, which, how- 

 ever, have only imperfect information as their basis ; and as is 

 generally the case, a careful weighing of the evidence gives strong 

 reason to believe that the use of tobacco is not wholly good, nor 

 wholly bad ; but that, at all events in our artificial mode of life, 

 there are conditions in which the weed, by some despised, by some 

 worshipped, may be of real service. 



