The reformers are reduced, then, to the vague generality, that smoking and chewing "affect the nerves."
Students, men of sedentary, professional habits, persons of a very nervous temperament, or those subject to much excitement in business and politics, sometimes show debility and languor, or agitation and nervousness, while they smoke and chew. Are there no other causes at work, sufficient in themselves to produce these effects? Are want of exercise, want of air, want of rest, and want of inherited vigor to be eliminated from the estimate, while tobacco is made the scape-goat of all their troubles?
Climate, and the various influences affecting any race which has migrated after a stationary residence of generations to a new country extending under different parallels of latitude, have been reasonably accused of rendering us a nervous people. It is not so reasonable to charge one habit with being the sole cause of this, although we should be more prudent in not following it to excess. The larger consumption of tobacco here is due both to the cheapness of the product and to the wealth of the consumer. But it does not follow that we are more subjected to its narcotic influences because we use the best varieties of the weed. On the contrary, the poor and rank tobaccoes, grown under a northern sky, are the richest in nicotin.
But it will be better to continue the argument about its effects upon the nervous system in connection with the assertions of the reformers. The following is a list, by no means complete, of these asserted ill effects from its use.
Tobacco is said to cause softening of the brain,—dimness of vision,—("the Germans smoke; the Germans are a spectacled nation!" post hoc, ergo propter hoc? the laborious intellectual habits of this people, and their trying "text," are considered of no account,)—cancer of the stomach,—disease of the liver,—dyspepsia,—enfeebled nutrition, and consequent emaciation,—dryness of the mouth,—"the clergyman's sore-throat" and loss of voice,—irritability of the nervous system,—tremulousness,—palpitation and paralysis,—and, among the moral ills, loss of energy, idleness, drunkenness. A fearful catalogue, which would dedicate the tabatière to Pandora, were it true.
Hygienic reformers are usually unequalled in imaginary horrors, except by the charlatans who vend panaceas.
We have no reasons for believing that tobacco causes softening of the brain equal in plausibility to those which ascribe it to prolonged and excessive mental effort. The statistics of disease prove cancers of other organs to be twice as frequent, among females, as cancer of the stomach is among males; and an eminent etiologist places narcotics among the least proved causes of this disease. A hot climate, abuse of alcohol, a sedentary life, and sluggish digestion happen, rather curiously, to be very frequent concomitants, if not causes, of disease of the liver. Dyspepsia haunts both sexes, and, we venture to assert, though we cannot bring figures to prove it, is as frequent among those who do not use tobacco as among those who do. We are ready to concede that excessive chewing and smoking, particularly if accompanied by large expectoration, may impair nutrition and cause emaciation: that the mass of mankind eat and digest and live, as well as use "the weed," is proof that its moderate employment is not ordinarily followed by this result. Dryness of the mouth follows expectoration as a matter of course; but the salivation excited in an old smoker by tobacco is very moderate, and not succeeded by thirst, unless the smoke be inhaled too rapidly and at too high a temperature.
We come next to a very tender point with reformers, the laryngeal cough and failing voice of the reverend clergy. The later generations of ministers of this vicinity, as a body, have abandoned tobacco, and yet the evil has not diminished. An eminent divine of our acquaintance, who does not smoke daily, always finds a cigar relieve a trifling bronchitis, to which he is occasionally subject The curious will find in the "Medical Journal" of this city, for 1839, that quite as much can be said on one side as on the other of this subject.
The minor, rarely the graver affections of the nervous system, do follow the use of tobacco in excess. We admit this willingly; but we deny these effects to its moderate use by persons of ordinary health and of no peculiar idiosyncrasy. Numerous cases of paralysis among tobacco-takers in France were traced to the lead in which the preparation was enveloped.
We pass next to what we claim as the effects of moderate tobacco-using, and will take first the evidence of the toxicologists. Both Pereira and Christison agree that "no well-ascertained ill effects have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking." Beck, a modern authority, says, "Common observation settles the question, that the moderate and daily use of tobacco does not prove injurious. This is a general rule": and he adds, that exceptions necessarily exist, etc.