5 
 
 DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 treasure %oom 
 
ERRATA 
 
 PAGE 
 
 13, notes, line two, for 26 read 6, and for 128 read 162 ; line three, for 165 read 
 
 210. 
 17, notes, line one, for casas read cosas. 
 20, line thirty-four, after quam qiiam, insert nobis. 
 37, line thirty-one, for erranty read errantry. 
 50, line eleven of epigraph, after " know of," supply the virtue of ; and in 
 
 the note, for 2 read 5. 
 52, line six, for virtu read vertu. 
 54, line thirty, for Chrysostum read Chrysostom. 
 60, line one of epigraph, for Q read'Q 
 71, line three of Greek passage, for avr' — avr read ovt' — ovt . 
 
 75, line fifteen, for cepit read ccepit. 
 
 76, line thirty-four, for tobaci read tabaci. 
 166, line fourteen, for noise read nose. 
 
 X.B.— The accents have been unintentionally omitted in some of the Greek 
 passages. 
 
y 
 
 %>M%& 
 
 
 COMMENTARY 
 
 ON 
 
 THE INFLUENCE 
 
 WHICH THE USE OF 
 
 TOBACCO, 
 
 EXERTS ON THE HUMAN CONSTITUTION 
 IN A SERIES OF LETTERS : 
 
 bf 
 (VOX E DESERTO,) 
 
 FRANCIS CAMPBELL, M.A., M.D., 
 
 SUPERINTENDENT OF THE COLONIAL LUNATIC ASYLUM, TARBAN. 
 
 *J little boke ! thou art so unconning, 
 How darst thou put thyself in prees for drede i 
 It is wonder that thou wexest not rede, 
 Sith that thou wost full lite who shall behold 
 Thy rude langage full boistrously unfold. 
 
 SYDNEY: 
 
 PUBLISHED A.VD SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS, 
 1853. 
 
Re 
 
 ROBERT I. OWE, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 &C , &C, &C, 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 
 
 SMALL BUT SINCERE TRIBUTE OP ADMIRATION TO EIS 
 GISll'S, ELOQUENCE. AND LEARNING, 
 
 ST B ! * OBKDIENT SHVJIil, 
 
 THE AUTHOR, 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These letters have no higher pretensions than 
 what is expressed in the title page. They form 
 a mere commentary on the effects, good and bad, 
 which the use of tobacco produces in the human 
 constitution. I have accordingly availed myself 
 of the usual privileges of a commentator, and 
 extracted from writers of every age such passages 
 as appeared to me calculated to elucidate the 
 various topics brought under consideration. 
 Great pains have been taken with the citations, 
 both to render them accurate and do justice to 
 the authorities. 
 
 But while I natter myself that I have not fallen 
 into the grave error of borrowing the sentiments of 
 any writer without giving him credit for the loan, 
 it must be admitted that in consulting and 
 studying not only the authors quoted, but 
 hundreds of others, oversights of this kind may 
 reasonably be expected. If the reader, therefore, 
 should discover any opinion made use of without 
 acknowledgment, he is earnestly entreated to 
 ascribe the omission charitably to inattention. Per- 
 haps I may excuse myself on the same grounds, 
 and with the same apology offered by the learned 
 
VIII 
 
 Jacobus Facciolatus — Quaeres fortasse, quinam 
 isti sint. * * * Equidem non memini. Imrao 
 ne illud quidem memini, utrum ego id aliquando 
 legerim, an audierim, an \ero ipse ita olim 
 cogitando conjecerim. 1 
 
 Ordinary readers need be under no apprehension 
 at the formidable array of passages from languages 
 not in common use. The meaning of them is for 
 the most part sufficiently implied in text to admit 
 of their being passed over without loss. It would 
 have been better no doubt if they had been 
 formally translated, or only referred to as notes. 
 But both time and inclination were wanting to 
 make so material an innovation on the original 
 letters of Vox E. Deserto, which in this respect 
 are left nearly in the state wherein they first 
 appeared, when the writer was entirely unknown. 
 
 The short excursus on Cabbage was only 
 thrown in on the spur of the thought by way of 
 analogy ; and the bundle of odds and ends entitled 
 Human Habits seemed to flow naturally from 
 the subject as a sort of moral aegis to protect 
 youth against the contamination which forms the 
 subject of the commentary; for the work is addressed 
 to my sons in common with the other youths of 
 Australia, and published in the sincere hope that 
 it may be the means of tempering the insane rage 
 for smoking, so epidemic in this colony. 
 
 1 Jacobi Facciolati orationes et alia ad artem dicendi per- 
 tinentia. Patavii. A. 1774, Edita. — Epistola x., de T. Livii 
 Patavinitate. 
 
IX 
 
 After exercising my profession for forty years ■ 
 with no inconsiderable experience of the so-called 
 diseases of the mind, I may be allowed without 
 the imputation of egotism, to speak with some 
 confidence on a habit which I am convinced 
 has consigned thousands to the madhouse, and 
 hundreds of thousands to the ever-rankling 
 affliction of incurable diseases in the stomach and 
 associated organs. 
 
 Hence, I considered it my imperative duty as a 
 father, a physician, and a friend to the young, to 
 warn them of the pernicious consequences of this 
 abomination both as it affects the health and the 
 purse. Having performed my share of a great 
 social obligation I will not feel disappointed rf my 
 labour should prove in vain. When I reflect that 
 the greatest geniuses have never yet been able to 
 begin and finish in a single life-time any important 
 revolution in Religion, Morals, Politics, or 
 Literature, I can have no great cause to com- 
 plain that my trifling efforts are not crowned with 
 success. 
 
 It is not to be expected that a luxury which has 
 successfully defied the thunders of the Vatican, 
 the prosciption of emperors, the interdiction of 
 states, and the " counterblaste" of a king, would be 
 much affected by any argument however forcible, 
 or proof however convincing, I might bring 
 against it. The taste for it is too deeply rooted 
 and general for any single individual, or any 
 single generation, to make one smoker less of 
 
those who rejoice in imbibing the deleterious 
 juices of this poison; which, being equally 
 attainable by the rich and the poor, has entwined 
 itself so inextricably among their habits as 
 to have become one of their chief necessities. 
 It is long since the impulse to reform was given in 
 respect to this habit, and if succeeding generations 
 continue the momentum, it is to be hoped the 
 force of oft-repeated appeals to the common sense 
 of mankind shall at length complete the change. 
 The continual dropping of water hollows out the 
 rock. — 7rhpr)v koiXclivei pavlg vSarog IvSeXexsir}. 1 
 
 But though these pages are consecrated to the 
 welfare of youth in particular, it would not be sur- 
 prising if some reader of a shrewd and penetrating 
 temper of mind should cunningly deduce from the 
 nature of the work that it aims at older and better 
 informed heads than at boys, adding force and 
 charm to his inference by asking — 
 
 "Who but rather turns 
 
 To Heaven's broad fire his unconstrained view, 
 
 Than to the glimmering of a waxen flame r 
 
 "Who that from Alpine heights, his laboring eye 
 
 Shoots round the wide horizon, to survey 
 
 Nilus or Ganges rolling his bright wave 
 
 Through mountains, plains, through empires black with shade 
 
 And continents of sand ; will turn his gaze, 
 
 To mark the wanderings of a scanty rill 
 
 That murmurs at his feet ? 
 
 Akenside. 
 
 Doubtless there would be great probability in 
 the conjecture, although the " scanty rill" is 
 
 1 Choerilus, apud Galen, de Temper, lib. III. 4. 
 
XI 
 
 indeed the prominent feature in the landscape ; 
 but he might reduce this probability to absolute 
 certainty if, without soaring into the sublimities 
 of poetry, he would proceed on plain ground, 
 and argue that the influence of morals 
 descends from the upper to the lower classes 
 of society, and from the older to the younger, 
 by a law as determinate as that which directs the 
 gravitation of bodies to the centre; that the hum- 
 bler orders not only imitate the good and the bad 
 examples set them by the higher, but even vie 
 with them in their follies and absurdities through 
 every grade from the base to the summit; and 
 that the younger members of each extreme, ape the 
 obliquities of their seniors with a degree of success 
 which completely throws the elders into the shade. 
 Ergo, higher game is aimed at than boys. 
 
 For none will deny that these propositions in ■ 
 volve universal truths, because in Baconian phrase 
 asundunt ad axiomata, et descendunt ad opera. — 
 But whether the question be man or boy, I may 
 venture to predicate of the work, that no one, old 
 or young, will be the worse of giving it a careful 
 consideration. 
 
 jEque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus seque ; 
 Et, neglecta, aeque pueribus, senebusque nocebit. 
 
 Hoeace. 
 
 It is thirteen years since these letters, as they 
 were originally written, appeared in the columns 
 of the Sydney Herald ; and though they are 
 revised and somewhat enlarged, they are still 
 
XII 
 
 disfigured with the blemishes arising from the 
 hurry and carelessness of style peculiar to articles 
 intended only for ephemeral reading in a daily 
 journal. But they were neither written then, nor 
 are they published now, with a view to pecuniary 
 advantage. The composition of them at first 
 beguiled many a melancholy hour, and consoled 
 me in circumstances the most trying to human 
 fortitude ; and latterly the correction of them 
 was undertaken in the hours devoted to repose as 
 a salutary and effectual means of recruiting and 
 re-composing my spirits, harassed and agitated by 
 the exhausting and mind-wearing duties of the 
 day, in the exercise of the most arduous branch of 
 the Healing Art. In short, homely and vulgar 
 as the task may be considered, " it has soothed 
 my afflictions ; it has multiplied and refined my 
 enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has 
 given me the habit of wishing to discover the 
 good and the beautiful in all that meets and 
 surrounds me." 1 
 
 1 Coleridge. 
 
 Lunatic Asylum, Tarban, 
 September, 1853. 
 
