Part 17

The Constituents of Tobacco Smoke are numerous, but the prominent ones are carbonic-acid, carbonic-oxide, and ammonia gases; carbon, or soot; and nicotine. The proportion of these substances varies with different kinds of tobacco, the pipe used, and the rapidity of the combustion. Carbonic acid tends to produce sleepiness and headache. Carbonic oxide, in addition, causes a tremulous movement of the muscles, and so of the heart. Ammonia bites the tongue of the smoker, excites the salivary glands, and causes dryness of the mouth and throat. Nicotine is a powerful poison. The amount contained in one or two strong cigars, if thrown directly into the blood, would cause death. Nicotine itself is complex, yielding a volatile substance that gives the odor to the breath and clothing; and also a bitter extract which produces the sickening taste of an old pipe. In smoking, some of the nicotine is decomposed, forming pyridine, picoline, and other poisonous alkaloids. [Footnote: The analysis of tobacco as given by different authorities varies greatly. The one stated in the text suffices for the purposes of this chapter. Von Eulenberg names several other products of the combustion. One hundred pounds of the dry leaf may yield as high as seven pounds of nicotine. Havana tobacco contains about two per cent, and Virginia about six per cent.--See JOHNSTON & CHURCH'S _Chemistry of Common Life_, and MILLER'S _Organic Chemistry_.]

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS.--The poison of tobacco, set free by the process either of chewing or smoking, when for the first time it is swept through the system by the blood, powerfully affects the body. Nausea is felt, and the stomach seeks to throw off the offending substance. The brain is inflamed, and headache follows. The motor nerves becoming irritated, giddiness ensues. Thus Nature earnestly protests against the formation of this habit. But, after repeated trials, the system adjusts itself to the new conditions. A "tolerance" of the poison is finally established, and smoking causes none of the former symptoms. Such powerful substances can not, however, be constantly inhaled without producing marked changes. The three great eliminating organs--the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys-- throw off a large part of the products, but much remains in the system. When the presence of the poison is constant, and especially when the smoking or chewing is excessive, the disturbance that at first is merely functional, must necessarily, in many cases at least, lead to a chronic derangement.

Probably in this, as in the case of other deleterious articles of diet, the strong and healthy will seem to escape entirely, while the weak and those predisposed to disease will be injured in direct proportion to the extent of the indulgence. Those whose employment leads to active, outdoor work, will show no sign of nicotine poisoning, while the man of sedentary habits will sooner or later be the victim of dyspepsia, sleeplessness, nervousness, paralysis, or other organic difficulties. Even where the user of tobacco himself escapes harm, the law of heredity asserts itself, and the innocent offspring only too often inherit an impaired constitution, and a tendency to nervous complaints.

THE VARIOUS DISTURBANCES produced in different individuals and constitutions by smoking have been summed up by Dr. Richardson as follows: "(_a_) In the blood, it causes undue fluidity, and change in the red corpuscles; (_b_) in the stomach, it gives rise to debility, nausea, and vomiting; (_c_) in the mucous membrane of the mouth, it produces enlargement and soreness of the tonsils--smoker's sore throat--redness, dryness, and occasional peeling of the membrane, and either unnatural firmness and contraction, or sponginess of the gums; and, where the pipe rests on the lips, oftentimes 'epithelial cancer'; (_d_) in the heart, it causes debility of the organ, and irregular action; (_e_) in the bronchial surface of the lungs, when that is already irritable, it sustains irritation, and increases the cough; (_f_) in the organs of sense, it produces dilation of the pupils of the eye, confusion of vision, bright lines, luminous or cobweb specks, and long retention of images on the retina, with analogous symptoms affecting the ear, viz., inability to define sounds clearly, and the occurrence of a sharp, ringing noise like a whistle; (_g_) in the brain, it impairs the activity of the organ, oppressing it if it be nourished, but soothing it if it be exhausted; (_h_) it leads to paralysis in the motor and sympathetic nerves, and to over-secretion from the glands which the sympathetic nerves control."

