Tobacco : an essay / by Henry Gibbons.

  • Gibbons, Henry, 1808-1884.
Date:
[Between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco : an essay / by Henry Gibbons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    physical injury. The brain is the organ of the mind. A sound mind requires, if not a sound body, at least a sound brain. With that organ or implement the mind does all its work. And how shall the work be well done with an imperfect or damaged tool? The effect of tobacco on the memory, under certain circumstances, has already been noticed. It is not to be supposed that memory alone should suffer, and that the other faculties can escape. In extreme cases the reason is dethroned. In the Annual Report of the Massachusetts General Hospital for 1843 eight cases of insanity are ascribed to the excessive use of tobacco, and four cases in the Report of the Pennsylvania Insane Hospital for 1849. Physicians who have practised medicine in the border States and on the Pacific Coast have had the best opportunity to observe both the bodily and mental effects of tobacco. In the excitements incident to those localities, without the enjoyments and restraints of home and of female society, men give up much more to the mastery of the lower appetites. There one beholds the victims of indulgence hanging round the door of the physician, or running from one to another for relief, or decoyed into the dens of advertising impostors • whose trade it is to frighten timid people into their toils by acting the alarmist through the newspapers. Thin and haggard; nervous, trembling, restless, and sleepless; timid, apprehensive, irresolute, and desponding—no lang'uage can define their sufferings. Not that tobacco is the sole cause, nor always the principal cause, of their troubles; but, like a wily foe watching its opportunity, it comes in at the critical moment when it has power to turn the scale against the wretched victim; and then, like a millstone about his neck, it prevents him from ever raising his head above the waves of despair. And so health, and hope, and money, and manhood, all pass away together, and nothing is left for him but death by the roadside, or in the hospital, or in the madhouse. How many mothers mourn their sons, widows their husbands, who have trod this path of sorrows to the bitter end in the far-off land of gold ! An'eminent English surgeon writes: “I have invariably found that patients addicted to tobacco-smoking were in spirit cowardly, and deficient in manly fortitude to undergo any surgical operation.” How is it possible for men with impaired digestion and unstrung nerves to exhibit fortitude and self-control? Loss of time is no small item in the account. Lord Stanhope calculated that in forty years, two years were dedicated by a snuffer to tickling his nose, and two to blowing it. A generous smoker will devote a much larger proportion of time than this to his cigar or pipe. But that is a trifle compared with the sacrifice of time which grows out of the bodily indolence and the aversion to intellectual activity begotten by the habit. Tobacco is conducive to indolence, both physical and mental. Repose or inaction is required for the full enjoyment of the cigar. Men will tell you that in order to think continuously on any subject they lay aside the pipe. Employers do not want a workman with-