LETTER I 
 
 The Indian weed, unknown to ancient times, 
 Nature's choice gift, whose acrimonious fume 
 Extracts superfluous juices, and refines 
 The blood distempered, from its noxious salts ; 
 Friend to the spirits, which with vapours bland 
 It gently mitigates ; companion fit 
 Of pleasantry and wine ; not to the bards 
 Unfriendly, when they to the vocal shell 
 Warble melodious their well-labored song. 
 
 J, Phillips. 
 
 Nicotiana Tabacum. — The tobacco plant/ in- 
 cluding all its species and varieties, of which there 
 are several, is a viscid herb, annual, a native of 
 America ; but now cultivated extensively all over 
 the globe. The species most in use are the 
 following : — Nicotiana E-ustica, the Yetle of the 
 ancient Mexicans, the most abundantly cultivated 
 in Europe, and of which the Syrian, Turkish, 
 Salonican, and Latakian tobaccos are made. 
 Gerard in his " Herbale," at the word, says " the 
 English-grown tobacco (the N. Rustica) is as good 
 as the American ;" but he adds, u it is not so 
 thought nor received of our Tabakians; for ac- 
 cording to the English proverbe — Far fetcht and 
 deere bought is best for the ladeys." N. Panicu- 
 lata, N. Glutinosa, N. Loxensis, N. Andicola, as 
 its name implies, found growing on the Andes at 
 
 1 NICOTIANA. Nat. Ord. Luridx, Lin. Solane^:, Juis. 
 Sex. Syst. Pentandria, Monogtnia. 
 
 Gen. Char. Calyx, urceolate, five-cleft. Corolla, funnel- 
 shaped, five-cleft, regular, border plaited. Stamens, five, in- 
 clined. Stigma, emarginate. Capsules, two-valved, two-celled. 
 
 Spec. Char. Leaves, oblong-lanceolate, sessile, acuminate, 
 the lower decurrent. Segments of the Corolla acute. Throat 
 of the Corolla inflate-ventricose. 
 
the height of 11,000 feet. N. Repanda, the 
 species from which the celebrated Havannah 
 cigars are manufactured ; it was introduced into 
 England about the year 1823. N. Quadrivalvis, 
 from which it is reported the Indians of the Rocky 
 Mountains prepare their tobacco. N. Tabacum, 
 the most important to English smokers and the 
 English Government ; and lastly the N. Persica, of 
 which the far-famed fragrant and delicious tobacco 
 of Schiraz is made. This, says the Rev. Dr. 
 Walsh, is one of the most indispensable of Turkish 
 luxuries. It is always the companion of coffee, 
 and there is something so exceedingly congenial 
 in the properties of both, that nature seems to have 
 intended them for inseparable associates. We do 
 not know how to use tobacco in this country ; but 
 defile and deteriorate it with malt liquor. When 
 used with coffee, after the Turkish fashion, it is 
 singularly grateful to the taste, and refreshing to 
 the spirits, counteracting the effects of fatigue, 
 and appeasing the cravings of hunger. 1 
 
 This species, and its variety, the N. Macrophylla, 
 flower in July and August. The root is branch- 
 ing, fibrous ; the stem from four to six feet in 
 height, erect, branching at the top, round and 
 hairy; the leaves are numerous and large, being 
 from two to three feet long, and four to six inches 
 wide, sessile, alternate, entire, pointed, slightly 
 decurrent, pale green, and glandular, with short 
 hairs. The flowers are in large panicles at the 
 end of the stem and branches. The bractes are 
 long, linear-pointed at the base of each division. 
 The calyx hairy, bell-shaped, somewhat pentan- 
 gular, and cleft into five acute, erect segments. 
 The corolla is rose-coloured, its tube twice the 
 length of the calyx, of a pale green hue, and 
 swelling into an oblong cup, which expands into 
 
 1 Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople, fyc, p. 1. 
 
five pointed, plaited segments. The stamens are 
 of equal length with the tube of the corolla. The 
 anthers awl-shaped, compressed, and oblong. The 
 style is slender, and the length of the corolla, 
 The stigma is capitate, slightly cleft, rising from a 
 conical germen, which changes to an ovate capsule, 
 opening crosswise at the apex, and containing 
 numerous small kidney-shaped seeds, of which 
 each capsule contains about 1000 ; so that a whole 
 plant will produce on an average 350,000 seeds. 
 The Virginia tobacco, when in flower, is one of 
 the most beautiful plants on the globe. 
 
 Pallas, the celebrated traveller and naturalist, 
 assumes, and seems to consider he has proved, that 
 " in Asia, and especially in China, the use of 
 Tobacco for smoking is more ancient than the 
 discovery of the New World." 
 
 A witty author 1 of the seventeenth century, 
 writes to a correspondent, in " merry pin" and 
 some sarcastic truth, that <( an acre of performance 
 is worth the whole land of promise." In the 
 same vein it may be maintained that one fact is 
 worth an entire bibliotheke of assumptions. Pallas 
 might as well tell us that a cigar and a cup of 
 coffee constituted the soothing anodyne with 
 which the " Argive Helen" treated her guests, and 
 threw a sweet oblivion over their sorrowful re- 
 membrances : — 
 Nrj7r£v0£C t a\o\6v re, kcikwv kiri\r]dov cnravTwv. 2 
 
 This is not the place to cite or discuss what 
 Pallas proposes as his proofs ; since from the 
 established facts of the case compared with all he 
 has written on the subject, it is manifest that the 
 reasons for adhering to the opinion generally 
 entertained at present, rest on far more solid 
 grounds than any he has adduced. The common 
 and well-founded belief is, that America is both the 
 
 J James Howell. a Odyss, iv , 224. 
 
native country of tobacco, and the source of the 
 universal custom of smoking ; which after being 
 introduced into Europe, was propagated thence 
 over the rest of the Old World. 
 
 The names alone by which it is known in 
 several countries of Asia, are clearly of American 
 extraction ; and are of themselves invincible 
 arguments against those of Pallas. For example, 
 Tamhracco, in the Malay language ; Tambrooko, 
 in the Javanese ; Tambacu, in the Hindostanee; 
 and Tamracoota in the Sanscrit, are so strikingly 
 analogous to Tabaco as to leave no doubt re- 
 specting the parentage both of these names and of 
 the plant itself. New importations generally carry 
 their names along them, and are adopted with only 
 such idiomatic modifications as are prescribed by 
 the genius of the language into which they are in- 
 troduced. There is hardly a known tongue in 
 which interchanges of this kind are not con- 
 spicuous. They may be seen even in the earliest 
 Hebrew records, naturalised from the Sanscrit. 
 I have endeavoured however to arrive at the truth, 
 by attempting to trace the practice of smoking 
 tobacco to a higher antiquity in the Old World 
 than the discovery of America. And to this end, 
 every record accessible to me has been diligently 
 examined, to detect if possible the faintest analogy 
 to this singular custom. But, as will be seen 
 below, I have been unsuccessful in finding a single 
 allusion to tobacco in any form, or for any 
 purpose 
 
 In ancient medical works indeed, we frequently 
 find the smoke of burning herbs recommended to 
 be inhaled into the lungs through tubes or funnels, 
 as a remedy for bronchial affections ; but not a 
 word of smoking as a custom, not a trace of tobacco 
 as a plant or a luxury is to be found. 
 
 Passing over the burnt offerings, &c, of Holy 
 Scripture, Herodotus is the earliest author who 
 
refers to the inhaling of smoke or perfume from 
 burning plants. Two instances only are mentioned, 
 one of which appears to have formed part of a 
 religious ceremony ; the other is a meagre descrip- 
 tion of a medicated Scythian vapour bath. So 
 that if any analogy to smoking can be discovered 
 in them it consists only in the accident of their 
 effects on the brain and nervous system. He says, 
 speaking of the Massagetse inhabiting the islands 
 of the Araxes, " these islanders have trees bearing 
 a fruit which produces such effects as the follow- 
 ing — KapTrovg tolovgSe. Having assembled to- 
 gether, they kindle a fire, and sitting down around 
 it, they throw this fruit into the flame, and as it 
 burns they inhale the odour and become in- 
 toxicated with its perfume, in the same degree as 
 the Greeks with drinking wine; the more they 
 throw in, the more they become inebriated, until 
 at length they leap, dance, and sing. 
 
 In another place where he treats of the manners 
 of the Scythians, he describes an excellent custom 
 observed by these people, which appears to have 
 exerted similar effects on the nervous system. 
 " They form," he says, " a conical tent by fixing 
 three poles in the ground with the upper ends 
 inclining towards each other, and spread (sheets of) 
 felt over them as closely as possible : when the 
 tent is completely covered in, they throw red hot 
 stones into the enclosed space, and then take the 
 seed of a large species of hemp which grows 
 there, and insinuating it under the felt into the 
 enclosure, they throw it on the burning stones. 
 When the seeds begin to roast, such a steam is 
 emitted as no Grecian vapour bath surpasses 
 The Scythians howl with delight while they enjoy 
 this luxury, which also serves them instead of 
 ablution with water. 2 
 
 • Clio. ccii. 2 Melpoaione lxxiii., etse]. 
 
I 
 
 Strabo also states that the Scythians smoked the 
 fumes of burning herbs through wooden and 
 earthen tubes. 1 Pliny, treating of the virtues of 
 coltsfoot, says, " hujus aridse cum radice fumus per 
 arundinem haustus et devoratus veterem sanare 
 dicitur tussem." 2 So far the ancient historians. 
 The physicians explain the objects of this practice. 
 