IS TOBACCO A FOOD?--Here, as in the case of alcohol, the reply is a negative one. Tobacco manifests no characteristic of a food. It can not impart to the blood an atom of nutritive matter for building up the body. It does not add to, but rather subtracts from, the total vital force. It confers no potential power upon muscle or brain. It stimulates by cutting off the nervous supply from the extremities and concentrating it upon the centers. But stimulation is not nourishment; it is only a rapid spending of the capital stock. There is no greater error than to mistake the exciting of an organ for its strengthening.

THE INFLUENCE UPON YOUTH.--Here, too, science utters no doubtful voice. Experience asserts only one conviction. _Tobacco retards the development of mind and body._ [Footnote: Cigarettes are especially injurious from the irritating smoke of the paper covering, taken into the lungs, and also because the poison fumes of the tobacco are more directly inhaled. In case of the cheap cigarettes often smoked by boys the ingredients used are harmful, while one revolts at the thought of the filthy materials, refuse cigar stumps, etc., employed in their manufacture.] The law of nature is that of steady growth. It can not admit of a daily, even though it be merely a functional, disturbance that weakens the digestion, that causes the heart to labor excessively, that prevents the perfect oxidation of the blood, that interferes with the assimilation, and that deranges the nervous system. [Footnote: There is one influence of tobacco that every young man should understand. In many cases, like alcohol, it seems to blunt the sensibilities, and to make its user careless of the rights and feelings of others. This is often noticed in common life. We meet everywhere "devotees of the weed," who, ignoring the fact that tobacco is disagreeable to many persons, think only of the gratification of their selfish appetite. They smoke or chew in any place or company. They permit the cigar fumes to blow into the faces of passers-by. They sit where the wind carries the smoke of their pipes so that others must inhale it. They expectorate upon the floor of cars, hotels, and even private homes. They take no pains to remove the odor that lingers about their person and clothing. They force all who happen to be near, their companions, their fellow-travelers, to inhale the nauseating odor of tobacco. Everything must be sacrificed to the one primal necessity of such persons--a smoke. Now, a young man just beginning life, with his fortune to make, and his success to achieve, can not afford to burden himself with a habit that is costly, that will make his presence offensive to many persons, and that may perhaps render him less sensitive to the best influences and perceptions of manhood.] No one has a right thus to check and disturb continually the regular processes of his physical and mental progress. Hence, the young man (especially if he be of a nervous, sensitive organization) who uses tobacco deliberately diminishes the possible energy with which he might commence the work of life; [Footnote: In the Polytechnic School at Paris, the pupils were divided into two classes--the smokers, and the non-smokers. The latter not only excelled on the entrance examinations, but during the entire course of study. Dr. Decaisne examined thirty-eight boys who smoked, and found twenty-seven of them diseased from nicotine poisoning. So long ago as 1868, in consequence of these results, the Minister of Public Instruction forbade the use of tobacco by the pupils.

Dr. Gihon, medical director of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in his report for 1881, says: "The most important matter in the health history of the students is that relating to tobacco, and its interdiction is absolutely essential to their future health and usefulness. In this view I have been sustained by my colleagues, and by all sanitarians in civil and military life whose views I have been able to obtain."] while he comes under the bondage of a habit that may become stronger than his will, and under the influence of a narcotic that may beguile his faculties and palsy his strength at the very moment when every power should be awake.

Another peril still lies in the wake of this masterful poison habit. Tobacco causes thirst and depression that only too often and naturally lead to the use of liquor. (See p. 338.)

