Chapter 22

That this habit is entirely unevangelical, Dr. Clarke attempts to show with much zeal. Let those who profess to renounce the lusts of the flesh read his tract, and determine, conscientiously, how far his arguments are worthy of attention. That the devout "roll this sin as a sweet morsel under the tongue," is fully evinced by every day's experience; and the following anecdote from Dr. Clarke forms a good illustration of this text.

"An eminent physician," says he, "gave me the following account:--'When I was at L----, in the year 1789, a certain religious people at one of their annual meetings made a rule, or rather revived one which had been long before made and established among them by their venerable founder, but had been in a great measure lost sight of, viz.--That no minister in their connexion should use snuff or tobacco, unless prescribed by a physician. This rule at once showed their prudence and good sense. Towards the conclusion of the meeting, having offered my assistance to as many as stood in need of medical help, several of them consulted me on the subject of taking tobacco in one form or other; and with very little variation their mode of address was as follows:--'Doctor, I am troubled frequently with such a complaint, (naming it,) I take tobacco, and have found great benefit from the use of it; I am sure were I to give it up I should be very ill indeed; and I am certain that you are too wise and too skilful a man to desire me to discontinue a practice which has been so beneficial to me.' After such an address what could I say? It was spoken with serious concern, and was properly _argumentum ad hominem_: I knew they were sincere, but I knew also they were deceived: however, to the major part of them I ventured to speak thus: 'gentlemen, you certainly do me honour in the confidence you repose in my skill, but you have brought me into a dilemma from which I cannot easily extricate myself; as I find I must either say as you say on the subject, or else renounce all pretensions to wisdom and medical skill. However, I cannot in conscience and honour prescribe to you the continued use of a thing which I know does many of you immense hurt.'"

But the anti-christian nature of this habit is placed in a very strong light, in a curious passage, by Dr. Rush.[63] "What reception," says he, "may we suppose, would the apostles have met with, had they carried into the cities and houses to which they were sent, snuff-boxes, pipes, segars, and bundles of cut, or rolls of hog, or pigtail tobacco?"

The effects of tobacco upon the morals have been often animadverted upon, and in no particular more frequently, and with greater emphasis, than in its obvious tendency to promote temulency. Charlevoix intimates the near connexion which exists between intemperance and smoking, when he assures us, that amongst many nations, to smoke out of the same pipe in token of alliance, is the same thing as to drink out of the same cup.[64]

"Smoking and chewing tobacco," says Rush, "by rendering water and simple liquors insipid to the taste, dispose very much to the stronger stimulus of ardent spirits. The practice of smoking segars has, in every part of our country, been more followed by a general use of brandy and water as a common drink, more especially by that class of citizens who have not been in the habit of drinking wine or malt liquors."[65] "One of the greatest sots I ever knew," says the same author, "acquired a love for ardent spirits by swallowing cuds of tobacco, which he did to escape detection in the use of it; for he had contracted the habit of chewing, contrary to the advice and commands of his father. He died of a dropsy under my care, in the year 1780."[66] On this subject, a very late writer is still more express. "We consider tobacco," says he, "closely allied to intoxicating liquors, and its confirmed votaries as a species of drunkards." Again. "I have observed that persons who are much addicted to liquor, have an inordinate liking to tobacco in all its different forms; and it is remarkable, that in the early stages of ebriety, almost every man is desirous of having a pinch of snuff. This last fact it is not easy to explain; but the former may be accounted for by that incessant craving after excitement, which clings to the system of the confirmed drunkard."[67]

