Smoking (food preparation)

“ If a lawyer is much excited about a case he is trying, or a business man is in trouble about his losses, the thinking causes the blood to flow to the head when it is needed in the stomach to give out digestive juices.
The taste of the tobacco smoke may cause some gastric juice to run out into the stomach, but at the same time it is likely to hurt the nerves of taste so that food cannot give so much enjoyment as when the nerves are unharmed. Although smoking may at the time help digestion a little, the poison in the tobacco may afterward injure the body. ”

“ It was at the meal time just preceding the next changing of air that I opened the last tin of canned peas, as a sort of treat for the doctor to offset my expected revel in fragrant tobacco. I prepared half the quantity for him, but left my portion in the tin until I should be hungrier. With the prospects of a good smoke before me, I had no appetite for food. I put in the bulkhead to prevent the smoke from entering his compartment and lighted my Havana. [131] Then I took Two-spot on my lap and stretched myself for a reverie. On Earth, smoking time had been my period for reflection. ”

“ A small quantity of salt and pepper increases the appetite and makes the stomach do its work better. Children should use very little pepper and almost no vinegar and mustard.
Tobacco.—Some people think tobacco is a food because it is made from the leaves of a plant. Other people think tobacco is a food because they do not feel hungry after smoking or chewing it. ”

“ There are still some people who share the Duke of Wellington's delusion that smoking promotes drinking, although experience proves the contrary, and historic evidence, especially as regards drinking after dinner, shows that it was the introduction of the cigar, followed by that of the cigarette, which absolutely killed the old, bad after-dinner habits. ”

“ Moderate smoking after meals I think useful to those who use their brains much; and this seems to have been the opinion of the majority of the physicians who took part in the controversy in the Lancet about ten or twelve years since. An energetic non-smoker is in haste to rush to his work soon after dinner. A smoker is willing to rest (it should be for an hour) , because he can enjoy his cigar, and his conscience is satisfied, which is a great thing for digestion; the brain is soothed also. ”

“ We are thus also reminded of the hygienic rule that smoking must be done after eating, and not, in ordinary cases, upon an empty stomach. If we smoke when the stomach is empty and quiescent, the stimulated secretion of the alimentary juices is physiologically wasteful; and, moreover, the much more rapid absorption of nicotine by the blood-vessels increases the liability to narcotic effects. ”

“ Besides this, there can be no doubt that the cigarette-smoking now practically universally prevalent after lunch and dinner has been a considerable factor in the direction of temperance, and has ended the practice of consuming large quantities of wine, which in old days was more or less universal. On the whole, I believe that smoking does more good than harm, in spite of the attacks sometimes levelled against it. ”

“ Smoking also leads to an appreciable reduction of digestive powers. The smoker feels no appetite for food, and in order to give it some flavour, spices and condiments have to be freely used. His breath stinks, and, in some cases, blisters are formed on [Pg 38] his face, and the gums and teeth turn black in colour. Many also fall a prey to terrible diseases. The fumes of tobacco befoul the air around, and public health suffers in consequence. I cannot understand how those who condemn drink can have the temerity to defend smoking. ”

“ From bodies thus imperfectly nourished, we demand excessive exertions of all kinds.
Hence, the universal craving for artificial aids to digestion. Hence, the universal use of stimulants,—whiskey, Worcestershire sauce, beer, wine, coffee, tea, tobacco. This is the only reason I can discover in the nature of things here for the widespread, increasing propensity to smoke. As all the virtues are akin, and give loyal aid to one another, so are all the vices in alliance, and play into one another's hands. ”

“ Smoking in the dining-room after dinner is now so general that people are apt to forget that this particular development is of no great age. It is not yet, however, universal. A valued correspondent tells me that he knows a house "where tobacco is still kept out of the dining-room, and smoke indulged in elsewhere after wine. ”

“ And what is worse, the cigarette is the favorite form of the “weed.” All seem to smoke it except the babies. Small boys scarcely in their teens puff lustily at cigarettes; and I have seen several respectable-looking women smoking in the open-air cafés. ”

“ With the ice or dessert, a glass of full-flavored but matured champagne, or a liqueur, may be served; but at this point dietetic admonitions are out of place, and we have already sacrificed to luxury. The value of a cigarette at this moment is that with the first whiff of its fragrance the palate ceases to demand either food or wine. After smoke the power to appreciate good wine is lost, and no judicious host cares to open a fresh bottle from his best bin for the smoker, nor will the former be blamed by any man for a disinclination to do so.
For unquestionably tobacco is an ally of temperance ”

“ Maize and Tobacco are found only in America, and were brought from the new world to the old. Maize and Beans they cook and use bear fat in place of butter as dressing, but no salt. Smoking tobacco is an old custom, especially at their national gatherings. ”

“ In the reports of the manufactures of tobacco, snuff is classed with chewing tobacco. Chewing tobacco is put up in pressed cakes called ‘plug tobacco,’ and in a spongy mass of fine threads known as ‘fine cut.’ Usually flavoring matters, as vanilla, sugar, syrups, glycerin, etc., are added in small amounts. Different manufacturers have various formulas, considered as trade secrets, for improving their products. Smoking tobacco for pipes is put up in twists or rolls of the natural leaf or is cut fine and put up in small packages. ”

“ From one to two and a half small wine glasses of claret or burgundy is the limit of what I can take—and that only at dinner—without conscious harm. One glass of sherry or port I find every way injurious. Whisky and brandy are to me simply poisons, destroying my power of enjoyment and of thought. Ale I can only drink when very much in the open air. As to tobacco, I have never smoked much, but I can either not smoke, as at present, or go to the limit of two small cigarettes in twenty-four hours. Any good effects of tobacco become with me uncertain in proportion to the frequency of smoking. ”

