William Edward Armytage Axon

“ IN speaking of the physiological position of tobacco, we have to deal with the action of the essential principles of that plant upon the human system. The peculiar effects of tobacco are due to the action of the essential oil of tobacco in the case of chewing and snuffing, and to that combined with the empyreumatic oil in smoking. Nicotine, as this essential principle is called, is so deadly an alkaloid, that the amount of it contained in one cigar, if extracted and administered in a pure state, would suffice to kill two men. ”

“ It will be said that tobacco soothes and cheers the weary toiler, and solaces the overworked brain. Such may be its momentary effects, but the sequelæ cannot be ignored. All such expedients are fallacious. When a certain amount of brain-work or hand-work has been performed, Nature must have space in which to recuperate, and all devices for escaping from this necessity will fail. It is bad policy to set the house on fire to warm our hands by the blaze. ”

“ Tobacco belongs to the class of narcotic and exciting substances, and has no food-value. Stimulation means abstracted, not added, force. It involves the narcotic paralysis of a portion of the functions, the activity of which is essential to healthy life. ”

“ There is a theory not unknown, even among medical men, that the toxic influences of tobacco are only transitory, and that all the poison is ultimately expelled from the system. But it is certain, from an experiment of M. Morin, [3] that the nicotine can be detected in the tissues of the lungs and liver after death. ”

“ The heart, then, during the act of smoking, was doing extra work; in some of the experiments this additional labor amounting to more than 50 per cent.
The effect upon the heart is not caused by direct action upon that organ, but by paralyzing the minute vessels which form the batteries of the nervous system. Thus paralyzed, they can no longer offer effectual resistance, and the heart, freed from their control, increases the rapidity of its strokes, expanding the vessels, with an apparent accession, but real waste of force. ”

“ Blatin also tells us of a medical student, aged twenty-two, who, after smoking a single pipe, fell into a frightful state—the heart became nearly motionless, the chest constricted, his breathing was extremely painful, the limbs contracted, the pupils insensible to light, one dilated, the other contracted. These symptoms gradually lessened, but did not disappear until four days after. [2]
But it is chronic nicotism which has the greatest interest for us. The poisonous effects of tobacco in larger doses are too evident for denial, and need scarcely be insisted upon. ”

“ Although when thus excited it has less pressure to overcome than when in a normal condition, yet the extra exertion cannot but be evil in its results, since it causes an irregularity in the supply of blood, and thus degrades tissue. ”