The limits of our article will not allow us to embrace all the considerations which belong to this subject, and which have been bestowed upon it by various writers. We will therefore proceed to the few remarks which we have to make upon the three chief modes of using tobacco, viz., snuffing, smoking, and chewing. Catherine de Medicis, the personage said to have prompted the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew's day at Paris, is commonly regarded as the inventress of snuff-taking. In Russia and Persia the penalty of death was annexed to the use of tobacco in every form except that of snuff. For this lighter offence, the punishment was softened down to simple mutilation, no greater severity being deemed necessary than that of cutting off the nose. We doubt exceedingly whether either penalty would deter the inveterate snuff-takers of the present day. Indeed, we are told somewhere that it was very common among the Persians to expatriate themselves, when they were no longer allowed to indulge in tobacco in their native country. One of the first effects of snuff is to injure the nerves of the nose, which are endowed with exquisite sensibility, and of which an incredible number are spread over the inner membrane of the nostrils. This membrane is lubricated by a secretion, which has a tendency to preserve the sense. By the almost caustic acrimony of snuff, the mucus is dried up, and the organ of smelling becomes perfectly callous. The consequence is, that all the pleasure we are capable of deriving from the olfactory organs, the _omnis copia narium_, as Horace curiously terms it, is totally destroyed. Similar effects are also produced upon the saliva, and hence it is that habitual snuff-takers are often unable to speak with proper distinctness; and the sense of taste for the same reason is very much obtunded. A snuffer may always be distinguished by a certain nasal twang--an asthmatic wheezing--and a sort of disagreeable noise in respiration, which is nearly allied to incipient snoring. Snuff also frequently occasions fleshy excrescences in the nose, which, in some instances, end in polypi. Individuals have oftentimes a predisposition to cancer in little scirrhous intumescencies, which, if kept easy and free from every thing of an irritating character, will continue harmless, but which the use of snuff sometimes frets into incurable ulcers and cancers. By the use of snuff, tumours are also generated in the throat, which obstruct deglutition, and even destroy life. Dr. Hill saw a female die of hunger, who could swallow no nourishment because of a polypus which closed up the stomach, the formation of which was attributed to the excessive use of snuff. Some portion of the snuff will involuntarily find its way into the stomach, where its pernicious properties soon manifest themselves, being frequently followed by nausea, vomitings, loss of appetite, and impaired digestion. The drain of the juices has a tendency to injure the muscles of the face, to render them flaccid, to furrow and corrugate the skin, and to give a gaunt, withered, and jaundiced appearance to "the human face divine."

We are also informed that it embrowns the complexion, by withdrawing those peculiar secretions which communicate the fine vermillion hue of beauty. In our country, however, women do not abandon themselves to this impure habit, till they are married, and have no farther desire to please, or till they are somewhat _passees_, and find their faculties of pleasing impaired. What a death-blow does snuffing give to all that romance with which it is the interest of refined society to invest the fair sex! How vulgar the thought "that a sneeze should interrupt a sigh!"--How unpoetical is snuff! The most suitable verses which a lover could address to a snuff-taking mistress, would be imitations of Horace's lines to the Sorceress Canidia. What sylph would superintend the conveyance of this dust to the nostrils of a belle? What Gnome would not take a fiendish delight in hovering over a pipe-loving beauty?

"The only advantage," says Dr. Leake, "of taking snuff, is that of sneezing, which, in sluggish phlegmatic habits, will give universal concussion to the body, and promote a more free circulation of the blood; but of this benefit snuff-takers are deprived, from being familiar with its use." When the stimulus of snuff ceases to be sufficient, recourse is immediately had to certain admixtures, by which the necessary excitement is procured; thus pepper, euphorbium, hellebore, and even pulverised glass, are made use of to give it additional pungency. Snuffing is also a frequent cause of blindness. Nature has appointed certain fluids to nourish and preserve the eye, which, if withdrawn, cause the sight to become prematurely old, impaired by weakness, and sometimes totally destroyed. We are also told that it dries up and blackens the brain, and gives the stomach a yellow hue;[68] that it injures the moral faculties, impairs the memory, and, indeed, debilitates all the intellectual powers, and that it taints the breath "with the rank odour of a tobacco cask." "We read in the Ephemerides des Curieux de la Nature, that a person fell into a state of somnolency, and died apoplectic, in consequence of having taken by the nose too great a quantity of snuff."[69] In fine, snuffing is said to bring on convulsions, promote pulmonary consumption, and to cause madness and death! Napoleon is thought to have owed his death to a morbid state of stomach, superinduced by snuffing to excess. Dr. Rush relates that Sir John Pringle was afflicted with tremors in his hands, and had his memory impaired by the use of snuff; when, on abandoning the habit, at the instance of Dr. Franklin, he found his power of recollection restored, and he recovered the use of his hands.[70]

