Part 5

Gentlemen, I have done. The subject, with a slight examination, is before you. I have plainly and fearlessly expressed my opinion, without intending to wound the feelings of a single individual. If your sentiments correspond with mine, you will assist in bringing this odious practice to the bar of public opinion. There let it be subjected to a severe, but dispassionate trial; and if on a cool and deliberate investigation, its pernicious tendency shall fully appear, then let the American people rise up, and with united voice pronounce its sentence of final condemnation.

APPENDIX,

CONTAINING AN ANSWER TO SEVERAL QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE USE OF TOBACCO.

"But," says the lover of tobacco, "how can it be so deleterious when multitudes, who apparently enjoy good health, use it daily?"

In this objection two things are assumed, viz.

1. The existence of a perfect standard of health.

2. That this standard is not depreciated by the habitual use of tobacco.

If we examine these positions in the light of truth, we shall find them both defective.

"The varieties in point of health," says an eminent physiologist, "are numerous and considerable. There is, indeed, a certain state of health, which may be said to be peculiar to each individual. Such persons as we suppose to be in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, differ surprisingly, not only from each other, but from their own condition at other times, as well in consequence of a difference in the constitution of the blood, as a diversity of tone and other vital energies." One state may be said to be healthy compared with another; and the same may be affirmed of persons. One may enjoy health when compared with an invalid. In all these cases it will be seen that health is only comparative. But to sustain this part of the objection it would be necessary to prove, what I presume will not be attempted, "that the thousands who daily use tobacco, are enjoying the maximum of health and strength;" i. e. that every function of the system is performed to absolute perfection. For if it be admitted that any function is deranged, it would be difficult, I apprehend, to prove, that that derangement was not occasioned by the use of tobacco.

That men accustomed to hard labor will endure more fatigue, than those of sedentary or enervated habits, needs no argument to prove. That the arm of the blacksmith acquires strength beyond the arm of the literary recluse, is altogether obvious.

The laborer will consume more food; consequently his frame will acquire a proportionate degree of strength, and, all other things being equal, it will be able to resist the influence of extraneous causes, to a much greater extent than that of the voluptuary.

Let now the blacksmith use tobacco, and although there may be no perceptible diminution of vigor, (since you have no perfect standard to try it by,) because he still exceeds in strength persons possessing constitutions naturally less vigorous, or constitutions less hardened by toil; yet, whether the same hardy son of Vulcan can endure more hardship, while using tobacco, than he could have done had he never used the baneful plant, is the question?

That many persons apparently enjoy good health, and yet use tobacco, cannot be denied. And the same may be affirmed with equal propriety of opium and alcohol. I once knew a man who, from his youth till he had reached his sixty-ninth year, became intoxicated, whenever he could procure sufficient liquor to produce this effect; and during that time he was never so ill as to require medical advice. I have known others to be literally steeped in ardent spirit, who were seldom sick; and yet few, I apprehend, will affirm, that alcohol used to such excess is not injurious.

The Turks, who, for aught to the contrary that appears in their history, enjoy as good health as the people of the United States, and are said to attain a longevity as great, use opium for the purpose of intoxication, much in the same manner in which the latter employ alcohol and wine, these being forbidden to the former by their creed. Yet, after all, the man who could adduce these facts to prove the harmlessness of the substances under consideration, must be destitute of that physiological knowledge which is necessary to understand the natural operations of the human system.

There is a principle in the animal economy, which powerfully resists morbid impressions, and tends to expel whatever is noxious. This principle, called by some "the medical power of nature," is roused to action by the application of an offending agent to any part of the human system. On the first intimation of the assault, this vigilant sentinel rallies her forces, and flies to the point of attack.

If she succeed in expelling the invader before any serious mischief has been done, the system again reposes in quiet; but if not, a more general tumult arises, and the assistance of art is often required to second her ineffectual efforts. These phenomena are exhibited in the first use of tobacco, in all its forms.

