246 
REVIEWS. 
certain well-defined limits, to absorb and apply oxygen; as the process of oxidation is 
most active and most required in those periods of life when the structures of the body 
are attaining their full development; and, as tobacco smoke possesses the power of 
arresting such oxidation,—the habit of smoking is most deleterious to the young, causing 
in them impairment of growth, premature manhood, and physical degradation. 
“If the views thus epitomized in relation to the influence of tobacco smoking on indi¬ 
viduals are true, we are led without any difficulty to the consideration of the influence 
exerted by the habit on communities and on nations. That which smoking effects, 
either as a pleasure or a penalty on a man, it inflicts on any national representation of 
the same man ; and, taking it all in all, stripping from the argument the puerilities and 
exaggerations of those who claim to be the professed antagonists of the practice, it is 
fair to say that, in the main, smoking is a luxury which any nation of natural habits 
would be better without. The luxury is not directly fatal to life, but its use conveys to 
the mind of the man who looks upon it calmly the unmistakable idea of physical de¬ 
gradation. I do not hesitate to say that if a community of youths of both sexes, whose 
progenitors were finely formed and powerful, were to be trained to the early practice of 
smoking, and if marriage were to be confined to the smokers, an apparently new and a 
physically inferior race of men and women would be bred up. Of course such an expe¬ 
riment is impossible as we live, for many of our fathers do not smoke, and scarcely any 
of our mothers; and thus, to the credit of our women, chiefly, be it said, the integrity 
of the race is fairly preserved: with increasing knowledge we may hope that the same 
integrity will be further sustained; but still, the fact of what tobacco can do in its ex¬ 
treme action is not the less to be forgotten, for many evils are maintained because their 
full and worst effects are hidden from the sight. 
“ Again, on the ground of the functional disturbances to which smoking gives rise in 
those who indulge in it, an argument may be used which goes very deeply, and cuts 
none the less sharply, because, in one sense, it is ridiculous. Put down the smokers of 
Great Britain at a million in number;—they are more than that, but let it pass:—Why 
should there exist perpetually a million of Englishmen, not one of whom can at any 
moment be writ down as in perfect health from day to day ? Why should a million of 
men be living with stomachs that only partly digest, hearts that labour unnaturally, and 
blood that is not fully oxidized ? In a purely philosophical point of view, the question 
admits of but one answer; viz. that the existence of such a million of imperfectly work¬ 
ing living organisms is a national absurdity, a picture which, to a superior intelligence 
observing the whole truth and grasping it, would suggest a mania, foolish, ridiculous, 
and incomprehensible. 
“ I cannot say more against tobacco, however, without being led into a wuder question ; 
I mean the use of luxuries altogether; on which question, if I were equally fair for 
tobacco as against it, I should be forced to give it a place as one of the least hurtful of 
luxuries. It is on this ground, in fact, that tobacco holds so firm a position ;—that of 
nearly every luxury it is the least injurious. It is innocuous as compared with alcohol; 
it does infinitely less harm than opium : it is in no sense worse than tea or sugar; and 
by the side of high living, altogether it contrasts most favourably. A thorough smoker 
may or may not be a hard drinker, but there is one thing he never is, a glutton ; indeed, 
there is no cure for gluttony, and all its train of certain and fatal evils, like tobacco. 
“ The friends of tobacco will add to these remarks that their ‘ friendly weed’ is some¬ 
times not only the least hurtful of luxuries, but the most reasonable. They will tell of 
the quiet which it brings to the overworn body, and to the irritable and restless mind; their 
error is transparent and universal, but universal error is practical truth ; for, in their ac¬ 
ceptation, tobacco is a remedy for evils that lie deeper than its own, and as a remedy it 
will hold its place until those evils are removed. The poor savage, from whom we 
derived ‘ tabac,’ found in the weed some solace to his yearning vacuous mind, and 
killed by it wearisome lingering time. The type of the savage, extant in modern civi¬ 
lized life, still vacuous and indolent, finds ‘ tabac ’ the time-killer: while the over¬ 
worked man discovers in the same agent a quietus, which his exhaustion having once 
tasted rarely forgets, but asks for again and again. Thus, on two sides of humau nature we 
see the source of the demand for tobacco, and until we can equalize labour, and remove 
the call for an artificial necessity of an artificial life, tobacco will hold its place, with 
this credit to itself, that, bad as it is, it prevents the introduction of agents that 
might be infinitely worse.” 
