My first efforts were directed to repair the injuries inflicted by the tobacco-pipe; and though the difficulties to be overcome were many and obstinate, by patience and perseverance they were all surmounted, and the woman was at length restored.
The conflict which this poor woman endured, in overcoming a habit that not only injured her health, but nearly destroyed her life, was dreadful beyond description. When her pain and distress were great, she would complain more of this privation, than of all her other sufferings; and so strong was the desire for smoking, that she, several times during her recovery, contrary to my orders, indulged in it a few minutes, and each time with manifest injury; so that she finally was induced to abandon it altogether, and thus recovered her health. Indeed, she now enjoys better health than she has done for years.
Any one acquainted with this ordinary effects of this foolish indulgence in the free use of narcotics, on the nervous system of its victims, will be convinced by a few years close observation, that such persons especially, if they are of sedentary habits, are more subject to fits of despondency, and to a far greater degree, than persons of the same general health and of the same employment, but who have escaped contamination.
I shall here introduce the following extract of a letter, from a respectable clergyman to the author, as illustrative of this point.
"When I say that the effects of the habitual use of tobacco on the human system, are injurious; I speak from years of painful experience. I commenced the use of tobacco when young, like many others, without any definite object, but experienced no very injurious consequences from it until I entered the ministry. Then my system began to feel its dreadful effects. My voice, appetite, and strength soon failed; and I become affected with sickness at the stomach, indigestion, emaciation, and melancholy, with a prostration of the whole nervous system. For years my health has been so much impaired as to render me almost useless in the ministry, and all this I attribute to the pernicious habit of smoking and chewing tobacco. And had I continued the practice, I doubt not but that it would have brought me to an untimely grave. I was often advised to leave it off, and made several unsuccessful attempts. At length I became fully convinced that I must quit tobacco or die. I summoned all my resolution for the fearful exigency, and after a long and desperate struggle I obtained the victory. I soon began to experience the beneficial results of my conquest. My appetite has returned; my voice grows stronger, and I am in a measure freed from that mental dejection to which I once was subject. My general health is much improved, and I feel that I am gradually recovering; though it is not to be expected I shall ever regain what I have lost by this needless and vicious indulgence. I am satisfied that the common use of tobacco is injurious to most people, especially those of sedentary habits. On them it operates with ten-fold energy. I am acquainted with many in the ministry, who are travelling this road to the grave. I uniformly say to them: "Lay aside your pipes and tobacco, or you are undone—your labors in the ministry will soon be at an end."["][F]
[F] Another Clergyman writes as follows. "I thank God, and I thank you for your advice to abandon smoking. My strength has doubled since I quitted this abominable practice."
A mere hint at these evils would seem to be sufficient to awaken inquiry, among the votaries of the plant in question. I shall therefore leave it to their candid decision, after a full and free investigation enables them to arrive at a just conclusion.
The great increase of dyspepsia within the last twenty years, with the dark and lengthened catalogue of nervous complaints that follow in its train, is, I have no doubt, in part owing to the universal prevalence of practices, the propriety of which we are calling in question.
The misery to which the consumers of this drug are subject, when from any cause they are temporarily deprived or it, would go far to deter a reflecting man from voluntarily binding himself to this most ignominious servitude. I have known a hard laboring farmer, who would have resented the name of slave, as much as did the Jews, arise from his bed in the middle of the night and travel half a mile to procure a quid of tobacco, because his uneasiness was such, that he could neither sleep nor rest without it. This uneasiness is more distressing than bodily pain, and has in some instances produced an agitation of mind bordering upon distraction.