When the habit of snuffing is once contracted, it becomes almost impossible to divest ourselves of it. It becomes as necessary as food, or any of those first wants of life "quibus negatis natura doleat." The following story we translate from a French medical writer:--

"I recollect, about twenty years since, while gathering simples one day in the Forest of Fontainebleau, I encountered a man stretched out upon the ground; I supposed him to be dead, when, upon approaching, he asked in a feeble voice if I had some snuff; on my replying in the negative, he sunk back immediately, almost in a state of insensibility. In this condition he remained till I brought a person who gave him several pinches, and he then informed us that he had commenced his journey that morning, supposing he had his snuff-box with him, but found very soon he had started without it; that he had travelled as long as he was able, till at last, overcome by distress, he found it impossible to proceed any farther, and without my timely succour he would have certainly perished."[71]

The consumption of time and great expense of this artificial habit, almost surpass belief. "A man who takes a pinch of snuff every twenty minutes," says Dr. Rush, "(which most habitual snuffers do), and snuffs fifteen hours in four-and-twenty, (allowing him to consume not quite half a minute every time he uses the box,) will waste about five whole days of every year of his life in this useless and unwholesome practice. But when we add to the profitable use to which this time might have been applied, the expenses of tobacco, pipes, snuff, and spitting boxes--and of the injuries which are done to the clothing, during a whole life, the aggregate sum would probably amount to several hundred dollars. To a labouring man this would be a decent portion for a son or daughter, while the same sum saved by a man in affluent circumstances, would have enabled him, by a contribution to a public charity, to have lessened a large portion of the ignorance or misery of mankind." But Lord Stanhope makes a far more liberal estimate than Dr. Rush; "Every professed, inveterate, and incurable snuff-taker," says he, "at a moderate computation, takes one pinch in ten minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and other incidental circumstances, consumes a minute and a half. One minute and a half out of every ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff-taking day, amounts to two hours and twenty-four minutes out of every natural day, or one day of every ten. One day out of ten amounts to thirty six days and a half in a year. Hence, if we suppose the practice to be persisted in forty years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be devoted to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it." The same author proposes in a subsequent essay to show, that from the expense of snuff, snuff-boxes, and handkerchiefs, a fund might be formed to pay off the English National debt!

The subject of snuffing having employed more of our time than we anticipated, the two following heads of smoking and chewing will be more briefly noticed. On the subject of smoking, Mr. Beloe has preserved the following old epigram.[72]

"We buy the dryest wood that we can finde, And willingly would leave the smoke behinde: But in tobacco a thwart course we take Buying the herb only for the smoke's sake."

Smoking was the earliest mode of using tobacco,[73] (as might be inferred from the epigram) and for a long time the only mode in which it was used in Europe. Certainly in our day it is the most general, and at the same time the most expensive, and although several rivals contend with Sir Walter Ralegh for the praise of having introduced tobacco into England, yet the "bright honour" of having taught his countrymen to imitate the Indians, in this particular, he "wears without corrival." Almost all the arguments which have been employed against the use of tobacco as a sternutatory, are more or less applicable to it when used in the way of fumigation.[74] Good old Cotton Mather, who was fully aware of the disadvantages as well as sinfulness of this habit, deprecates it with a qualification at which it is impossible to repress a smile. It savours so much of "beating the Devil round a bush." Thus he says--"May God preserve me from the indecent, ignoble, criminal slavery, to the mean delight of smoking a weed, which I see so many carried away with. And _if_ ever I should smoke it, let me be so wise as to do it, not only with moderation, but also with such employment of my mind, as I may make that action afford me a leisure for!"[75]