 Diocorides in describing the sanative properties 
 of firixiov or coltsfoot, says the smoke of burning 
 coltsfoot inhaled through a funnel into the lungs 
 cures those who are troubled with dry cough, 
 &c. 3 Marcellus Empiricus describes how this 
 process is conducted. A tube is to be inserted 
 into a new pipkin, (ollam) in which the dried 
 herb and some burning coals have been enclosed ; 
 the steam and smoke (humor et fumus) are to be 
 inhaled by the mouth until they penetrate the lungs 
 and stomach. 4 Galen briefly notices the applica- 
 tion of the smoke of coltsfoot to the lungs for the 
 relief of cough, but says nothing of a tube. 5 
 Alexander Trallianus has half-a-dozen different 
 vTroKaTTviajiaTa or formula? for the cure of chronic 
 cough, by inhaling the smoke of burning in- 
 gredients into the lungs, in one or two of which 
 we are rather startled to find the red sulphuret of 
 arsenic. But to be brief with this enquiry, 
 consult for yourselves Pliny. 7 Ccelius Aurelianus 8 
 the psuedo-Dioscorides, 9 Nicolaus Myrepsus, lt? 
 
 1 Geog.,lib. 7. 
 
 1 Nat. Hist , lib. xxvi., cap. 16 and 79. 
 
 a Lib. iii.,cap. 109, andlib. v., cap. 81, where he states that 
 the fumes of the red sulphuret of arsenic aavdapaicn, burnt 
 along with resin, and inhaled through a tube, relieves chronic 
 cough, 
 
 4 l)e Med., cap. 16. 
 
 * De fac. Simp. Med., lib. vi., in vocem firixiov. 
 s Lib v., cap. 4. 
 
 7 Nat Hist, lib., xxiv , cap. 35. 
 
 * Morb. Chron , lib ii., i ap. 1 t 8. 
 9 Euporist, ii. 3. 
 
 18 Sect xli., 76. 
 
Aetius, l Paulus iEgineta, 2 with the two Arabians, 
 Johannes Serapio 3 and Rhasis : 4 all these authors 
 mention this mode of applying remedies in 
 bronchial complaints, but for no other use or 
 purpose whatever. 
 
 Now if we are credulously to receive these as 
 examples of smoking in the modern acceptation 
 of the term, it must be admitted that the ancients 
 carried the habit to the utmost limits of burlesque 
 and absurdity, for they not only enjoyed the 
 incense of the pipe themselves, but taught their 
 horses, mules, and asses — mulorum, equorum, as- 
 sinorumque genus omne — to blow a cloud occa- 
 sionally for the benefit of their health. Vegetius, 
 treating of the coughs to which these domestic 
 animals are subject, proceeds thus : — " Istis quo- 
 que suffimentis non minus, quam potionibus, 
 adjuvabis : Sandarici uncias tres, asphalti 
 uncias tres ; allii et ceparum uncias tres, quae cum 
 pariter triveris, in tres partes equaliter divides, 
 et per triduum cooperto ori vel capiti sub- 
 jects carbonibus, suffumiges, ut odor impleat 
 nares, &c.," 5 
 
 Such are all the data that I can find, either 
 ancient or modern, from which I believe Pallas, 
 Rumph, Loureiro, and Thorius, have drawn their 
 conclusions concerning the antiquity of smoking 
 tobacco. 
 
 This herb has been fortunate in the number of its 
 appellations, most of them conferred whilst the 
 enthusiasm attending its introduction into Europe 
 was operating like its own inebriating fumes upon 
 the brains of its frantic devotees. Tabacum and 
 psetum are native names latinised ; hyoscyamus 
 
 » Lib. Med lib. viii., 61. 
 
 3 Lib. iii., 28 and 29. 
 
 8 Tr. ii.,19. 
 
 4 Continens, viii. 
 
 Mulomedicina, lib. iii., cap. 67. 
 
Peruvianus, or henbane of Peru, which Shakspeare 
 has metathesecl into liebenon ; l sacra harba, sancta 
 herba, sana sancta indorum ; herbe du Grand 
 Prieur ; Herbe sacrie ; Herbe a la Reine ; Regina ; 
 Herbe de St. Croix ; Herbe propre a tous maux ; 
 and among the Italians, Tornabona. 2 It is now 
 best known, however, by some modification of the 
 Haitian name tabac, a word whose strict definition 
 seems to have puzzled every writer on the subject 
 from the conquest of Mexico till the present time. 
 Its generic name Nicotiana was bestowed upon 
 the plant by Linneeus, in compliance with a custom 
 among botanists, who on such occasions are not 
 always guided by the principles of strict justice or 
 discretion. Nicotiana appellata est a Johanne Ni~ 
 cotio, Regis Galliarum legato in Lusitania, anno 
 1559, qui primus hanc plantain Galliis transmisit, 3 
 By this act of the great botanist, a monument 
 has been consecrated to another, which was due to 
 Columbus alone. Vos non vobis. But if neither 
 the grandeur and importance of his discovery, 
 nor the humbler merit of having first brought 
 this weed and its use into notice, was con- 
 sidered sufficient to entitle him to this honor, 
 then it devolved by right on the Spanish hermit 
 Roman Pane, who discovered tobacco in Haiti 
 only a few years after the occupation of that 
 island by his countrymen ; and if Roman Pane's 
 title to the distinction was also to be quashed, 
 surely Gonsalvo's claim was indisputable, who 
 witnessed the smoking of it in Yucatan in the 
 year 1518 ; and lastly, but precedent to any other 
 claimant of his age, the name of Hernandez de 
 Toledo, who introduced it into Europe, ought to 
 have been identified with that of the poison. 
 
 1 Hamlet, a. 1, s 5 
 
 2 Flora Domestic a, at the word. 
 
 3 Chrysostom Magnenus, Exercitativnes de Tabaco. 
 
9 
 
 It has hitherto been said and regretted, that the 
 ingratitude or indifference of his contemporaries 
 had shorn Columbus of every ray of his glory. It 
 is true, indeed, that the scene of his fame was de- 
 frauded of its greatest prerogative and proudest 
 title when Columbia was supplanted by America. 
 But history is his proper monument, and the vast 
 amplitude of the New World the solid basis on 
 which its rests. Can the most aspiring ambition 
 or insatiable love of glory, covet a grander or more 
 imperishable memorial ? 
 
 At the epoch of the discovery of the New 
 World, this plant had been cultivated from time 
 immemorial by all the original nations of the 
 Oroonoko, and in several of the West India 
 Islands ; and the smoking and chewing of the 
 dried herb had evidently been a long established 
 custom, probably over the whole of the American 
 continent. 1 Jacques Cartier found it in common 
 use as far north as Canada. In a voyage he made 
 thither in 1535, he says the inhabitants of Canada 
 have likewise a certain kind of herb, of which they 
 lay up a store every summer, having first dried it 
 in the sun. This is only used by the men, who 
 always carry some of it in a small skin bag hanging 
 from their necks, in which they also carry a hollow 
 piece of stone or wood like a pipe. When 
 they use this herb they bruise it to powder, 
 which they put into one end of the before- 
 mentioned pipe, and lay a small live coal upon it, 
 after which they smoke so long at the other end 
 that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till it 
 comes out of their mouths and nostrils as if from 
 the chimney of a fire-place. 2 
 
 See Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. v., page 666. 
 Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii., p. 335. Herrera, Descripcion 
 delas Indias Occidentales, vol. 1., p. 24. 
 2 Bib. Univers des Voyages, vi., 15. 
 
10 
 
 When Columbus discovered Cuba in 1492, 
 imagining he had arrived at the island of Japan, the 
 Golden Zipangu of Marco Polo, he dispatched two 
 men into the interior on a mission to the Khan 
 of this El Dorado, the fondest and most fallacious 
 of all his hopes. The mission of course failed : 
 a whole continent and the wide unbroken 
 expanse of the North Pacific Ocean lay between 
 them and Cipango. When the men returned to 
 the ships, in relating what they had seen on their 
 journey, they mentioned the surprise they felt at 
 meeting the natives carrying about burning sticks 
 in their hands to light fires " and fumigate them- 
 selves with the smoke of certain dried herbs," 
 which they rolled into a leaf, one end of which 
 they put into their mouths, and lighting the other, 
 they continued inhaling and puffing out the 
 smoke. 1 Again on the 4th February, 1503, says 
 Don Fernando Colon, writing the history of his 
 father — this Cazique and his chief men never 
 ceased putting a dry herb into their mouths, which 
 they chewed, and sometimes they took a sort of 
 powder, which they carried along with that herb, 
 which singular custom astonished our people very 
 much. 2 In several islands Columbus, and after- 
 wards Vespucci, found the natives chewing this 
 herb, as at Long Island and Cat Island, which 
 Vespucci says they did as a substitute for water, 
 of which there was great want. 3 Jacques Cartier 
 relates that the Canadians smoked and chewed to 
 keep themselves warm. 4 Twenty- six years after 
 the first voyage of Columbus, that is, in 1518, 
 Gonzalvo saw tobacco smoked by the Cazique of 
 
 1 Historia del Alniirante, cap. 27. Herrera, op. et. loc. cit. 
 W. Irving's Life and Voyages of Columbus, vol. 1, p. 281. 
 Grinseus, Novus Orbis, p*. 37. Mundo Nuovo, &c, &c, da 
 Alberico Vesputio Florentine Vicenza, 1507. 
 
