CHAPTER IV
TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH AND CHARACTER
But oh, what witchcraft of a stronger kind,
Or cause too deep for human search to find,
Makes earth-born weeds imperial man enslave,
Not little souls, but e’en the wise and brave?
Arbuckle.
Is smoking injurious to health? is an old and oft-repeated question which has agitated men’s minds for fully three centuries, and out of which has grown a literature of peculiar interest, now signalised by royal Counterblasts and Papal Bulls, now rising in grateful pæans for the blessing conferred on weary humanity by the weed whose—
quiet spirit lulls the lab’ring brain,
Lures back to thought the flights of vacant mirth,
Consoles the mourner, soothes the couch of pain,