Tobacco juice

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a filthy trick to let the exquisite juice of tobacco trickle down the corners of one’s mouth; or lie in splashes on one’s coat, or bosom; to squirt the juice all over a clean floor, or upon a carpet, or baptismally to sprinkle a proud pair of andirons the refulgent glory of the much-scouring housewife. It is a vile economy to lay up for re-mastication a half-chewed cud ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hereward the Wake.—Yes! tobacco-chewing is exceedingly injurious. Tobacco contains a large quantity of nicotine, a highly poisonous substance. When tobacco is chewed, this nicotine is taken into the stomach and absorbed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a quicker and better method, as practiced in Cuba and the cigar districts of the United States, the tobacco is piled under suitable conditions of moisture and the process of fermenting is hastened by the heat developed. The tobacco is repiled when the temperature rises to a certain point, and so continued until the proper flavor and aroma are developed. Tobacco for cigarettes is cured by heating it for a short time in large ovens. The product is of light color and a small nicotine content and without the agreeable aroma of cigar tobacco. ”

“ Nor be wanting the fragrant perfume of coffee. 'Meat without salt,' says Hafiz, 'is even as tobacco without coffee.' The tannin of the coffee corrects the nicotine. And it may not be amiss to learn that a plate of watercress, salt, and a large glass of cold water should be at hand to the smoker by day; the watercress corrects any excess, and is at hand in a garden. Smoke not before breakfast, nor till an hour has elapsed after a good meal. Smoke not with or before wine, you destroy the wine-palate. If you love tea, postpone pipe till after it; no man can enjoy fine tea who has smoked. ”

“ In America, where I spent many happy years, I was never without “a smoke,” a habit I still continue, though with the disadvantage of having to substitute British for the fragrant Oronoko and Perique tobaccos. This latter is, in my estimation, whether used as cigar, cigarette, or in a pipe, the finest tobacco in the world. I have discovered, beyond doubt, that a person afflicted with obesity is affected by the smallest transgression of the strict regimen. ”

“ Smoking is to some extent gradually replacing betel-nut chewing, especially with the children, who now take to the weed when they are about five or six years old. The native tobacco is very strong, and when smoked as a cigarette wrapped in dried banana-leaf, it is decidedly unpalatable to the European. Light cigarette tobaccos of foreign manufacture are now much in vogue. Those who can afford it, roll up the tobacco in lotus leaf. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A large quantity of water used in the process of liquoring has the effect of darkening the colour and giving strength to the flavour of the tobacco. By extreme watering and pressure is produced the kind so dear to the sailor called ‘pigtail,’ as well as the less pungent ‘sag,’ of which there are two sorts, fine and common, the difference consisting of the fineness or coarseness of the shreds into which the leaf is cut. These and many other odd circumstances in the manufacture give the different degrees of strength and flavour sought for by the varying tastes of smokers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chemistry has taught us that nicotine is only one among many principles which are contained in the plant. It is supposed by many but not substantiated by chemical research that nicotine is not the flavoring agent which gives tobacco its essential and peculiar varieties of odor. Such are most probably given by the essential oils, which vary in amount in different species of the plant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The process of the manufacture of snuff or tobacco powder, is essentially based on long and thorough fermentation as all bitter substances, acid and essential oils, as well as a large part of the nicotine, must be removed.
Strong, coarse tobacco is suitable for the purpose, the darker types of Virginian and Tennessee tobaccos being used. Strong tobacco does not necessarily contain a high percentage of nicotine as is usually supposed. ”

“ They are oily and rich. Peanuts come from Virginia, and Chestnuts from Italy and our own Northern States.
TOBACCO. The active principle of tobacco is the alkaloid nicotine, but it cannot be said that the effects of tobacco are solely due to this substance, for some varieties, as the Syrian, etc., contains little or no nicotine, yet are considered strong. The quantity of nicotine varies much in tobacco, or from one-half of one per cent. to eight per cent. As a rule, the finer the quality and flavor, the less nicotine the tobacco contains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is something touching in the self-abnegation of a tobaccoite who will devote five mortal minutes and the sweat of his refined intelligence, with the skill of his delicate fingers, to the preparation of a tiny capsule of the weed, which burns itself to ashes in five minutes more. There is a butterfly-beauty about the cigarette to which the cigar and the pipe can lay no claim—a summer charm to stir the dreamy rapture of a poet, and to excite the Lotus-eating philosopher even to analogy. ”

“ Cigarettes are still more injurious than cigars because of the smoke from their paper coverings; also, because from the way they are made, more of the tobacco poison goes into the lungs. The cheap cigarette which boys use is made from cast-away cigar stumps and other filthy things. ”

“ I am a firm believer in tobacco as a preventive, more particularly in the shape of cigarettes, and in this I have every one against me. A pipe, I think, is half poisonous in itself on account of the nicotine, and, after experimenting with pipe, cigar, and cigarette, I truly believe the cigarette to be the least harmful, and, as a preventive of malarial fevers, the best remedy. I felt particularly well amidst all these fever-stricken people. ”

“ The tobacco is of many kinds, both Russian and American, and when the stock of it is finished native substitutes are used. Preference is given to the sweet, strong chewing tobacco, which sailors generally use. In order to make the tobacco sweet which has not before been drenched with molasses, the men are accustomed, when they get a piece of sugar, to break it down and place it in the tobacco-pouch. ”

“ Good tobacco, the produce of the northern colonies, is powerful, aromatic, and has a most pleasing flavour. The fumes of it are invigorating to the head, and leave not that nausea on the stomach that the common sort does. As much time would be required to smoke one pipe of it, as three of that which is generally used: before so great a quantity of the vapour could be drawn from it as to prove hurtful, the smoker, from intoxication, would be unable to continue his amusement. ”

“ It is colorless, has an acrid taste, and the peculiar smell of tobacco; and occasions violent sneezing. With alcohol and water it forms a colorless solution, from which it is precipitated by a tincture of galls. Tobacco yields its active matter to water and proof spirit, but most perfectly to the latter; long boiling weakens its powers. A most powerful oil may be obtained by distillation, and separating it from the surface of the water on which it floats. ”

“ The manufactured American cigarette seems to be especially deadly in its effect. It is said to contain five and one-half per cent. of nicotine, or more than twice as much as the Cuban-made cigarette contains, and more than six times as much as is contained in the Turkish cigarette.
I am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. He who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach ”

“ For to separate cigars from tobacco would be as if in a natural history there were separate chapters—one treating of sheep shorn and the other of sheep unshorn, which were folly. For it is certain that cigars are tobacco, and come under the definition, "a herb in which resides a soporific and nicotinic virtue;" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gardiner prescribed and live is beyond conception: their Spartan-like endurance shines out conspicuously under a treatment [83] which embraces ‘tobacco gruel,’ ‘tobacco wine,’ also, tobacco made up into a kind of soup, or syrup, with sufficient sugar. The patient is recommended to drink the decoction hot, as a medicine good against the plague. ”

“ Before the full maturity of the system is attained, even the smallest amount of smoking is hurtful; subsequently, the habit is generally prejudicial. Smoked just after a meal a cigar is said to act as a digestive stimulant, and as a food when other forms of nourishment are not procurable. In some persons smoking increases, in others diminishes mental activity. Chewing is considered the most deleterious form in which to use tobacco. The different kinds of tobacco exert a different influence on the smoker according to the amount of noxious ingredients which they contain. ”