 2 u. s. and all the last quoted Avorks 
 
 3 Mundo Nuovo, &c, &c., Voyages of Discovery. 
 
 4 Loc. cit. 
 
11 
 
 Tobasco during their interview; and in 1519, 
 when Cortez took possession of Yucatan and 
 Mexico, he found the inhabitants using tobacco in 
 the same way as the natives of Cuba. The Empe- 
 ror Motecusuma was in the habit of enjoying the 
 luxury after breakfast and dinner, for the purpose 
 of inducing sleep, a practice still followed by the 
 natives of most of the provinces of South America. 
 Even at the present day the Tamanoes and May- 
 pures of Guayana continue to wrap maize leaves 
 round their cigars, as the Mexicans did at the 
 arrival of Cortez. 1 
 
 But the Caciques and grandees at the court of 
 Motecusuma were not content with the simple 
 satisfaction of blowing a cloud like reasonable 
 smokers by idly inhaling and exhaling the fumes, 
 and confining their utmost range of pleasure to the 
 region of the mouth. Habit blunts the edge of 
 sensibility ; and thus long practice of the same 
 mode had exhausted all their power of enjoyment. 
 The luxurious children of the sun, sated with the 
 simple old-fashioned Aztek manner of enjoying 
 the pleasures of the pipe, are represented to 
 have made such innovations on the ancient laws 
 of smoking a cigar as enabled them to carry 
 their fruition of this precious incense to an 
 extent which I believe is not ventured upon 
 by the most zealous of our modern fumebibbers. 
 They held the cigar with one hand, while with 
 the other they closed the nostrils to enable them to 
 swallow the smoke with more freedom and satis- 
 faction. 2 Now this appears to be a practice so 
 contrary to nature and common sense as to render 
 the report at least doubtful. For if it were 
 possible to admit the acrid fumes of tobacco into 
 
 1 Bemal Diaz del Castillo, vol. 1., cap. 91. Humboldc, loc. 
 cit. 
 
 2 Caley's Life of Raleigh, vol. 1 , p. 82. 
 
13 
 
 the lungs in any quantity with impunity, I cannot 
 believe that the holding of the nostrils would 
 facilitate the inhaling of smoke or anything else ; 
 since, as I apprehend, the moderns correctly 
 express by inhaling, what the old English authors 
 signified by swallowing and d? inking tobacco : — 
 thus Davis : 
 
 Fumosus cannot eat a bit, but he 
 
 Must drink tobacco, so to wash, it down. 1 
 
 Besides the common uses to which tobacco was 
 applied, such as the gratification of a vitiated taste, 
 or as a narcotic to sooth the inquietudes of the 
 mind, for which purposes it is admirably adapted, 
 inducing that repose of the passions which disposes 
 to sleep, it was observed by the Spaniards, English, 
 and the French, at their different points of dis- 
 covery, that it performed an important oflice in the 
 civil and religious ceremonies of the natives ; who 
 burnt it as an incense on the altars of their 
 deities ; and the smoke, as it rose on the 
 gale being inhaled by their priests, produced on 
 them effects similar to those experienced by the 
 ancient sibyls and priestesses of Apollo when 
 they respired the intoxicating gases issuing from 
 the chasms in their grottoes and caves to fit 
 them for uttering their equivocal responses. These 
 ministresses were also compelled to eat the leaves 
 of the laurus nobilis, the tree consecrated to Apollo 
 on account of his beloved Aacpvrj, before they 
 could be rendered sufficiently entheastic to deliver 
 the oracles of the god. Lycophron gives the 
 Pythoness the epithet of laurel-eater. 
 
 Aa<pvti<paywv 0o<j3a£fv Ik Acujuwv oira? 
 
 In the temple of Apollo at Delphi, there was a 
 
 1 Scourge of Folly. Epigr. 184. 
 
 2 Alexandra, 6. Juvenal, vii , 19. Tibullus, ii., v., 65. 
 Coelius Rhodig. Ant. Lect. v., 7. 
 
13 
 
 fissure in the middle of the floor whence an en- 
 trancing vapour issued, which threw those who in- 
 haled it into a frightful state of agitation. The 
 tripod upon which the priestess sat on these oc- 
 casions, was placed over this chasm, and when an 
 answer was to be returned to any question pro- 
 pounded to the oracle, the pythoness seated 
 herself upon the sacred stool, and after inhaling 
 the vapour for a short time, her whole frame 
 became fearfully convulsed, and, foaming at the 
 mouth, with dishevelled hair and heaving bosom, 
 " her eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," she delivered 
 her fateful oracles. 1 
 
 Hence we may fairly conclude that if tobacco had 
 been known in ancient times, Apollo, the god of 
 plants, would have directed this vaticinating de- 
 moniac to deliver her responses under the influence 
 of its fumes, instead of risking her life with the 
 infamous gases of the Delphic chasm, or by im- 
 bibing the poison of the laurel. And while the 
 inspiring incense from her dhudeen of polished jet 
 curled gracefully over her dark features, she could 
 have chanted in tripping measure this moral 
 response — 
 
 " The Indian weed withered quite, 
 Green at noon, cut down at night, 
 Shows thy decay, — all flesh is hay : 
 Thus think, then drink tobacco. 
 
 The pipe that is so lily-white, 
 Shows thee to be a mortal wight, 
 And even such, gone with a touch : 
 Thus think, then drink tobacco. 
 
 And when the smoke ascends on high, 
 Think thou behold' st the vanity 
 Of worldly stuff, gone with a puff : 
 Thus think, then drink tobacco. 
 
 1 Aristoph. in Plut. Schol. Diodorus Siculus, lib. xvi., cap. 
 26 ; Pausanias, lib. x., cap. 5 ; Lucan. Phars. lib. v., 128 and 
 165 ; Pollux, x., 23, 81 ; Virg. Mn. iii., 92, vi., 47 ; Plutarch 
 de Pyth. Orac. 9—24. 
 
 c 
 
14 
 
 And when the pipe grows foul within, 
 Think on thy soul, defiled with sin ; 
 And then the fire it doth require : 
 Thus think, then drink tobacco. 
 
 The ashes that are left behind 
 May serve to put thee still in mind 
 That unto dust return thou must : 
 
 Thus think, then drink tobacco." 1 
 
 In all seriousness, there is a striking similarity in 
 these two modes of deceiving the uninitiated. In 
 both these systems of priestcraft, the priests 
 became inspired almost by the same means ; and 
 both delivered their answers under the excitement 
 of a factitious furor occasioned by the juice of a 
 poisonous plant, or the inhalation of intoxicating 
 vapors. Antonio de Solis, speaking of the Mexican 
 Indians, says, tobacco " had somewhat of super- 
 stition in it, for the juice of this herb was one of 
 the ingredients with which the priests were 
 worked up into madness and fury, when it was 
 necessary for them to prepare themselves by aban- 
 doning their reason, to receive the devil's oracles." 2 
 We are informed by credible eye-witnesses of the 
 early manners and customs of the Floridians and 
 Virginians, that the priests and enchanters some- 
 times inhaled the smoke of tobacco until they be- 
 came quite intoxicated ; and after lying insensible 
 for three or four hours, they pretended to the cre- 
 dulous people that they had seen signs and visions 
 during their trance, which gave them a clear 
 forecast of the issue of such enterprises as they 
 were about to undertake. 3 N^ay, it was " of 
 so precious an estimation amongst them," says the 
 astronomer Hariot, " that they think theyr Gods 
 are marvellously delighted therewith : whereupon 
 sometimes they make hallowed fires, and cast some 
 
 1 Two Broad-sides against Tobacco, &c, &c, &c, 1672. 
 
 2 Historia de la Conguista de Mexico, iii. 15. 
 
 3 Voyages of Captain Thomas Smith (Harris, vol. 1). 
 
15 
 
 of the powder (of tobacco) therein for a sacrifice ; 
 being in a storme upon the waters, to pacefie theyr 
 Gods, they cast some into the ayre and into the 
 water : so a weare for fish being newly set up, 
 they cast some therein and some into the ayre : 
 also after an escape of danger they cast into the 
 ayre likewise ; but all done with strange gestures, 
 stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands, 
 holding up of hands, and staring up into the 
 heavens^ uttering therewithal, and chattering 
 strange words and noises." 1 In some nations of 
 America the priests swallowed the juice to throw 
 them into that state of furor which enabled them 
 to read the mysteries of futurity ; in others they 
 swallowed the smoke, but the effects appear to 
 have been the same, whether real or pretended. 
 To those who have an interest in the deceiving, 
 the means are easy. 
 
 The same author informs us that the Virginians 
 reduced the dried leaves of the " vppowok" or 
 tobacco, into powder, and took the " fume or smoke 
 thereof, by sucking through pipes made of clay, 
 into theyr stomach and head."- But the natives of 
 Oroonoko and of the islands prepared their 
 tobacco somewhat differently, iDasmuch as they 
 wrapped the leaves in an envelope and formed it 
 into a cigar, to which they gave the name tabaco, 
 a word which according to Humboldt belongs to 
 the ancient language of Haiti, signifying the in- 
 strument through which the smoke is inhaled, but 
 the plant itself was called Yetl. When they were 
 about to use these cigars they stuck them in tubes 
 made of silver, of painted wood, or of shell 3 
 
 This agrees with what is recorded by Grizalvo 
 Fernandez de Oviedo, Inspector-General of Com- 
 
 1 Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii., p. 271. 
 
 2 Hariot, Voyage to Virginia, and loc. cit. 
 
 3 Humboldt, Essay on New Spain, p. 231. 
 
16 
 
 merce in the New World, in the second edition of 
 a part of his work, 1 published in Salamanca in 
 1546 ; where we find Tobacco especially described 
 as the tube through which the natives inhaled by 
 the nostrils the smoke of a certain poisonous herb 
 to produce " insensibility." But with the excep- 
 tion of him of Oviedo, who resided in Cuba for many 
 years shortly after the discovery of America, and 
 the Baron Von Humboldt, 2 every other early 
 writer I have had the opportunity to consult, 
 speaks of tobacco as the herb or material smoked. 
 
