Tobacco smoking

“ As tobacco-smoke is neither a solid nor a liquid, but only a gas, no one could even pretend that it is of any value, either as food or drink. All that can be said of smoking, even by the most inveterate smoker, is that it is a habit, of no possible use or value to body or mind, and of great possibilities of harm. ”

“ Penitent and shattered, I vow to lead a new life; to forswear spirits, to drink nothing but water. Indeed, the sight and smell of brandy make me ill. All goes well for some weeks, when I grow nervous, discontented, moody. I smoke, and am soothed. But moderation is not to be thought of; little by little I increase the dose of tobacco. Five pipes a day become six or seven. Then I count up to ten and twelve, then drop to three or four, then mount to eleven at a leap; then lose count altogether. Much smoking excites the brain. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Taking a general survey of army medical officers’ reports of work done in the hospital-camps, he finds evidence in abundance supporting the view that tobacco-smoking does in some indefinable way mitigate suffering and help to a speedy recovery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This stinking tobacco kills men! Would there were none in England! Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do you? Nothing, I warrant you; make chimneys a' your faces!" But many women viewed tobacco differently, as we shall see in the chapter on "Smoking by Women." Moreover, this good woman herself, in the epilogue to the burlesque, invites the gentlemen whom she has before abused for smoking, to come to her house where she will entertain them with "a pottle of wine, and a pipe of tobacco." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The using of tobacco, especially by smoking, is any thing but kindness or the kindly expression of it, when it creates an atmosphere, which, whether it comes directly from the pipe, the cigar, or deeply imbued clothing, or worse than alligator breath, is absolutely insupportable to many, who do not use it, causing depression of strength, dizziness, headache, sickness at the stomach, and sometimes vomiting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Taken in large quantities into the stomach, tobacco not only causes an excretion of mucus from the mouth, throat, and breathing organs, but it produces an overtaxing of the liver; that is, this organ overworks in order to counteract the presence of the poison. But one asks, If tobacco is so injurious, why is it used with such apparent pleasure? A small quantity of tobacco received into the system by smoking, chewing, or snuffing is carried through the circulation to the skin, lungs, liver, kidneys, and to all the organs of the body, by which it is moderately resisted. ”

“ Excessive smoking causes mental and physical laziness in boys and men.
The following organs, fluids, functions, etc., of the body, especially of the young, are frequently more or less affected by the use of tobacco:—The blood, the heart, the nerves, the brain, the liver, the lungs, the stomach, the throat, the saliva, the taste, the voice, the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, the tongue, the palate, the pancreas, the lips, the teeth, the bones, the skin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no sufficient ground for the statement that cigarette smoking is more injurious than smoking tobacco in a pipe or cigar, unless in the former case the smoke is inhaled into the lungs. The practice of smoking is injurious to growing boys, and should be strictly forbidden. ”

“ Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco.
And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date, gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and [30] the puffing of tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses. ”

“ In addition to its direct action on the heart, tobacco smoking may also bring on a sudden fainting, in which there is absolutely no warning. This condition may develop from the tobacco alone, but in many instances nervous excitement or shock are superadded. Professor Fraser, of Edinburgh, has observed that quite a number of his college friends, who smoked to an inordinate extent as students, were obliged to give up tobacco as middle age approached. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My people never let the tobacco habit get the better of them as they can go all day without smoking or quit smoking for several days at a time and never complain in the least. The men, after supper, on going into the sweat-house take their pipes and smoke and some take two or three smokes before they go to bed. The old women doctors will smoke through the day and always take a smoke before lying down to sleep. All inhale the smoke, letting it pass out of the lungs through the nose. ”

“ Their mode of smoking is very peculiar. They first take a whiff after the usual manner, and puff out the smoke. But, when they have expelled nearly the whole of the smoke, they make a kind of catch at the last tiny wreath, and swallow it. This they are pleased to consider the very essence or spirit of the tobacco, which is lost if the smoke is exhaled in the usual manner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They appear to have a natural propensity for the fumes of tobacco, which they invariably inhale into the lungs, and eject through the nostrils. They make no use of this article except in smoking, which is an {256} indulgence of which they are exceedingly reluctant to be deprived. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rush, "is it possible to contemplate the creature man in a more absurd and ridiculous light, than in his foolish and disgusting attachment to the poisonous weed, tobacco." Who then can witness groups of boys ten or twelve years old [36] in our streets, smoking cigars, without anticipating such a depreciation in our posterity with regard to health and character, as can scarcely be contemplated without pain and horror! ”

“ Cigarette smoking would not be different from other smoking if it did not so readily tend to excess. Cigarette smoke is inhaled more than the smoke from cigars and pipes, and thus more of the injurious ingredients of tobacco are absorbed. ”

“ These kinds are favourites with those who chew tobacco. Besides smoking and chewing, tobacco is used as a sternutatory by inhaling through the nose, and the practice of snuff-taking in Britain is nearly coeval with smoking; the habit, which is highly objectionable in many respects, especially in a sanitary point of view, is certainly declining. ”

“ 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 our railroad cars smokers have to separate themselves from wives, children, and friends and go by themselves into a smoking-car or apartment, and why? simply because tobacco smoke is unpleasant to every man, woman, and child who is not accustomed to it ”

“ From this we should expect to find that tobacco shows most in later life, when vitality is ebbing and the machinery of the body is beginning to wear. It is in his middle age that a man begins to feel the harm. In short, though we know only the precise or immediate effect of nicotine and only some of the morbid processes which excessive smoking may produce, it is likely that the worst aspect of tobacco is something that we do not know very much about—its tendency to reduce a man’s general vigor. ”

“ One of the German periodicals says, the chief German physiologists compute, that of twenty deaths of men between eighteen and twenty-five, ten, that is, one half, originate in the waste of the constitution by smoking. They declare, also, with much truth, that tobacco burns out the blood, the teeth, the eyes, and the brain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Smokers keep on finding chewers disgusting, and smokers of pipes and cigars frequently object to the odor of cigarettes.
Nothing more strikingly illustrates how addicted people may become to a habit than the smoking and chewing of the traditional Southern gentleman of the old school, whom any other [Pg 141] personal uncleanliness would have horrified. Young men most fastidious about their apparel seem quite unaware that it is saturated with the smell of tobacco. The odor of a cigarette is probably as offensive to some of those who do not smoke as any other smell under heaven. ”

“ The elder men smoke tremendously, especially cigarettes, fifty or sixty per diem being nothing uncommon. In fact, this smoking has become so terrible a curse that there is now a movement among the students, most of whom seem to be anti-smokers, against tobacco, so perhaps the new generation may not have such black teeth and yellow fingers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The development of cigar-smoking among those classes from which tobacco had long been practically banished, and the natural consequent spread downwards of the use of cigars—in accordance with the invariable law of fashion—together with the continued devotion to the pipe among those whose love of tobacco had never slackened, made smoking a much more general practice than it had been for some generations. ”