3. OPIUM.

Opium is the dried juice of the poppy. In Eastern countries, this flower is cultivated in immense fields for the sake of this product. When a cut is made in the poppy head, a tiny tear of milky juice exudes, and hardens. These little drops are gathered and prepared for the market, an acre yielding, it is said, about twenty-five pounds. Throughout the East, opium is generally smoked; but in Western countries laudanum and paregoric (tinctures of opium), and morphine--a powerful alkaloid contained in opium, are generally used. The drug itself is also eaten.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Opium, in its various forms, acts directly upon the nerves, a small dose quieting pain, and a larger one soothing to sleep. It arouses the brain, and fires the imagination to a wonderful pitch. [Footnote: So far as its effects are concerned, it matters little in what form opium is taken, whether solid as in pills, liquid as in laudanum, or vaporized, as when inhaled from a pipe. The opium slave is characterized by trembling steps, a curved spine, sunken glassy eyes, sallow withered features, and often by contraction of the muscles of the neck and fingers. In the East, when the drug ceases its influence, the opium eater renews it with corrosive sublimate till, finally, this also fails of effect, and he gradually sinks into the grave.] The reaction from this unnatural excitant is correspondingly depressing; and the melancholy, the "overwhelming horror" that ensues, calls for a renewal of the stimulus. The dose must be gradually increased to produce the original exhilaration. [Footnote: The victim of opium is bound to a drug from which he derives no benefits, but which slowly deprives him of health and happiness, finally to end in idiocy or premature death. Whatever the victim's condition or surroundings may be, the opium must be taken at certain times with inexorable regularity. The liquor or tobacco user can, for a time, go without the use of these agents, and no regular hours are necessary. During sickness, and more especially during the eruptive fevers, he does not desire tobacco or liquor. The opium eater has no such reprieves; his dose must be taken, and, in painful complications affecting the stomach, a large increase is demanded to sustain the system. If, in forming the habit, two doses are taken each day, the victim is obliged to maintain that number. It is the unceasing, everlasting slavery of regularity that humiliates opium eaters by a sense of their own weakness.--HUBBARD _on The Opium Habit and Alcoholism._] The seductive nature of the drug leads the unfortunate victim on step by step until he finds himself fast bound in the fetters of one of the most tyrannical habits known to man.

To go on is to wreck all one's powers--physical and mental. To throw off the habit, requires a determination that but few possess. Yet even when the custom is broken, the system is long in recovering from the shock. There seems to be a failure of every organ. The digestion is weakened, food is no longer relished, the muscles waste, the skin shrivels, the nervous centers are paralyzed, and a premature old age comes on apace. De Quincey, four months after he had cast away the opium bonds, wrote, "Think of me as one still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered."

No person can be too careful in the use of laudanum, paregoric, and morphine. They may be taken on a physician's prescription as a sedative from racking pain, [Footnote: Many persons learn to inject morphine beneath the skin by means of a "hypodermic syringe." The operation is painless, and seems an innocent one. It throws the narcotic directly into the circulation, and relief from pain is often almost instantaneous. But the danger of forming the opium habit is not lessened, and the effect of using the drug in this form for a long time is just as injurious as opium smoking itself. Opium in one of its forms enters largely into the composition of many of the painkillers and patent medicines so freely advertised for domestic use in the present day, and for this reason the greatest care is needed in having recourse to any of them. Taken, perhaps, in the first instance, to alleviate the torments of neuralgia or toothache, what proves to be a remedy soon becomes a source of gratification, which the wretchedness that follows on abstinence renders increasingly difficult to lay aside. The same must be said of bromide of potassium and hydrate of chloral, frequently resorted to as a remedy for sleeplessness: the system quickly becomes habituated to their use, and they can then be relinquished only at the cost of much suffering. Indeed, the last mentioned of these two drugs obtains over the mind a power which may be compared to that of opium, and is, moreover, liable to occasion the disease known as chloralism, by which the system ultimately becomes a complete wreck. Looking at the whole question of the medicinal use of narcotics, it is perhaps not too much to say that they should never be employed except with the authority of a competent medical adviser.-- _Chambers's Journal_.] but if followed up for any length of time, the powerful habit may be formed ere one is aware. Then comes the opium eater's grave, or the opium eater's struggle for life!