 The conquistador Bernal Diaz, a follower of 
 Cortez, a participator in all the achievements of 
 that intrepid commander, and an accurate deli- 
 neator of every circumstance that fell under his 
 observation during these predatory wars, is al- 
 lowed on all hands to be the most veracious and 
 minute historian of the conquest of Mexico. Now 
 Bernal Diaz says expressly that this herb was called 
 tabaco by the Mexicans. In his description of 
 the domestic habits of Motecusuma, he says that 
 after dinner the women presented him with three 
 beautifully painted and gilt tubes, which were 
 filled with liquid amber and a herb called by the 
 Indians tabaco. After dinner had been removed, 
 and the singing and dancing finished, one of the 
 tubes was lighted and the monarch took the smoke 
 into his mouth, and when he had done this a short 
 time he fell asleep. 3 
 
 Munoz had the means of obtaining the materials 
 of his history 4 from the most authentic sources. 
 In narrating the first voyage of Columbus to Ame- 
 rica he notices the surprise of the Spaniards at the 
 
 1 Historia General de las Indias Occidentals, lib. v., cap. 2, 
 
 2 Essay on New Spain, p. 231. 
 
 3 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, vol. i., p. 231. See also Antonio 
 de Solis' Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, iii. IS. 
 * Historia del Nuovo-Miuido. Madrid, fol. 1793. 
 
17 
 
 novelties of the country, thus — " Not less strange- 
 appeared to them the custom of the men, who 
 generally walked abroad both in the fields and in 
 roads with a lighted torch in their hands, and rolls 
 of certain herbs wrapped up in a leaf, or rather of 
 leaves rolled together, which they called tabacos. 
 These they lighted at one end, and from the other 
 sucked in the smoke." 
 
 Nicholas Monardes in his work 1 on the Drugs 
 of America, when describing the uses to which it 
 was converted by the priests, as noticed above, 
 mentions the herb by the name now universally 
 employed ; such also is the name of the plant de- 
 scribed by Hernandes of Toledo ; and tobacco was 
 the material smoked by Governor Lane and Hariot 
 the Astronomer. Hariot says distinctly there is 
 an herb which is sowed apart by itself and is 
 called by the inhabitants vppowoc. In the West 
 Indies it hath divers names according to the places 
 and countries where it groweth and is used. The 
 Spaniards generally call it Tabaco. 2 Besides, it 
 might be argued that tobacco must have been 
 generally understood by the first settlers in Ame- 
 rica in its present acceptation, from the very cir- 
 cumstance of several of the earliest writers endea- 
 vouring to establish the derivation of the word 
 Tobacco as the plant smoked, by deducing it from 
 Tobago or Tabasco. 
 
 From all this we are led to the inevitable con- 
 clusion that the islanders of Hispaniola used cigars 
 which they called Tabaco, while on the continent, 
 where they used pipes for their tobacco as well as 
 cigars, they applied the name tabaco indiscrimi- 
 nately. But there is much confusion on this sub- 
 ject among the early writers. 
 
 1 Dos Libras de las Casas que si traen de las Indias Occi- 
 dentals, que sirven al itso de Medicina. Sevilla t 1565. 
 
 2 Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 771. 
 
18 
 
 It is generally believed that tobacco was intro- 
 duced into Europe in 1559 by Francisco Her- 
 nandez, better known as Hernandez de Toledo, 
 one of the physicians to Philip II. of Spain, 
 who had returned from Florida to his native 
 country in that year. But it is stated likewise, 
 and with an air of truth, that it was brought into 
 Europe by the companions of Columbus on their 
 return to Spain in the year 1493, after the dis- 
 covery of the Bahama Islands. 1 It is not however 
 equally verisimilar that, according to the report of 
 others, it was imported along with syphilis as a 
 specific for that atrocious disease, which is sup- 
 posed to have been contracted by the Spaniards 
 on their first visit to the New World, and thence 
 disseminated over the rest of the Globe. 
 
 That both the seed and specimens of the plant, 
 as also the prepared material, were brought into 
 Spain by Columbus at that time, is highly 
 probable. It is certain, at all events, that Cortez, 
 only twenty- seven years afterwards, sent home 
 some tobacco as a present to his sovereign, 
 Charles V. But although allusions to the 
 antisyphilitic properties of this weed are oc- 
 casionally found in the writings of authors who 
 flourished about that period, and among the rest 
 in a work of our own literary monarch, James I., 
 no trifling authority, who proposes the fore- 
 mentioned report as a fact, in his famous Counter- 
 blast ; yet there is no solid reason for believing 
 it was brought from America as a cure for this 
 malady. I have never read or heard the slightest 
 credible evidence to that effect, or anything to 
 prove indeed that even syphilis was a disease of 
 West Indian or American extraction. King James 
 notices it in these quaint terms : — " Tobacco being 
 a common herb, which (though under diverse 
 
 1 Opus cit. 
 
19 
 
 names) grows almost everywhere, was first found 
 out by some of the barbarous Indians to be a pre- 
 servative or antidote against a filthy disease,where- 
 unto these barbarous people are (as all men know) 
 very much subject, what through the uncleanly and 
 adust constitution of their bodies, and what through 
 the intemperate heat of their climate. So that, as 
 from them was first brought into Christendom that 
 most detestable disease, so from them likewise was 
 brought this use of tobacco, as a stinking and un- 
 savoury antidote for so corrupted and execrable 
 a malady, the stinking suffumigation whereof they 
 yet use against that disease, making so one canker 
 or vermine to eat out another." 
 
 The first generally recognised appearance of 
 this disorder, and the discovery of America, were 
 certainly coetaneous occurrences ; but in that 
 coincidence alone rests all the relation that ever 
 subsisted between this famous and infamous event. 
 I believe we have sufficient evidence to prove that 
 the distemper was lurking in Europe long previous 
 to this grand discovery. Many diseases have been 
 considered new on their first assaults in a malig- 
 nant or epidemic form, while in truth they had 
 never been entire strangers : but having become 
 either nearly worn out, or mellowed and modified 
 by habitude, they had lain in repose until some 
 disturbance in the constitution of the atmosphere, 
 or in the earth, conspiring perhaps with moral and 
 political causes, rendered the bodies of men mor- 
 bidly susceptible, and resuscitated their slumbering 
 energies. In like manner this disreputable com- 
 plaint had no doubt always existed in some form, 
 but not sufficiently virulent to be an object of par- 
 ticular regard. From the commencement of the 
 history of human depravity till the age of Colum- 
 bus was a sufficiently long period to divest it of 
 its terrors. Having become naturalized as it were 
 in the constitution under its ordinary conditions, 
 
20 
 
 it had by long association ceased to be offensive in 
 bodies thus rendered in some measure proof against 
 the action of its virulence. But still it was the 
 companion of man — his evil genius on truce ; and 
 it required only the excitement arising from the 
 privations, the filth, the pollutions of a camp, and 
 such a frequent and promiscuous venus as we 
 might suppose would be in vogue at the siege of 
 Naples, to restore to it, or to re-invest it with, all 
 the malign attributes of its nature ; for it was in 
 the character of a true pestilence that it perpetrated 
 its first recorded acts of defedation at the siege 
 of Naples, and thence spread over the whole of 
 Europe with the baleful rapidity of a simoom. 
 Syphilis was known as a peculiar disease in 1492, 
 but attracted little notice till two years after, when 
 it broke out with fearful virulence in the French 
 army while carrying on that celebrated siege in 
 1494. Many diseases already existing in a mild 
 form have no doubt been exasperated into active 
 malignity in a similar way. 
 
 I believe with Fracastorius and Antonio Sanches 
 Rebeiro, that this disease was not a new one at 
 the discovery of America, and it will require strong 
 arguments to invalidate the proofs which the 
 latter gentleman has adduced to that effect in the 
 second edition of his treatise on this disease. 
 Fracastorius' prophecy has been almost verified, 
 and will no doubt be completely fulfilled in a 
 century or two more. Thus he sings to his friend 
 Cardinal Bembo, in his exquisite poem of Syphi- 
 lides — 
 
 Nee semel in terris visam, sed ssepe fuisse 
 Ducendum est quamquam nee nomine nota 
 Hactenus il] a fuit, quoniam longseva vetustas 
 Cuncta situ involvens et res et nomina de'et, 
 Nee monumenta patrum seri videre nepotes. 1 
 
 1 Syphilides, sive de Morbo Gallico. 
 
21 
 
 But he is more explicit in another place where 
 he predicts : — Hie idem morbus interibit et ex- 
 tinguetur, mox etiam et nepotibus nostris rursus 
 videndus renascetur, quemadmodum et prseteritis 
 aetatibus visum a majoribus nostris credendum est 
 de quo non pauca indicia etiamnum extant. 1 
 
 1 De Contagionibus, et Morbis Contagiosis, lib. ii. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 Turn vacuus, deusa Pgeti porrectus in umbra, 
 Omnigenum ut patuit foecunda scientia rerum, 
 Dulcibus absumit lentas sermonibus horas, 
 Explicat ingentes opulentse mentis acervos, 
 Ludenti et similis Naturae arcana recludit ; 
 Implicitos memorat sphaeris coelestibus orbes, 
 Compagemque bominis, terrse et miracula pandit, 
 Addit et orac'lis docti libamina fumi. 
 
 Thorius. 
 
 All dainty meats I do defy, 
 Which feed men fat as swine ; 
 
 He is a frugal man indeed, 
 Tbat on a leaf can dine. 
 
 He needs no napkin for his bands, 
 
 His fingers' ends to wipe, 
 That keeps his kitchen in a box, 
 
 And roast meat in a pipe. 
 
 Marrow of Complaint,' Lond. 1654. 
 
