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It is no use in telling you by this time that I talk not about tobacco "like a book," but like one who has been tobacconized. For I have been one of those unfortunate boys who never had an opportunity of learning any thing except from that cross old pedagogue Experience, who invariably compelled me to work out my own problems, often have I in scalding tears of bitter regret.
Tobacco like alcohol gives a temporary stimulus, and to slack off the use of it, it will produce similar effects.
Nicotina and Nicotianin are the proper fathers to the following diseases,—Dispepsia, Water-brash, Cancer, Ramollissement, Impotence, Fatuity, Caries, Consumption, Laryngitis, Cardialgia, Angina Pectoris, Neuralgia, Paralysis, Amaurosis, Deafness, Liver Complaint, Apoplexy, Insanity, Hippochondriasis, "Horrors," "Blues," and so on through the greater part of the Nosological family.
Because you are not killed outright you flatter your self that you are not poisoned, but I tell you that you are, and you are dying by inches or by sixteenths of inches if you please, how ever small the effect on you it has some effect and finally by a continual pressing of that effect it will kill you. Put your ear to the huge locust tree and hear the gentle grating of a bore worm. Thou insignificant worm! What dost thou hope to do with that monster tree? Grate, grate, grate! For years that almost imperceptible grating goes on, while the mighty locust lifts its towering branches in fancied security. Finally, a storm comes and the locust hopes to brave it as he has many others; but, alas, its strength is undermined; Its vitals are eaten away, and it falls,—a victim to the tiny worm. Thus does tobacco, or alcohol, or opium, or any other poison when taken habitually, undermine the system, slowly, imperceptibly,—but surely.
Go into any tobacco factory of cigars, snuff, or plug, and bring out a healthy man if you can.
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