The tobacco habit: its history and pathology : a study in birth-rates. Smokers compared with non-smokers.

  • Tidswell, Herbert Henry.
Date:
1912
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The tobacco habit: its history and pathology : a study in birth-rates. Smokers compared with non-smokers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    be the means of saving the life, or preserving the health of a single fellow being, who may be unconsciously shortening his days by indulging in what he calls an innocent pastime and luxury, he is culpably negligent if he remains silent. ' The profession,' says Mr. Solly, ' have no idea of the ignorance of the public regarding the nature of tobacco. Even intelligent, well educated men stare in astonishment when you tell them tobacco is one of the most powerful poisons we possess. Now is this right ? Has the medical profession done its duty ? Ought we not, as a body, to have told the public that of all our poisons, it is the most insidious, uncertain, and in full doses the most deadly ? ' Dr. Lizars enumerates the constitutional effects of tobacco by stating that they are ' numerous and varied, consisting of giddiness, sickness, vomiting, dyspepsia, vitiated taste of the mouth, loose bowels, diseased liver, congestion of the brain, apoplexy, palsy, mania, loss of memory, blindness, deafness, nervousness, emasculation, and cowardice.' Frightful as is this list of ills, I can from my own experience endorse its accuracy, and yet how large a number of our own profession are addicted to the vice, and how fatal must be the effect of their example upon the unthinking. Professor Lay cock, of Edinburgh University, says in a most temperate paper in the Medical Gazette, October 2, 1846 : ' I have known many instances in which I was unable to prove that the ordinary use of tobacco did any harm ; I have known many more in which I could prove that it did do harm ; and I have not known any good from it that might not have been obtained by other less objectionable means.' I will only make a few more extracts from Dr. Lizar's paper, in order to support the view I have enunciated that tobacco is the fi-uitful source of paralytic affections : ' Congestion of the brain, which is a frequent precursor of palsy, occurs almost only in those much addicted to smoking, in whom a cigar is never out of the mouth. It is denoted by headache, want of sleep, or rather restless nights, and occasionally flushing of the countenance. Apoplexy has been noticed by several authors supervening the smoking of tobacco, also the immoderate use of snuff.