 To return from this digression, Hernandez 
 extolled the plant as if it had been endowed with 
 extramundane qualities. He expatiated in glow- 
 ing terms on its miriflcent operations, its properties 
 and various uses as a luxury calculated to anni- 
 hilate the tardy hours of idleness, or as a medicine 
 adapted by nature to soothe and tranquillize the 
 perturbations of the spirit under the influences of 
 disease and morbid irritability ; to calm the tur- 
 bulent passions of the soul under all existing cir- 
 cumstances, and to induce the somniferous spirit of 
 sleep to settle on the wearied and exhausted 
 frame. 
 
 By this means tobacco quickly obtained numer- 
 ous admirers, and the patronage of men in the 
 highest ranks of society. All Spain was spell- 
 bound with its fascinations, and resolved to sustain 
 and extend its character as a drug of miraculous 
 
23 
 
 and innumerable virtues, scarcely inferior in effi- 
 cacy to the wood of the true Cross. 1 It is no 
 wonder that it should thus have become an object 
 of universal desire by men whose " only market 
 of their time is but to eat and sleep." Through 
 their wealth, and consequent slothful habits, the 
 Spaniards at that time had little to do but yawn 
 after new sources of sensuous gratification. They 
 ultimately became such slaves to it that they in- 
 sulted Religion by using it in places devoted to 
 the worship of God, in so much that the clergy 
 found it necessary to appeal to His Holiness to 
 forbid its use in Churches. 
 
 About this epoch of our history, a French 
 gentleman of the name of Jean Nicot, Seigneur de 
 Villemain, a man of considerable taste and learning, 
 was residing at the Court of Lisbon as ambassador 
 of Francis II. of France. Nicot, attracted by the 
 uncommon reputation of the plant, and the high 
 encomiums lavished upon it by Hernandez and 
 other admirers, was induced to try its qualities, 
 and falling into the same delusion which be- 
 wildered the Spaniards in respect to its powers, he 
 at once decided as a patriot and philosopher ought 
 to decide, that it was a commodity too precious to 
 be monopolized by a set of lazy Hidalgos ; that it 
 was indeed an incense worthy of tickling the 
 nostrils of Royalty . Accordingly, in the spirit of 
 that gallantry which has always distinguished 
 Frenchmen, he transmitted a packet of the seeds to 
 Catharine de Medicis, widow of Henry II., under 
 whose patronage, and perhaps example, this intoxi- 
 cating weed speedily acquired fresh vigor on the 
 Gallic soil ; and its use, in the character of a new 
 luxury, became as popular and universal among 
 all ranks of Frenchmen as with their swarthy 
 neighbours of the Sangre azul. 
 
 1 See page 25. 
 
u 
 
 This may be taken as a luminous exemplifica- 
 tion of the influence of one of the ruling principles 
 of human conduct ; a principle which triumphed 
 over the common understanding of the nation, and 
 led them in slavish submission to fashion to 
 idolize and to propagate one worthless plant with 
 all the ardour of fanaticism ; whilst another of 
 Pomona's choicest offerings, of vital importance to 
 the well being of the human race, is tendered by 
 the hand of Providence to the same people nearly 
 at the same period, but is doomed to appeal to 
 their judgment and their wants for centuries 
 before it can obtain admission for the incredible 
 stores of human subsistence it offers to supply. 
 So miraculous is the power of this controlling 
 element of popular idolatry ; so potent is the spell 
 which fashion and high example cast over the 
 general mind, that oftentimes scarcely a glimmering 
 of reason remains to inform them whether they 
 should feed with their mouths or their noses. You 
 will come to a similar conclusion when you contrast 
 the unequal fortunes of the tobacco and the potato 
 plant in respect to their introduction into France. 
 For the space of two centuries the potato, recom- 
 mended even by the voice of science and the 
 cohortations of philosophy, had to contend against 
 the prejudice of the people without the smallest 
 prospect of success. And it might have continued 
 in hopeless importunacy till doomsday, had not 
 Louis XV. at the end of that period taken advan- 
 tage of a day of festivity, and wore in his breast a 
 bunch of potato blossoms in the midst of his court. 
 Mark the effect. Patronage did the work with 
 electric speed. What the importunity of two 
 hundred years failed to accomplish, was achieved 
 in one moment by the more potent influence of 
 Fashion. The people were touched with the rod 
 of the magician — they awoke from their lethargy 
 — they bowed obsequiously to the idol — acknow- 
 
25 
 
 ledged its power — and in yawning bewilderment 
 expressed their astonishment how it was possible 
 their indifference could have so long blinded them 
 to its utility as to prevent its general cultivation. 
 
 We must next follow the track of this peripatetic 
 plant to the classic lands of Italy, where it basked 
 for a while in fortune's sweetest smiles. It hap- 
 pened as a propitious event coincident with the 
 nascent blaze of its fame in Spain, that the Cardi- 
 nal Santa Croce was preparing to return from his 
 Nunciature in Spain and Portugal in the same 
 year ; for, on his departure from these countries 
 he took with him, among other rarities of the New 
 World, a quantity of tobacco, which he distributed 
 among his countrymen ; and, while he supported 
 it with all the weight of his patronage, his name 
 shed upon it an odour of sanctity which not only 
 served it as a passport into all classes of society, 
 but contributed chiefly to establish it as one of the 
 presiding lares of every hearth, where with the 
 devotion of a phoenix, it made burnt offerings of 
 itself, and diffused its grateful incense — 
 
 '* Like the sweet south 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of -violets 
 Stealing and giving odour." 
 
 Shakspeare, 
 
 The welcome it met with is indescribable ; its 
 advent was hailed with rapturous and insane joy ; 
 and poets and philosophers, in the madness of the 
 hour, vied with each other in hyperboles of un- 
 merited praise, till the heart sickens alike with the 
 nauseating drug and the fulsomeness of the adula- 
 tion bestowed upon its properties. Indeed, the 
 degree of enthusiasm which attended its introduc- 
 tion to the land of the Caesars may be measured 
 by some of the poetry prostituted on the occasion ; 
 of which the following is a specimen in a miserable 
 
26 
 
 translation of the Hymnus Tabaci of Castor Du- 
 ranti — 
 
 Herb of immortal fame ! 
 
 "Which hither first with Santa Croce came ; 
 When he, his time of nunciature expired, 
 Back from the Court of Portugal retired ; 
 Even as his predecessor, great and good, 
 Brought home the Cross 
 
 England was the next theatre on which this 
 poison is found enacting its part ; and the honour 
 of introducing it on that great stage is generally 
 ascribed to Sir Francis Drake. Some affirm that 
 he was even the first who brought it into Europe. 
 Neither of these statements appears to be correct. 
 I have shown above that Hernandez de Toledo 
 brought tobacco into Europe as early as the year 
 1559, and it seems to be an established historical 
 fact that Drake's first return from America did not 
 take place till the month of August, 1573. So 
 that there is an interval of fourteen years, in 
 which it had become famous all over the rest of 
 Europe, while it is said to have been unknown in 
 England, — a very improbable circumstance. For 
 when you take into consideration only the 
 proximity of England, France, and Spain, the 
 commercial relations existing between these states, 
 and above all, the uninterrupted literary and 
 scientific intercourse constantly maintained by the 
 countries of Europe, through all the political 
 bickerings of these nations, you will see how im- 
 probable it is that a herb so notorious should be 
 unknown to the English till the return of Sir 
 Francis Drake. Besides, you will recollect that 
 the knowledge of an article of such celebrity in 
 other quarters, did not depend at that period in 
 England, on the usual chances of a precarious 
 literary or general intercourse with Spain ; for 
 at the very time of the return of Hernandez 
 
27 
 
 England was still in close alliance with that 
 country, the death of Queen Mary, the wife of 
 Philip II., having occurred only a year previous ; 
 that Philip was not only courting the friendship 
 ot England, but aiming at the hand of Elizabeth 
 its Queen ; and lastly, that Hernandez, who was 
 the chief patron of the plant, was one of the 
 physicians of Philip, at whose court it was held 
 in high estimation ; so that there is hardly a 
 doubt that tobacco was well known to the English 
 at this period, especially to those about the court. 
 
 I cannot but believe, indeed, that it was 
 notorious in England from the time when Sir 
 John Hawkins' Report, dated July 1565, was 
 made public, in which he says the " Floridians, 
 when they travel, have a kind of dried herbe, 
 which, with a cane and an earthern cup in the 
 end, with fire and dried berbes put together, do 
 suck thorow the cane the smoke thereof." 1 
 
 Furthermore, we are assured by Lobel, a writer 
 of unquestionable veracity, who was physician 
 and botanist to James I., that it was cultivated in 
 England in 1570, 2 three years earlier than the 
 time it is reported to have made its first ap- 
 pearance on British soil. 
 
 For the same reasons it appears to me even 
 more doubtful that Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom 
 others ascribe the honour of its introduction into 
 England, had any other connexion with the plant 
 than what is generally assigned to him, inasmuch 
 as his first voyage to America was not undertaken 
 until the year 1584, 3 twenty-five years after the 
 return of Hernandez from Florida. It appears 
 
 1 Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii., p. 541. 
 
 2 Adversaria Simplicium Medicamentorum. p. 252. Fol 
 Lond. 1605. 
 
 3 The charter to allow Raleigh to proceed to America for 
 the purpose of making a settlement, is dated Lady-day, 1584. 
 Hazard's State Papers, vol. i„ p. 33. 
 
28 
 
 also to be a settled question among the retailers 
 of anecdote that Sir Walter was the first who 
 taught Englishmen the common use of this luxury, 
 and rendered it fashionable in England. Here, 
 too, there is a slight error. Governor Lane, and 
 Hariot the astronomer, have really the credit of 
 being the first who introduced the disgusting 
 practice of smoking into England. Hariot, who 
 was in the Virginian expedition, dates his account 
 1586, in which he says, " We, ourselves, during 
 the time we were there, used to suck it (the smoke 
 of tobacco) after their manner, as also since our 
 return, and have found many rare and wonderful 
 experiments of the virtues thereof ; of which the 
 relation would require a volume by itself ; the use 
 of it by so many of late, men and icomen of great 
 calling as else, and some learned physicians also, 
 is sufficient witness." 1 It is just probable that 
 one of the " women of great calling" was Queen 
 Elizabeth herself, who, some affirm, was not averse 
 to tobacco smoke, while others insinuate she pre- 
 ferred the smokers. And there may be some truth 
 in this, since both Raleigh and Essex were 
 inveterate cloud-blowers. 
 
