Smoking (food)

“ 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. ”

“ Warren’s exhortations against the use of tobacco are very forcible. He says: “The habit of smoking impairs the natural taste and relish for food, lessens the appetite, and weakens the powers of the stomach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A cigar should be handled daintily; it is a fragile, graceful creature—don't mar its beauty. Tear off the twist, and the pleasure of smoking is at an end! The outer leaf becomes untwirled. Ere it is half finished, you have a ragged end between your lips—nasty, foul, and unsightly—through which the smoke comes in huge clouds to your mouth, instead of slender streams on the palate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cigarettes in short order make the face sallow, spoil the shape of the mouth, make the eyes heavy, fill the hair with permanently unpleasant nicotine suggestions, develop a mustache—and women are cured of cigarette smoking by a look in the glass, when they could not be cured by tearful appeals of the wisest philosophers. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A pipe of tobacco, or a cigar, after a day's hard exercise, whether mental or bodily, and after the cravings of hunger and thirst are appeased, may be fairly ranked amongst the most delightful and most harmless of all earthly luxuries. It fills the mind with pleasing visions, and the heart with kindly feelings. A hard-working laborer, smoking by the side of his hearth at night, presents a perfect picture of quiet enjoyment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When they chew they spit in their hands, then raise them to their nose that they may inhale from the saliva the irritating principles of the plant. Thus they satisfy two senses at the same time. They regularly smoke after their meals. If their supply of Tobacco falls short, they sit down in a circle and pass the pipe round, so that every one in his turn may have a whiff. [53]
"A Painter's Camp in the Highlands" defends the custom of smoking in the following well chosen words:
"People who don't smoke—especially ladies—are exceedingly unfair and unjust to those who do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although I have smoked habitually for ten years, I have never been able to take tobacco in my mouth without violent nausea, or even to retain a cigar between my teeth; and have always been compelled to remove my cigar frequently from my lips and to carry it between my fingers, when not in actual use. In short, the slightest and most momentary contact of tobacco with the nerves of taste produces instant and uncontrollable nausea, though I am exceedingly fond of smoking, and have always been reckoned a connoisseur in flavors. ”

“ Indeed, we have not observed any liquor of intoxicating quality among these or any Indians west of the Rocky Mountains, the universal beverage being pure water. They, however, sometimes almost intoxicate themselves by smoking tobacco, of which they are excessively fond, and the pleasures of which they prolong as much as possible, by retaining vast quantities at a time, till after circulating through the lungs and stomach it issues in volumes from the mouth and nostrils. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the condition of these albuminoids, and on the presence of other substances, as nitric acid, alkalies, &c., in the tobacco, mostly depend the burning qualities of the leaf, and the flavour of a cigar. The Eastern habit in smoking, from Malaysia, Japan and China, through India, Persia and Turkey, even to Hungary, is to inhale the smoke into the lungs, and natives of these countries maintain that a tobacco should be of full flavour without burning the throat or catching the breath. Western nations do not admit the smoke further than the mouth, and therefore require a strong, rank flavour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The German china bowl with globular receiver of the essential oil, the absorbent meerschaum, the red Turkish bell-shaped clay, the elaborate hookah,—a really elegant ornament, and perhaps the most healthful and rational form of smoking,—pipes of all shapes, began to fill the shops of London. Coleridge, when cured of opium, took to snuff. Byron wrote dashingly about 'sublime Tobacco,' but I do not think he carried the practice to excess. Shelley never smoked, nor Wordsworth, nor Keats. Campbell loved a pipe. John Gibson Lockhart was seldom without a cigar. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We may, upon occasion, feel for the manufacturers and venders of 'lights,' but more generally we find ourselves constrained to sympathize with the purchasers of such contrivances for the ignition of pipes and cigars. The smoking of tobacco is an art; an art which, in its proper exercise, requires much care, much prudence, and not a little skill. This is a proposition which must, from its very nature, be startling to non-smokers, and surprising to many smokers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”