In travelling about from place to place you make acquaintance with a most interesting type of character—that of the veteran Scotchman. In Christchurch, New Zealand, I met a Waterloo veteran, eighty-four years of age, yet with erect, military carriage. With vivacious garrulity he told that he was born in Fife; that he had lodged at the house of Mrs Grant of Laggan; that he knew ‘Jamie Hogg’ and Nathaniel Gow; that he had been all through the Peninsular War, had fought at Waterloo, and had been on half-pay since 1817. A companion-figure was that of the venerable Highlander of King William’s Town, Cape Colony—a genial-hearted man, of stern brow and with war-worn features—whose talk was a strange blending of pleasant Scottish reminiscence and weird stories of Kaffir campaigns in which he had taken part. Again, while sailing up the Suez Canal, on the voyage home from India, one of my fellow-passengers was an old Scotsman who had fought at Waterloo, and was then engaged making a tour of the world. As he said, with pleasant pathos: ‘I want to see all that’s to be seen before I’m happit up in the mools’—a phrase that can only be inadequately rendered in English as ‘lying snug beneath the sod.’ He left the steamer at Port Saïd, as he was bound on an excursion to the Holy Land, and as the quarter-master offered to carry his portmanteau, the old fellow elbowed him aside, exclaiming: ‘Pooh, pooh; I’m a young man yet!’ Last and not least notable of this class was an old and well-preserved gentleman I met at Wellington, New Zealand. He was an Edinburgh man, and had been educated at the university there. He had been acquainted with friends of Burns, had known the poet’s ‘Chloris’ and ‘Clarinda,’ and in speaking of the Potterrow always seemed to regard it as still a fashionable street. To gossip with him was like shaking hands with the past.
In going round the world, one is sure to find relatives and souvenirs of famous men and women. At Hobart-Town, Tasmania, there resided, when I visited the town, the granddaughter of Neil Gow and daughter of Nathaniel Gow, the composer of Caller Herrin’. In the Waikato district of the North Island of New Zealand, about a hundred miles from the city of Auckland, lives, I still trust, old Mrs Nicol, mother of the late Robert Nicol, the celebrated Perthshire poet. During a stormy passage in a small steamer on the New Zealand coast, I had some interesting chats with an Irish gentleman who had met and talked with Sir Walter Scott in a chapel in Italy, during the closing scenes of that busy life. I may add also that at Listowel, in Ontario, I was privileged to meet the brother of Dr Livingstone, and was much struck with the facial resemblance between him and the great traveller. In the University of Dunedin the visitor can see, in a gilt frame, a lock of Burns’s hair, labelled ‘A genuine relic of the Poet, and modicum of a larger lock owned by Jean Armour.’ A certain country hotel in Tasmania lives in my memory from its having distributed through its rooms an extraordinary number of pictures of John Knox, the religious character of the house being increased by the fact that one of the apartments was used as the ‘study’ of the Presbyterian clergyman of the village. The name of John Knox, by association, recalls to my mind the incident of the eccentric Scot of Kaffraria, South Africa, who had a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots hung in his bedroom, and who, every morning on rising, stretched his hands towards it, crying: ‘O my poor murdered queen!’
The visitor fresh from home is certain of meeting with a kind welcome from his countrymen abroad. The welcome need not be on personal grounds. An Edinburgh man in Canada once shook my hand warmly, saying: ‘I dinna ken ye; I never met ye before; but I just want to see a man that’s seen Arthur Seat since I saw it.’ The love of home sometimes reaches an intense pitch, as in the case of the Scotsman at Fort Beaufort, in Cape Colony, who ejaculated: ‘I’d rather gang hame and be hanged, than dee here a natural death!’ Again, an old man in New Zealand remarked: ‘I doot I’ll no get hame to Scotland again; but if onybody said: “Ye shall not go,” I’d be off the morn’s mornin’!’ With which forcible yet touching deliverance let these glimpses conclude.
I am afraid that during our brief bird’s-eye view of colonial life, the reader has been dragged hither and thither in a somewhat erratic course. The irregularity, however, has been more apparent than real. Whether amid Canadian snows, New Zealand mountains, Australian bush, or South African veldt, you meet with the same shrewd, persevering Scotsman, steadily moving in his colonial orbit, and moving none the less regularly because of the tender gravitation of his heart towards the central sphere of patriotic affection—dear though distant Scotland.
IS SMOKING INJURIOUS TO HEALTH?
