The same tea, applied to parts affected with itch, has been followed by vomiting and convulsions. The same article, applied to the skin on the pit of the stomach, occasions faintness, vomiting, and cold sweats.
I knew a young man, who, only from inhaling the vapor arising from the leaves of tobacco immersed in boiling water, was made alarmingly sick.
A medical friend assured me that he was once thrown into a state of great prostration and nausea, from having a part of his hand moistened, for a few minutes, in a strong infusion of tobacco.
Col. G. says, that during the late war, under hard service on the Canadian frontier, the soldiers not unfrequently disabled themselves for duty, by applying a moistened leaf of tobacco to the armpit. It caused great prostration and vomiting. Many were suddenly and violently seized soon after eating. On investigation, a tobacco leaf was found in the armpit.
Dr. M. Long, of Warner, N. H., writes me, under date of April 26, 1834, that, on the 6th of May, 1825, he was consulted by Mrs. F. on account of her little daughter L. F., then five years old, who had a small ring-worm, scarcely three-fourths of an inch in diameter, situated upon the root of the nose. Her object was to ascertain the Doctor's opinion, as to the propriety of making a local application of tobacco in the case. He objected to it as an exceedingly hazardous measure; and, to impress his opinion more fully, related a case, a record of which he had seen, in which a father destroyed the life of his little son, by the use of tobacco spittle upon an eruption or humor of the head.
Immediately after the Doctor left the house, the mother besmeared the tip of her finger with a little of the "strong juice" from the grandmother's tobacco pipe, and proceeded to apply it to the ring-worm, remarking, that "if it should strike to the stomach it must go through the nose." The instant the mother's finger touched the part affected, the eyes of the little patient were rolled up in their sockets, she sallied back, and in the act of falling, was caught by the alarmed mother. The part was immediately washed with cold water, with a view to dislodge the poison. But this was to no purpose, for the jaws were already firmly locked together, and the patient was in a senseless and apparently dying state. The Doctor, who had stopped three-fourths of a mile distant, to see a patient, was presently called in. The symptoms were "coldness of the extremities, no perceptible pulse at the wrists, the jaws set together, deep insensibility, the countenance deathly." He succeeded in opening the jaws, so as to admit of the administration of the spirits of ammonia and lavender; frictions were employed, and every thing done, which, at the time, was thought likely to promote resuscitation, but "it was an hour, or an hour and an half, before the little patient was so far recovered as to be able to speak."
"Till this time," says Dr. S., "the child had been robust and healthy, never having had but one illness that required medical advice; but, since the tobacco experiment, she has been continually feeble and sickly. The first four or five years after this terrible operation, she was subject to fainting fits every three or four weeks, sometimes lasting from twelve to twenty-four hours; and many times, in those attacks, her life appeared to be in imminent danger. Within the last three or four years, those turns have been less severe."
The foregoing facts serve to show, that tobacco is one of the most active and deadly vegetable poisons known; it acts directly upon the nervous power, enfeebling, deranging, or extinguishing the actions of life. Is it possible, that the habitual use of an article of so actively poisonous properties can promote health, or indeed fail to exert an injurious influence upon health? It will readily be admitted, that the daily use of any article, which causes an exhaustion of the nervous power, beyond what is necessarily occasioned by unstimulating food and drink, and the ordinary physical agents, as heat, cold, light, together with mental and corporeal exertion, &c., is not only useless but hurtful, tending directly to produce disease and premature decay. Such is tobacco. Ample evidence of this is furnished by a departure, more or less obvious, from healthy action, in the organic, vital movements of a large majority of tobacco consumers.