 There is an anecdote told of Sir Walter and his 
 servant, which must have happened, if it happened 
 at all, before the use of the plant had become very 
 common ; or probably before this perfume had been 
 vulgarised in the tap-room by every dustman and 
 coal-heaver, omnibus lippis atque tonsoribus 3 who 
 
 -From tube as black 
 
 As winter chimney, or well polish'd jet, 
 Exhale mundungus ill -perfuming scent. 
 
 J. Phillips. 
 
 Be that as it may, Sir Walter is said to have been 
 
 1 Hariot, Voyage to Virginia. Hakluyt, vol. iii., pp. 271, 
 272. Hariot's account was published in one vol. fol. 1588. 
 Camden Annal. Eliz. 
 
29 
 
 devoted to this plant ; and in lieu of the fumes of 
 the bottle, regaled himself more philosophically 
 with the incense of his pipe. Democritus of 
 Abdera is reported to have lived for many- 
 days on nothing but the halitus from a 
 pot of honey placed under his nose. 1 The pipe 
 was Sir Walter's honey, and he often retired from 
 the vanities of the world and left — 
 
 -all meaner things, 
 
 To low ambition, and the pride of kings, — 
 
 Pope. 
 
 to solace himself with blowing a cloud ; and per- 
 haps prophetic of his fate — 
 
 Darkling sigh and feed with dismal thought 
 his anxious mind. 2 
 
 Whether his musings took this direction or not is 
 immaterial ; it happened on one of these occasions, 
 while the Knight sat smoking in his study, en- 
 veloped in a dense fog of tobacco smoke, and like 
 Cacus when about to fall into the embraces of 
 Hercules — 
 
 Faucibus ingentem fumum, mirabile dictu, 
 Evomit involvitque domum caligine caeca, — 
 ^En. 8, 252. 
 
 that his servant entered with a tankard of ale and 
 nutmeg, and seeing nothing but his master's legs 
 extended from the chair, his head towering in the 
 clouds, like 
 
 Some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, — 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 1 Athenaeus, Deipnosoph, lib. ii. 
 
 2 Aubrey relates that Sir Walter smoked a pipe just before 
 he laid his head on the block ; " at which," says he, " some 
 formal people were scandalized — I think it was properly done 
 to settle his spirits." 
 
30 
 
 and observing through the palpable obscure a 
 gleam of fire alternately dimming and glowing, and 
 lighting up " the darkness of the scenery ;" and 
 an atred vapor issuing forth, heaving, eddying, 
 swelling, and collapsing as if thrown from the 
 chimney of a steam-engine — 
 
 Turbine fumantem piceo et candente favilla, — 
 
 JEn. 3, 572. 
 
 he was struck with horror, and believing his 
 master's head was on fire, dashed the tankard of 
 ale and nutmeg over him, and ran down stairs 
 bawling out ci fire ! fire ! Sir Walter has read till 
 his head's in a blaze, and the smoke is bursting 
 from his mouth and nose !" 
 
 Had Sir Walter been an ordinary man, it would 
 not have surprised us to learn that after this 
 cold affusion he — 
 
 Rose staring like a snake, 
 
 Wondering to see himself awake. 
 
 Parnell. 
 
 But he was an experienced soldier and not to 
 be taken by surprise, and he was' too much the 
 philosopher to lose his temper at the rough 
 humanity of his servant. It is more likely he sat 
 still and enjoyed the joke, like the divine Socrates 
 on a similar occasion, of whom it is said, when his 
 wife emptied the vials of her wrath — 
 
 -Upon his hed — 
 
 This selly man sat still as he wer ded ; 
 He wiped his hed, no more dorst he sain, 
 But, " er the thunder stint, there cometh rain." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 It is related by Oldys, that Sir Walter being once 
 in conversation with the Queen, and discussing the 
 singular properties of this new and extraordinary 
 herb, he " assured Her Majesty he had so well 
 
31 . 
 
 experienced the nature of it, that he could tell her 
 of what weight even the smoke would be in 
 any quantity proposed to be consumed. Her 
 Majesty fixing her thoughts upon the most im- 
 practicable part of the experiment, that of bounding 
 the smoke in a balance, suspected that he put the 
 traveller upon her, and would needs lay him a wager 
 he could not solve the doubt ; so he procured a 
 quantity agreed upon to be thoroughly smoked ; 
 then went to weighing, but it was of the ashes ; 
 and in the conclusion, what was wanting in the 
 prime weight of the tobacco, Her Majesty did not 
 deny to have been evaporated in smoke ; and 
 further said, that many labourers in the fire she 
 had heard of who had turned their gold into 
 smoke, but Raleigh was the first who had turned 
 smoke into gold." 1 
 
 There is a tradition extant that Sir Walter 
 Raleigh used to sit at his door, in Friday Street, 
 parish of St. Matthew, smoking with Sir Hugh 
 Middleton, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ; and 
 it has been reasonably surmised, on the faith of the 
 tradition being true, that the practice of smoking 
 was propagated by means of the public manner in 
 which it was exhibited, and the aromatic flavour 
 inhaled by the passengers, exclusive of the 
 singularity of the circumstance and eminence of 
 the parties. 2 
 
 1 Life of Ra^igk, p. 75. 
 2 Malcom. Londinum Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 904. 
 
LETTER III 
 
 Planta beata ! decus terrarum, munus Olympi ! 
 Non tantum agricoiis duro lassata labore 
 Membra levas, minuis victus absentis amc-rem, 
 Fundis et absque cibo sparsas in corpore vires ; 
 Sed radium specimen que Dei, sapientibus ipsis 
 Ingenium illustras. siquando aut multa tenebras 
 Colligit ingluvies cerebro, aut mo;imine longo 
 Intellectus hiat, rerum neque concipit umbras 
 Conceptasve tenet, vel caeca oblivia regnant, 
 TJt semel irrepsit biando lux indita fumo, 
 Aufugiunt nubes atrae, curaeque tenaces. 
 
 Raphael Thorius. 
 
 In my last letter we left the noisome weed 
 creeping rapidly into repute with the courtiers of 
 the virgin Queen, as a prophylactic against ennui 
 and a substitute for thought. It was chiefly 
 through the example and patronage of Sir Walter 
 Raleigh and the Earl of Essex, whose likes and 
 dislikes at that time had all the weight of a code 
 of laws in matters relating to taste, that the 
 practice of smoking became a court luxury. 
 Having thus obtained a firm footing and eminent 
 station among the great, the influence of fashion 
 propagated the barbarous custom like a contagion ; 
 and long before the decease of the sovereign in 
 whose reign it was introduced, the spirit of tobacco 
 might be seen brooding, dark, lazy, and pestilent, 
 like a November fog, over every civilized spot of 
 the empire. From the palace to the hut, neither 
 age, nor sex, nor condition, that could procure the 
 luxury, escaped the contamination of its noxious 
 vapour, or the tranquillizing influence of its 
 poison. 
 
 Whether tobacco was introduced into Turkey 
 from Europe or from Asia, is difficult to decide. 
 
The question fortunately is of small importance. 
 Probably the Turks acquired the habit of smoking 
 from both sources nearly at the same time ; for on 
 the one hand there can hardly be a doubt that they 
 learnt it from the inhabitants of Bagdad, from 
 which they had a short time before expelled the 
 Persians, and where, it is stated by Sir Thomas 
 Herbert, 1 they intoxicated themselves in the coffee 
 houses with arrack and tobacco ; whilst Sandys, on 
 the other hand, who visited Constantinople in 1610, 
 describes the habit as one of recent introduction, 
 and likely to have been communicated by the 
 English. 2 
 
 It appears, however, from the relations of old 
 travellers, to have passed early into the East, and 
 spread rapidly over Asia and Africa, through the 
 ordinary channels and means of commerce. 
 
 In this manner, in the space of two hundred and 
 ninety years from its first appearance in Europe, 
 tobacco has steadily followed the track of man, 
 whether savage or sage, wherever he has impressed 
 his footsteps. It has attended him with the constancy 
 of his own shadow in every haunt, over every 
 wave, and in every climate, cold, hot, and temperate, 
 on the face of the globe. It is the sweetest in- 
 cense of the wigwam, and its odours have im- 
 pregnated the air of a thousand palaces. Like 
 man, too, around whom it has so closely entwined 
 itself, it has experienced the severest storms of 
 adversity and the blandest smiles of fortune ; now 
 basking in the sunshine of royal favour, and now 
 disgraced and persecuted with a rancour and 
 hatred as intense as if it had been a being endowed 
 with the power of offending, or of reciprocating 
 enmity. It appears to have cast a spell indeed 
 over the intellects of a large portion of the human 
 