4. CHLORAL HYDRATE.

CHLORAL HYDRATE is a drug frequently used to cause sleep. It leaves behind no headache or lassitude, as is often the case with morphine. It is, however, a treacherous remedy. It is cumulative in its effects, _i. e._, even a small and harmless dose, persisted in for a long period, may produce a gradual accumulation of evil results that in the end will prove fatal.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT of its prolonged use is very marked. The appetite becomes capricious. The secretions are unnatural. Nausea and flatulency often ensue. Then the nervous system is involved. The heart is affected. Sleep, instead of responding to the drug, as at first, is broken and disturbed. The eyesight fails. The circulation is enfeebled, and the pulse becomes weak, rapid, and irregular. There is a tendency to fainting and to difficult respiration. Sometimes the impoverished blood induces a disease resembling scurvy, the ends of the fingers ulcerate, and the face is disfigured by blotches. An excessive dose may result in death.

Prolonged habitual use of chloral hydrate tends to debase the mind and morals of the subject in the same manner as indulgence in alcohol, ether, or chloroform.

5. CHLOROFORM.

CHLOROFORM is an artificial product generally obtained, by distillation, from a mixture of chloride of lime, water, and alcohol. It was discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York. It is a colorless, transparent volatile liquid, with a strong ethereal odor.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Chloroform is a powerful anæsthetic, which, when inhaled, causes a temporary paralysis of the nervous system, and thus a complete insensibility to pain. There is great peril attending its use, even in the hands of the most skillful and experienced practitioners. It is sometimes prescribed by a physician, and afterward (as in the case of laudanum, morphine, and chloral) the sufferer, charmed with the release from pain and the peaceful slumber secured, buys the Lethean liquid for himself. Its use soon becomes an apparent necessity. The craving for the narcotic at a stated time is almost irresistible. The patient, compelled to give up the use of chloroform, will demand, entreat, pray for another dose, in a heartrending manner, never to be forgotten. Paleness and debility, the earliest symptoms, are followed by mental prostration. Familiarity with this dangerous drug begets carelessness, and its victims are frequently found dead in their beds, with the handkerchief from which they inhaled the volatile poison clutched in their lifeless hands.

6. COCAINE.

Cocaine is an alkaloid prepared from the erythroxylon coca, a shrub, five or six feet high, found wild in the mountainous regions of Ecuador and Peru, where it is also cultivated by the natives. The South American Indians, for centuries, have chewed coca leaves as a stimulant, but the highly poisonous principle, now called cocaine, to which the plant owes its peculiar effects, was not discovered till 1859. Within a few years this drug has come into favor as an agent to produce local anæsthesia, and has proved exceedingly valuable in surgical operations upon the eye and other sensitive organs. It has already, however, been diverted from its legitimate use as a benefaction, and to the other evils of the day is now added the "cocaine habit," which is, perhaps, even more dangerous and difficult to abandon than either the alcohol or the opium habit.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Applied locally, cocaine greatly lessens and even annihilates pain. Taken internally, it acts as a powerful stimulant to the nervous system, its physiological action being similar to that of theine (p. 170), caffeine, and theobromine. Used hypodermically, its immediate effect, says one to whom it was thus administered, is to cause "great pallor of countenance, profuse frontal perspiration, sunken eyes, enlarged pupils, lessened sensitiveness of the cornea and conjunctiva, lowered arterial tension, and a feeble pulse and heart beat. Under its influence I could not reason. Everything seemed to run through my brain, and in vain I summoned all my will power to overcome an overwhelming sleepiness." A few doses of this drug will in some persons produce temporary insanity. Used to excess, it leads to permanent madness or idiocy. "Cocaine," says a writer in the _Medical Review_, "is a dangerous therapeutic toy not to be used as a sensational plaything. If it should come into as general use as the other intoxicants of its class, it will help to fill the asylums, inebriate and insane."

PRACTICAL QUESTIONS.