Although the above important question is so frequently asked, more especially of medical men, yet their replies are as a general rule either of a vague or dogmatic nature that is anything but satisfactory. There has been unlimited discussion respecting the injurious effects of smoking, ever since the first introduction of tobacco, and a great deal of nonsense has unfortunately been urged by enthusiasts on both sides. Some have praised tobacco far beyond its merits; while others have so enlarged upon its injurious and poisonous qualities as to make one wonder that anybody who smokes should be left alive at all. Hitherto, however, no satisfactory solution of the problem appears to have been arrived at. Our object in this paper will be to deal as concisely as possible with the subject upon its merits.
In the first place, we may inform our readers that smoking is and is not injurious. This apparently contradictory assertion admits, however, of the following explanation. In New England, it has been with truth alleged that the thirst induced by smoking is an active incentive to alcoholic excess and its attendant evils. Now, on the other hand, amongst Asiatic nations the reverse holds good. Mr Lane—translator of the Arabian Nights—when in the East, noticed that smoking appeared to possess a soothing effect, attended with slight exhilaration, and that it supplied the place of alcoholic beverages. Mr Layard, whose knowledge of eastern nations is most extensive, was also of the same opinion. Mr Crawford, again, an authority of high repute as regards Asiatic habits, believes the use of tobacco has contributed to the sobriety both of Asiatic and European nations. Here we have two entirely contradictory results, as, in North America smoking produces dissipation; whilst in the East it not only restrains, but takes its place. It is therefore to climate, temperament, and bodily constitution acting and reacting upon each other, that we may trace so opposite an effect.
The chemical constituents of tobacco are three, the due consideration of which is highly important. They are: (1) A volatile oil; (2) a volatile alkali; (3) an empyreumatic oil. The volatile oil, although in minute quantities, has a most powerful action on the physical system, even in the smallest dose; and when taken internally, gives rise to nausea with giddiness. The volatile alkali is nicotine, possessing narcotic and very poisonous qualities; so much so indeed, that a single drop of it is sufficient to kill a dog. The proportion of this substance in the dry tobacco-leaf varies from two to eight per cent., according to Professor Johnston, who states that ‘in smoking a quarter of an ounce of tobacco, two grains or more of one of the most subtle poisons known may be drawn into the smoker’s mouth;’ the reason why he is not poisoned being because this deadly juice is not concentrated. Empyreumatic oil (from Gr. empyreuo, I kindle), the third active ingredient of tobacco, is so called to express the burned smell and acrid taste which result from the combustion of the tobacco during smoking. This oil closely resembles in its action that which is produced from poisonous foxglove leaf (Digitalis purpurea). A drop of empyreumatic oil when applied to the tongue of a cat has produced convulsions and death in a few minutes. Reptiles are destroyed by it as through an electric shock. It must be borne in mind that these three chemical ingredients are united when smoking, and produce to a greater or less degree their respective effects. A cigar when smoked to the end effectually discharges into the smoker’s mouth everything produced by its combustion. When saliva is retained in the mouth, the effects of tobacco in one sense become more markedly developed on the nervous system. On the other hand, when constant expectoration takes place, digestion becomes impaired, from the diminution of saliva, which plays an important part in this function. We have heard medical men, who were themselves smokers, aver that the former is the least of the two evils; which we hope is the case, as the habit of constant expectoration in which many smokers indulge, is certainly one of the most unpleasant concomitants of the pipe or cigar.
In a purely physiological sense, smoking acts as follows: (1) The heart’s action becomes lowered; (2) the elimination of carbonic acid is diminished, thus interfering with the respiratory power; (3) the waste of the body is checked, and digestion to a certain extent impeded. Excessive smoking disorders digestion, and, where the heart is weak, often induces disease of that organ. It is by no means uncommon to find habitual smokers troubled with dyspepsia. Dr Leared considers excessive smoking decidedly productive of indigestion. Dr Pereira, who was a high authority on such matters, when alluding to habitual smokers in his celebrated Materia Medica, observes: ‘The practice, when moderately indulged in, provokes thirst, increases the secretion of saliva, and produces that remarkably soothing and tranquillising effect upon the mind which has caused it to be so much admired and adopted by all classes of society, and by all nations civilised and barbarous.’ Later on, the same eminent authority states that ‘when indulged in to excess, and especially by those unaccustomed to its use, smoking causes nausea, trembling, and in some cases paralysis and death.’ Instances are recorded of persons killing themselves by smoking seventeen or eighteen pipes at a sitting!
In his luminous Treatise on Poisons, Dr Christison states that ‘no well-ascertained ill effects have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking.’ On the other hand, Dr Prout, a late distinguished physician and chemist, was of a different opinion. He observes: ‘Tobacco disorders the assimilating functions in general, but particularly, I believe, the assimilation of saccharine principle. It is the weak and those predisposed to disease who fall victims to its poisonous operation, whilst the strong and healthy suffer comparatively little therefrom.’ So even this learned physician’s opinion is to a certain extent thus modified.