Experiment (by Davison) to show how the nicotine in six cigarettes was sufficient to kill this fish. The smoke from the cigarettes was passed through the water in which the fish is swimming.
The Use of Tobacco.—A well-known authority defines a narcotic as a substance "which directly induces sleep, blunts the senses, and, in large amounts, produces complete insensibility." Tobacco, opium, chloral, and cocaine are examples of narcotics. Tobacco owes its narcotic influence to a strong poison known as nicotine. Its use in killing insect parasites on plants is well known. In experiments with jellyfish and other lowly organized animals, the author has found as small a per cent as one part of nicotine to one hundred thousand parts of sea water to be sufficient to profoundly affect an animal placed within it. The illustration here given shows the effect of nicotine upon a fish, one of the vertebrate animals. Nicotine in a pure form is so powerful a poison that two or three drops would be sufficient to cause the death of a man by its action upon the nervous system, especially the nerves controlling the beating of the heart. This action is well known among boys training for athletic contests. The heart is affected; boys become "short-winded" as a result of the action on the heart. It has been demonstrated that tobacco has, too, an important effect on muscular development. The stunted appearance of the young smoker is well known.
The amounts of alcohol in some liquors and in some patent medicines. a, beer, 5 %; b, claret, 8 %; c, champagne, 9 %; d, whisky, 50 %; e, well-known sarsaparilla, 18 %; f, g, h, much-advertised nerve tonics, 20 %, 21 %, 25 %; i, another much-advertised sarsaparilla, 27 %; j, a well-known tonic, 28 %; k, l, bitters, 37 %, 44 % alcohol.
Use and Abuse of Drugs.—The American people are addicted to the use of drugs, and especially patent medicines. A glance at the street-car advertisements shows this. Most of the medicines advertised contain alcohol in greater quantity than beer or wine, and many of them have opium, morphine, or cocaine in their composition. Paregoric and laudanum, medicines sometimes given to young children, are examples of dangerous drugs that contain opium. Dr. George D. Haggard of Minneapolis has shown by many analyses that a large number of the so-called "malts," "malt extracts," and "tonics," including several of the best known and most advertised on the market, are simply disguised beers and, frequently, very poor beers at that. These drugs, in addition to being harmful, affect the person using them in such a manner that he soon feels the need for the drug. Thus the drug habit is formed,—a condition which has wrecked thousands of lives. A number of articles on patent medicines recently appeared in a leading magazine and have been collected and published under the title of The Great American Fraud. In this booklet the author points out a number of different kinds of "cures" and patent medicines. The most dangerous are those headache or neuralgia cures containing acetanilid. This drug is a heart depresser and should not be used without medical advice. Another drug which is responsible for habit formation is cocaine. This is often found in catarrh or other cures. Alcohol is the basis of all tonics or "bracers." Every boy and girl should read this booklet so as to be forearmed against evils of the sort just described.
[36] Adapted from Atwater, Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Value of Food, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1902.
[37] and [38] W. O. Atwater, Principles of Nutrition and Nutritive Value of Food, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1902.
[39] The above tables have been taken from the excellent pamphlet of the Cornell Reading Course, No. 6, Human Nutrition.
[40] Alcohol is made up of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. It is very easily oxidized, but it cannot, as is shown by the chemical formula, be of use to the body in tissue building, because of its lack of nitrogen.