“ Although the poisonous symptoms of tobacco are, in a great degree, the same in different persons at the inception of the habit, the effects vary materially in after years according to the quantity and variety used, the form employed and the habits and temperament of the user. One man will chew a paper a week, another four, many use one a day, and a few from one and a half to three a day, besides smoking. ”

“ It must be borne in mind that these three chemical ingredients are united when smoking, and produce to a greater or less degree their respective effects. A cigar when smoked to the end effectually discharges into the smoker’s mouth everything produced by its combustion. When saliva is retained in the mouth, the effects of tobacco in one sense become more markedly developed on the nervous system. On the other hand, when constant expectoration takes place, digestion becomes impaired, from the diminution of saliva, which plays an important part in this function. ”

“ Now every one knows how a cup of tea, a glass of wine, or a cigar, dispels weariness. Of the three agents, tobacco is perhaps the most efficacious, and it can produce its effect in only one way—namely, by economizing nervous force, and arresting the disintegration of tissue.
Thus also is explained the marvellous food-action of these substances. Tea and coffee enable a man to live on less beefsteak. The Peruvian mountaineer, chewing his coca-leaf, accomplishes incredibly long tramps without stopping to eat. ”

“ The ordinary gallant, like Mercutio, would smoke while the dinner was serving up. Those who were rich and foolish carried with them smoking apparatus of gold or silver—tobacco-box, snuff-ladle, tongs to take up charcoal, and priming irons. ”

“ Or, once more, if our meal ends in tobacco, we may please ourselves by contemplating the alternate, but never contemporaneous, glories of snuff and tobacco, and note the sage's curious, but strictly truthful, account of the advantages and disadvantages of smoking. "Smoking has gone out. To be sure it is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the words of my preceptor: “The true art of smoking consists in reducing the combustion to a minimum, and yet never allowing the pipe to go out while a particle of tobacco remains in the bowl. The object is not to smoke quickly or much—we are not locomotives bent upon producing force, but men on the quest of solace and enjoyment.” ”

“ They both chew and smoke tobacco, but they do not use pipes for smoking; they roll up the tobacco in a strip of dried leaf, take three or four whiffs, emitting the smoke through their nostrils, and then they extinguish it. ”

“ For any one who smokes less than eleven pipes per diem is not so much to be accounted a smoker as one who smoketh. And if at any time the student should feel his mouth to be, as it were, cloyed and brackish with much smoking, let him by all means pause for awhile, and drink a strong decoction of tea without either sugar or milk. For nothing is more recuperative and invigorant than this same black tea, and altogether a drink mightily to be commended. And thus in constant smoking and meditation passeth the life of the Pipe Philosopher. ”

“ Oftentimes we hear men say they must smoke after meals, for unless they do so they cannot digest their food. They fail to see that it is not the tobacco that promotes digestion, but the enforced repose. ”

“ It is all very well to say that smoking is a vile habit; so it may be, when indulged in by luxurious fellows who eat and drink their full every day, and are rarely without a cigar or pipe in their mouths ”

“ It acts as an absorbent of the objectionable juices which might otherwise find their way into the mouth, and can be changed, if the smoker chooses, every time he fills his pipe.
From a review of the scientific testimony and physiological facts bearing upon this subject, we may safely arrive at the following conclusions: (1) That smoking in excess is decidedly an injurious habit, frequently causing dyspepsia, and functional diseases of the heart, brain, and nervous system. ”

“ The mind acts more promptly and more continuously under its use. We think any tobacco-consumer will bear us out in this definition of its varying effects.
After a full meal, if it does not help, it at least hides digestion. "It settles one's dinner," as the saying is, and gives that feeling of quiet, luxurious bien-aise which would probably exist naturally in a state of primeval health. It promotes, with most persons, the peristaltic movements of the alimentary passages by its relaxing properties.
Smoking is eminently social, and favors domestic habits. ”

“ Half-a-dozen glasses of good wine are not thought an extravagance in any man of fair means, but women exclaim when a man spends the same amount in smoking cigars. The French habit of coffee-drinking and the English habit of tea-drinking are also cases in point. They are quite as expensive as ordinary Tobacco-smoking, and, like it, defensible only on the ground of the pleasurable sensation they communicate to the nervous system. ”

“ If much smoke is taken into the lungs, it irritates the delicate linings and tends to clog them up. Tobacco smoke also contains the poison nicotine, which is absorbed into the blood. For these reasons the cigarette user who inhales the smoke does himself great harm, injuring his nervous system and laying the foundation for diseases of the air passages. The practice of smoking indoors is likewise objectionable, since every one in a room containing the smoke is compelled to breathe it.
Alcohol and Diseases of the Lungs.—Pneumonia is a serious disease of the lungs caused by germs. ”

“ But these illustrious examples of great tobacco smokers are, in respect to the whole community, altogether exceptional, and may be regarded as having no more bearing on any general rule applicable to all men than had their individual capacity for imbibing, say, ‘sweet waters.’ It may be observed, however, that those who pass severe censure on the smoking habit seem to overlook the fact that men do not eat or drink tobacco; that the prudent smoker is quite contented if its ambient fumes gently float about him, regaling his olfactory sense. ”

“ The use of tobacco is not asserted as a reason, but it may be.
With regard to other beneficial effects—Clouston, Fullerton and Marvin, state that the moderate use of tobacco has a beneficial effect on the digestive system as in general it causes an increased flow of saliva and gastric juice which helps in the digestion of food; it also stimulates the muscles and mucous membrane of the stomach and intestines. The sedative effects of tobacco on the nerves is a preventative of nervous dyspepsia and is valuable for the promotion of good digestion. ”