1. Why is the pain of incipient hip disease frequently felt in the knee?

2. Why does a child require more sleep than an aged person?

3. When you put your finger in the palm of a sleeping child, why will he grasp it?

4. How may we strengthen the brain?

5. What is the object of pain?

6. Why will a blow on the stomach sometimes stop the heart?

7. How long will it take for the brain of a man six feet high to receive news of an injury to his foot, and to reply?

8. How can we grow beautiful?

9. Why do intestinal worms sometimes affect a child's sight?

10. Is there any indication of character in physiognomy?

11. When one's finger is burned, where is the ache?

12. Is a generally closed parlor a healthful room?

13. Why can an idle scholar read his lesson and at the same time count the marbles in his pocket?

14. In amputating a limb, what part, when divided, will cause the keenest pain?

15. What is the effect of bad air on nervous people?

16. Is there any truth in the proverb that "he who sleeps dines"?

17. What does a high, wide forehead indicate?

18. How does indigestion frequently cause a headache?

19. What is the cause of one's foot being "asleep"? [Footnote: Here the nervous force is prevented from passing by compression. Just how this is done, or what is kept from passing, we can not tell. If a current of electricity were moving through a rubber tube full of mercury, a slight squeeze would interrupt it. These cases may depend on the same general principle, but we can not assert it.--HUXLEY. The tingling sensation caused by the compression is transferred to the foot, whence the nerve starts.]

20. When an injury to the nose has been remedied by transplanting skin from the forehead, why is a touch to the former felt in the latter?

21. Are closely curtained windows healthful?

22. Why, in falling from a height, do the limbs instinctively take a position to defend the important organs?

23. What causes the pylorus to open and close at the right time?

24. Why is pleasant exercise most beneficial?

25. Why does grief cause one to lose his appetite?

26. Why should we never study directly after dinner?

27. What produces the peristaltic movement of the stomach?

28. Why is a healthy child so restless and full of mischief?

29. Why is a slight blow on the back of a rabbit's neck fatal?

30. Why can one walk and carry on a conversation at the same time?

31. What are the dangers of overstudy?

32. What is the influence of idleness upon the brain?

33. State the close relation which exists between physical and mental health and disease.

34. In what consists the value of the power of habit?

35. How many pairs of nerves supply the eye?

36. Describe the reflex actions in reading aloud.

37. Under what circumstances does paralysis occur?

38. If the eyelids of a profound sleeper were raised, and a candle brought near, would the iris contract?

39. How does one cough in his sleep?

40. Give illustrations of the unconscious action of the brain.

41. Is chewing tobacco more injurious than smoking?

42. Ought a man to retire from business while his faculties are still unimpaired?

43. Which is the more exhaustive to the brain, worry or severe mental application?

44. Is it a blessing to be placed beyond the necessity for work?

45. Show how anger, hate, and the other degrading passions are destructive to the brain. [Footnote: "One of the surest means for keeping the body and mind in perfect health consists in learning to hold the passions in subservience to the reasoning faculties. This rule applies to every passion. Man, distinguished from all other animals by the peculiarity that his reason is placed above his passions to be the director of his will, can protect himself from every mere animal degradation resulting from passionate excitement. The education of the man should be directed not to suppress such passions as are ennobling, but to bring all under governance, and specially to subdue those most destructive passions, anger, hate, and fear."]

46. Are not amusements, to repair the waste of the nervous energy, especially needed by persons whose life is one of care and toil?

47. Is not severe mental labor incompatible with a rapidly growing body?

48. How shall we induce the system to perform all its functions regularly

49. How does alcohol interfere with the action of the nerves?

50. What is the general effect of alcohol upon the character?

51. Does alcohol tend to produce clearness and vigor of thought?

52. What is the general effect of alcohol on the muscles?

53. Does alcohol have any effect on the bones? The skin?

54. What is the cause of the "alcoholic chill"?

55. Show how alcohol tends to develop man's lower, rather than his higher, nature.

56. When we wish really to strengthen the brain, should we use alcohol?

57. Why is alcohol used to preserve anatomical specimens?

58. What is meant by an inherited taste for liquor?

59. Ought a person to be punished for a crime committed during intoxication?

60. Should a boy ever smoke?