Plain home talk about the human system : the habits of men and women, the causes and prevention of disease, our sexual relations and social natures : embracing medical common sense applied to causes, prevention, and cure of chronic diseases, the natural relations of men and women to each other, society, love, marriage, parentage, etc., etc. / by Edward B. Foote.

  • Foote, Edward B. (Edward Bliss), 1829-1906.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plain home talk about the human system : the habits of men and women, the causes and prevention of disease, our sexual relations and social natures : embracing medical common sense applied to causes, prevention, and cure of chronic diseases, the natural relations of men and women to each other, society, love, marriage, parentage, etc., etc. / by Edward B. Foote. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    smoking of the aborigines of America, and the Asiatics somehow or other got hold of the trick themselves. Many fashionable ladies on both sides of the Atlantic smoke their cigarettoes, and a cigar dealer in Boston makes the astounding announcement that he sells an average of three hundred cigars daily.for the use of the fair ones of New England. According to Johnson, every female in the big empire of China, from the age of eight or nine, wears as an append- age in her dress a small silken pocket, to hold tobacco and a pipe. The Japanese also smoke, women as well as men. A majority of men all over the world smoke, or chew, and not a few boys follow their illustrious example. The poet, Milton, was a moderate smoker, and Lamb, at one time, carried smoking to a great excess. The latter in a letter to Wordsworth, said: Tobacco has been my evening comfort and morning curse for these five years. The great preacher Robert Hall claimed to have adopted the habit of smoking to qualify himself for the society of a certain Doctor of Divinity (!) and finally he became so much of a slave to it, he found himself unable to over- come it. He thanked somebody who was trying to reform him for Adam Clark's pamphlet on The Use and Abuse of Tobacco, followed with the exclamation— I cannot refute his argument, and I cannot give up smoking! A friend one day accosted him with— Ah ! I find you again at your idol! Whereupon Hall responded— Yes! turning it! Sir Walter Raleigh who first appeared in England with a pipe of tobacco in his mouth, was said to have had a bucket of water thrown on him by his servant, who, seeing the smoke issuing from his mouth, supposed him to be on fire. In portions of the Southern States, a practice called u dipping is indulged in to a disgusting extent among women. A little mop is made, by mashing the end of a stick of pine, or some other soft wood, and with this instrument snuff is rubbed sometimes for hours at a time on the lips, teeth, and gums. A young miss in Arkansas died from the effects of snuff-dipping, she having fallen asleep with a mop in her mouth. A post-mortem examination, remarked the news- paper, revealed the fact that she had swallowed the juice contain- ing a large quantity of nicotin, which is a deadly poison. Her lips, cheeks, and breast, were smeared with the foul stuff in her dying struggles alone in her room. This is shocking, to be sure; but many ladies and some gentlemen, who would be shocked to hear of a friend having contracted the habit of snuff-dipping, may he