The effects of smoking on the breath, clothes, hair, and indeed the whole body, are most offensive. What is more overpowering than the stale smell remaining in a room where several persons have been smoking? When the practice is carried to excess, it causes the gums to become lax and flabby, and to recede from the discoloured teeth, which appear long, unsightly, and at length drop out. Dr. Rush, in his "Account of the life and death of Edward Drinker," tells us that that individual lost all his teeth by drawing the hot smoke of tobacco into his mouth. By the waste of saliva, and the narcotic power of tobacco, the digestive powers are impaired, and "every kind of dyspeptic symptoms," says Cullen, "are produced."[76] King James does not forget to note this habit as a breach of good manners. "It is a great vanitie and uncleannesse," says he, "that at the table, a place of respect, of cleanlinesse, of modestie, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing pipes, and puffing of the smoke of tobacco one to another, making the filthy smoke and stinke thereof to exhale athwart the dishes and infect the aire, when very often men that abhorre it, are at their repast."

We come now to the subject of chewing. Whether the rock goat, the filthy animal to which we have before adverted, or the tobacco worm, first taught imitative man to masticate tobacco, we are ignorant. One thing, however, is most certain, that of all modes of using it, chewing seems most vulgar and ungentlemanlike, and it is worthy of particular remark, that in our country it is more used in this manner, among the better class of society, than in any other part of the world.[77] All the worst effects which have been ascribed to it in the two former modes of using it, are, with increased severity, imputed to chewing. But tobacco used in this form is said to diminish hunger. "We have been told," says Dr. Leake, "that tobacco, when chewed, is a preservative against hunger; but this is a vulgar error, for in reality it may more properly be said to destroy appetite by the profuse discharge of saliva, which is a powerful dissolving fluid, essential both to appetite and digestion." In the use of the quid, or cud, accidents sometimes happen from swallowing portions, which must needs be very hurtful. Chewers are often taken by surprise, and rather than be detected in the unclean practice, they will, with Spartan fortitude, endure the horrible agonies of swallowing the juice, and sometimes even the quid itself. But we must close our remarks upon this vile habit, which we do by the following quotation from a French writer. "Quant a la coutume de chiquer le tabac, elle est bornee, je crois, a un petit nombre d'individus grossiers, et le plus souvent voues a des habitudes crapuleuses, du moins si j'en juge par ceux que j'y vois livres." We take the liberty of referring tobacco chewers to Dr. Clark's treatise, (p. 24,) for a quotation he makes from Simon Paulli, physician to the King of Denmark, who wrote a treatise on the danger of using this herb, and also to a note at the foot of the page, both which we are unwilling to repeat.

We are almost prepared to assert, that there is scarcely a conceivable mode of applying tobacco to the human body, which has not been thought of and practised. In former times, it was used by the oculists. Howell says "that it is good to fortify and preserve the sight, the smoak being let in round about the balls once a week, &c." We have even known snuff to be blown into the eyes to cure inflammation. This latter remedy should be somewhat perilous, if what Sauvages relates be true, that a female was thrown into a catalepsy by a small portion of snuff which had accidentally entered her eye. The Rev. S. Wesley, speaking of the abuse of tobacco, intimates an apprehension that the human ear will not long remain exempted from its application.

"To such a height with some is fashion grown, They feed their very nostrils with a spoon,[78] One, and but one degree is wanting yet, To make their senseless luxury complete; Some choice regale, useless as snuff and dear, To feed the mazy windings of the ear."