Apply snuff to the nostrils of one unaccustomed to it; and a violent sneezing, with a copious secretion of mucus will follow. Put tobacco into the mouth and it immediately produces a profuse discharge of saliva; and if this proves unsuccessful in expelling the unwelcome intruder, severe nausea and vomiting ensue. Smoking also produces similar effects. Apply the moistened leaves of tobacco to any part of the surface of the body, and its deadly effects are soon perceived in an entire prostration of strength, accompanied with ghastly paleness and vomiting.

If it were not in a high degree poisonous, no such results would follow its first application to the living fibre; for they do not follow the first application of those substances which were, by our wise and bountiful Creator, designed for the use of man.

Though the effects above described are less violent, when the nerves (the media through which it operates) become accustomed to the stimulus of the noxious substance; yet it by no means proves, even in these circumstances, that it does no injury to the system, any more than the fact that some men drink a quart of proof spirit daily without producing death, proves that that amount does them no harm, when half the quantity taken by a beginner would prove fatal.

In the course of twelve years' observation on the effects of narcotics upon the human system, I became acquainted with a delicate female, who, for thirty years, had taken a sufficient quantity of opium daily to kill the hardiest son of New-England, provided he had been unaccustomed to its pernicious influence. She, nevertheless, lived to an advanced age, and was eighty-four years old when I last saw her, though she, at that time, took every day two scruples of solid opium.

I had the unpleasant task to attend this lady in a fit of sickness. And with the exception of a few cases, in which similar results have followed the excessive use of alcohol, it was, without exaggeration, the most troublesome case that has ever fallen under my care.

All the frightful symptoms of delirium tremens waited around and haunted her imagination through the day; while shrieks, and groans, and all the signs of woe attended her nightly couch, to add a gloomy horror to her unrefreshing and broken slumbers. And so far as my observations extend, the most inveterate derangements of the nervous system are either produced or aggravated by the habitual use of narcotics.

The inherent power of the constitution to sustain itself amid the ever-varying changes to which it is exposed, has been learned by common observation, as well by the peasant as by the man of erudition. The fact, that man, "made of one blood, can dwell" in all the varieties of climate, "on the face of the whole earth," and can sustain himself, without any change of organization, at one period on the burning sands of a Numidian desert, at another among the ice-bergs of a Greenland winter--exhibits in the most convincing light the extent of this wonderful power.

A curious field of speculation, on this sanative power in the physical constitution of man, lies open to out view, had we time to pursue it, in contemplating the habits, customs, and manners of the North American Indian. Guided by the simple dictates of nature, he gratifies his appetite with such food as comes most readily within his reach, and slakes his thirst at the first mountain brook. Sometimes, for days, he lies sleeping in his smoky wigwam without the means of appeasing hunger; then rises and follows his game with the fierceness of a tiger, until the object of his pursuit is overtaken; after which, with the voracity of a dog, he loads his stomach with food sufficient to satisfy the cravings of nature, for as many days as he had previously fasted, and again betakes himself to sleep and inactivity. With all this irregularity, he is a total stranger to lingering complaints, and to that numerous as well as fashionable class of diseases denominated "Nervous." That formidable ailment, Dyspepsia, which, like a fiend, has, for the last few years pervaded the whole land, is unknown to the Indian; having its origin in the abuses introduced by civilization and refinement. But to return:

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man who daily uses tobacco, enjoys equal health with one who uses none, and is no more liable to disease; let him once be attacked by disease, and then it will be far more difficult to remove it, than to do so in one free from such habit.

This will appear from the following considerations:

Remedial agents ordinarily act on the system, by exciting the living power through the medium of the nerves; hence when these have long been deadened by the habitual use of any narcotic, common sense, aside from the lights of science and philosophy, would teach us the difficulty of making an impression on a system whose nerves had thus been previously paralyzed.

Perhaps the man, who daily drinks ardent spirit, may, from the greater insensibility of his system, in some cases escape sickness as long as the most temperate, (though this is by no means a common fact); yet, let disease once commence, and then we learn, by painful experience, the disadvantage of having broken down the nervous system by needless and vicious excess.