Now, as a medicine, at least, it has been used for the ear; for Sir Hans Sloan positively affirms that the "oyl or juice dropped into the ear is good against deafness."[79] Another mode of using tobacco, and not very common we hope, is what is called plugging, that is, thrusting long pellets or rolls of tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during the night. As a dentifrice it is used in many parts of the world. We have had an opportunity of witnessing this fact in various parts of South America, but especially in Brazil, where respectable women do not scruple openly to use tobacco for this purpose. We have known several very respectable individuals of both sexes in our own country, who use snuff as a tooth powder, and with them its employment was just as much a habit as any other mode of using tobacco. These have been generally West Indians, or persons who have resided much in the West India islands. In some of our southern states, tobacco is much used among the ladies as a dentifrice. Indeed there appears to prevail generally, a very strong opinion, that it is an excellent preservative of the teeth, which is certainly an error; though we think it probable that the stimulus of tobacco, to those who use it in excess, may become in a certain degree necessary to their preservation.

Tobacco is truly a leveller. It equalizes the monarch and the hind, and is acceptable to the sage as well as the sailor. "Its smoke," says Thomson, "rising in clouds from the idolatrous altar of the native Mexican, opened the world of spirits to his delirious imagination," while it has "even assisted in extending the boundaries of intellect, by aiding the contemplations of the Christian philosopher." If we advert to the irrefragable proofs of the virulent properties of this plant, and the various arguments which have been urged against its habitual use, we cannot fail to be struck with the extraordinary fact, that so large a portion of mankind should voluntarily struggle through its repugnant qualities, both of taste and effect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable, and the system becomes mithridated against its poison! It would almost seem as if the use of some substance of this class were necessary to the intellectual and physical economy of man, since no nation nor age, of which we have any account, has been found without. Of the various masticatories which have been in general use, if we except opium, tobacco is unquestionably the most pernicious. Although its moderate use may not shorten life, or prove perceptibly hurtful to health, yet its excessive employment certainly generates many formidable disorders, particularly of the nerves and stomach, and subjects its votary to innumerable inconveniences and sufferings. Our space will not permit us to expatiate any further; and we shall therefore conclude our article by relating from Rush a very interesting anecdote of Dr. Franklin, which places the common-sense view of this matter in the strongest possible light. _A few months before Franklin's death, he declared to one of his friends, that he had never used tobacco in the course of his long life, and that he was disposed to believe there was not much advantage to be derived from it, for that he had never known a man who used it, who advised him to follow his example._

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Epistolae Hoelianae, p. 405.

[17] Critical and Historical Dictionary, article Thorius.

[18] Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, fol. p. 235.

[19] King James's Works, fol. p. 214.

[20] Hist. North America, vol. i. p. 322.--See also Hennepin's Voyages, p. 93 et seq.

[21] Stith's Hist. of Virginia, p. 19.

[22] Sloan's Nat. Hist. Jamaica, vol. i. p. 147.

[23] This hiatus we are in some measure able to supply from a note in the Appendix to Mrs. Thomson's Life of Ralegh, (Note B. Notices concerning Tobacco by Dr. Thomson,) p. 458. "In the Mexican or Aztuk tongue, it is called _yetle_; in Algonkin, _sema_; in the Huron, _ayougoua_; in the Peruvian, it is _sayri_; in Chiquito, _pais_; in Vilela, _tusup_; Albaja, _nalodagadi_; Moxo, _sabare_; Omagua, _potema_; Tumanac, _cavai_; Mayhure, _jema_; and in the Cabre, _sena_. The other synonymes are, _tabac_, in French; _tabak_, in German, Dutch, and Polish; _tobak_, in Swedish and Danish; _tobaco_, Spanish and Portuguese; and _tobacco_ in the Italian. In the Oriental languages,--it is _tambacu_, in Hindostanee; _tamracutta_, in Sanscrit; _pogheielly_, in Tamool; _tambracco_, in the Malay tongue; _tambracco_, in Javanese; _doorkoole_, in Cingalese; and _bujjerhony_, in Arabic."

[24] Nat. Hist. Jam. vol. i. p. 147.