 2 Relation of a Journey, &c, lib. i., p. 61. 
 
34 
 
 race, both friends and foes, of all ranks, conditions, 
 and degrees of civilization. Harderus, descanting 
 on the pernicious effects of tobacco on the human 
 constitution, confesses at the same time, Nicotiana 
 herba est non solum ubivis decantata sed praecipuse 
 hominum parti cujuscumque dignitatis aut sortis k 
 illi fuerint j 1 and Ramazzini admits also " that the 
 most celebrated writers have extolled its virtues, 
 and it is deservedly ranked among the medicinal 
 plants." 2 But, notwithstanding the praises 
 bestowed upon it, by these and a hundred other 
 respectable authors, it met with a share of abuse 
 and persecution far beyond what the nature of the 
 thing itself would be supposed to evoke, or common 
 sense dictate. Had this insane opposition, however, 
 been instituted and carried on by men in those 
 ranks of life to which the discussion of subjects of 
 this nature properly belongs, such procedure, 
 whether unwise or prudent, would perhaps never 
 have called forth an observation, and the plant 
 and its fortunes might have remained in the 
 mediocre state of estimation which would have left 
 Great Britain without a large and valuable branch 
 of revenue, and an unnecessary annual expense to 
 the people of nearly eight millions sterling. 
 But— 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough hew them how we wi 1 — 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 which seems to extend even to plants. For it 
 happened that the practice of smoking had become 
 so extravagant and dangerous to public morals, 
 even so early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 that she was obliged to put the law in force 
 against the suicidal and ruinous habit. King 
 James, her successor, too, must have had cogent 
 
 1 Anat. Pract. 2 Morb. Artif. cap. 16. 
 
35 
 
 reasons for discountenancing the use of tobacco, if 
 we may judge from the strenuous and persevering 
 efforts with which he opposed the u stinking weed." 
 He began the campaign in 1604, by issuing a 
 proclamation against it, on his own responsibility, — 
 for the British monarchy was not then, as now, 
 confined in a strait waistcoat, — and imposed a duty 
 of 6s. 8d. a pound in addition to the 2d. which 
 already existed. 1 In 1620, his great aversion 
 continuing, he published another proclamation, 
 commencing thus : — " Whereas we, out of the 
 dislike we had of the use of tobacco, tending to a 
 general and new corruption both of men's bodies 
 and manners, and yet, nevertheless, holding it of 
 the two, more tolerable that the same should be 
 imported, amongst many other vanities and super- 
 fluities which came from beyond seas, than to be 
 permitted to be planted here within this realm, 
 thereby to abuse and misemploy the soil of this 
 fruitful kingdom, &c." 2 
 
 In 1624 he made his final assault, in the shape 
 of a third proclamation, in which he still shows 
 the inveterate animosity he ever entertained to 
 " the use of tobacco in general, as tending to the 
 corruption both of the health and manners of our 
 people." 
 
 I believe it was about the time of his first 
 proclamation that King James published, without 
 either date or title, his celebrated philippic 
 against tobacco. 3 But it appeared afterwards 
 with the title of " Counterblaste to Tobacco," in 
 the first authorized edition of his works, collected 
 and published by Bishop Montague. 
 
 This tract is highly characteristic of the man 
 and of the monarch ; and, as far as it goes, is a 
 luminous exposition of the sentiments and manners 
 
 FcBdura, vol. xiv., p. 601. 2 Foedera, vol. xvii , p. 233. 
 3 Harris's Life of James I. 
 
of the age in which it was written. But in order 
 that you may judge for yourselves on this topic, 
 and also see his opinions on the use of tobacco, in 
 the quaint language and style of the time, I will 
 introduce a few random extracts from this re- 
 markable and amusing document, which a generous 
 and patriarchal solicitude for the welfare of his 
 subjects induced him to compose ; for with 
 all his failings, and he had many, he was truly 
 the father of his people. 
 
 His character is anamalgam of contradictory 
 elements ; he is a microcosm of inconsistencies ; 
 and, both as a man and a king, he would 
 form a curious and interesting study to the 
 psychologist as well as the historian. I can 
 only draw your attention to his character in 
 connection with our subject. His natural dis- 
 position was eminently benevolent ; and he in- 
 variably inclined rather to forgive and forget 
 injuries than to punish them. He not only ad- 
 ministered with exemplary attention and in- 
 defatigable zeal the internal government of an 
 extensive empire ; but he laboured personally, 
 night and day, with head and hands, of which this 
 singular treatise is an example, to benefit and im- 
 prove the condition of his people. He made some 
 lamentable mistakes ; but it may be said of him, 
 generally, that where he deviated from the rule of 
 right, his errors sprang rather from his head than 
 from his heart : — his faults were often the excess 
 of his virtues. Both his public and private con- 
 duct was greatly influenced by his constitutional 
 weakness, aggravated by an education in which 
 the illusion of Divine right was the ruling spirit 
 and principle ; and you cannot wonder if you find 
 him sometimes absurdly " assume the god, affect 
 to nod," and " shake his awful curls." He was 
 deeply embued with the prejudices and super- 
 stitions which prevailed somehow to great excess 
 
37 
 
 rates in his reign, and being nothing in advance of 
 the age in which he lived, some of his acts bore the 
 stamp of barbaric despotism and cruelty. He was 
 morally and physically an uncommonly timorous 
 man, and consequently his decisions were in con- 
 stant danger of being regulated by the unsteady 
 vacillations of a morbidly nervous temperament : 
 some of his greatest blunders arose from forming 
 immature judgments through his timorous im- 
 patience to get rid of difficulties which required 
 more fortitude and courage to grapple with than 
 he possessed, and the consequence is, that there are 
 some stains on his character which no time or 
 circumstance can efface. Careless, or blind to 
 final consequences, and deaf even to the voice of 
 nature, he selfishly shrank from the duties of a 
 father, a man, a Protestant, and a king, because 
 these duties involved some danger, difficulty, ex- 
 pense, and personal exertion, whilst he could rise 
 with the intrepidity of a giant in armour against a 
 simple plant, and for years carry on a war of ex- 
 termination with the courage and resolution of a 
 demigod. He would quail under the frown of a 
 titled pathic and murderer, and meanly temporize 
 with circumstances which he was too pusillanimous 
 by nature to confront with the majesty of a king, 
 or the divine impartiality of a judge, whilst he 
 could mercilessly roast and drown aged and de- 
 fenceless females, without the shadow of a crime ! 
 He was better fitted by nature and education for 
 knight erranty in controversial divinity, than for 
 playing the game of kingcraft. I believe his 
 errors were due to time, circumstance, and con- 
 stitutional debility. 
 
 He commences his " Counterblaste" by de- 
 nouncing the use of tobacco as a " custom loath- 
 some to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to 
 the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black 
 stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the 
 
horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is 
 bottomless." Now mark the Royal climax ! 
 " Is it not the greatest sin of all," he continues, 
 " that you, the people of all sorts in this kingdom, 
 icho are created and ordained by God to bestow both 
 your persons and goods for the maintenance both of 
 the honour and safety of your King and common- 
 wealthy should disable yourselves in both. In 
 your persons, that your are not able to ride or walk 
 the journey of a Jew's sabbath s but you must have 
 a reekie coal brought you from the next poor-house 
 to kindle your tobacco with ? 
 
 " Now, how you are by this custom disabled in 
 your goods, let the gentry of this land bear witness, 
 some of them bestowing three, some four hundred 
 pounds a year upon this precious stink, &c. 
 
 " For the vanities committed in this filthy cus- 
 tom, is it not great vanity and uselessness, that at 
 the table, a place of respect, of cleanness and of 
 modesty, men should not be ashamed to sit tossing 
 of tobacco pipes, and puffing of the smoke one to 
 another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof 
 exhale across the dishes, and infect the air, when 
 very often men that abhor it are at their repast ? 
 
 " But not only meal time, but no other time nor 
 action is exempted from the public use of this un- 
 civil trick. And is it not a greater vanity that a 
 man cannot welcome his friend now, but straight 
 they must be in hand with tobacco ? No, it 
 is because in place of a curse, a point of good 
 fellowship, and he that will refuse to take a pipe 
 with his fellows, though by his own election he 
 would rather feel the savour of a stink, is accounted 
 peevish and no good company, even as they do 
 with tippling in the cold eastern countries. Yea, 
 the mistress cannot in more mannerly kind enter- 
 tain her servant than by giving him out of her fair 
 hand a pipe of tobacco. ***** 
 And now, good countrymen, let us (I pray you) 
 
39 
 
 consider what honour or policy can move us to 
 imitate the barbarous and beastly manners of the 
 wild, godless, and slavish Indians, especially in so 
 vile and stinking a custom. Shall we that disdain 
 to imitate the manners of our neighbour France, 
 (having the style of the great Christian Kingdom,; 
 and that cannot endure the spirit of the Spaniards, 
 (their king being now comparable in largeness of 
 dominion to the greatest emperor of Turkey ;) 
 shall we, I say, that have been so long civil and 
 wealthy in peace, famous and invincible in war, 
 fortunate in both, we that have been ever able to 
 aid any of our neighbours, (but never deafened 
 any of their ears with any of our supplications for 
 assistance ;) shall we, I say, without blushing, 
 abase ourselves so far as to imitate these beastly 
 Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, the refuse of the 
 world, and as yet aliens from the Holy covenant 
 of God ? Why do we not as well imitate them 
 in walking naked as they do, in preferring glasses, 
 feathers, and such toys, to gold and precious stones, 
 as they do ? Yea, why do we not deny God and 
 adore the devils as they do V n 
 
 No sooner was James gathered to his fathers 
 and his son Charles I. seated on his throne, than 
 the latter began to follow the example of his pre- 
 decessor by publishing prohibitory proclamations 
 against the importation of tabacco, but with this 
 essential and statesmanlike difference, that his 
 father discountenaced the commodity from a pure 
 zeal for what he considered the public good, 
 whereas the son only opposed a free trade in it 
 from motives of gain. Restriction suits an ab- 
 solute monarch, because it is made to fill 
 his private coffers ; an open trade is like a 
 fertilizing stream, it diffuses the elements of wealth 
 wherever it flows, and blesses the people with 
 
 1 King James's Works, p. 214, fol. 1616. 
 
40 
 
 general abundance. Charles would permit no to- 
 bacco to enter the ports of the realm, but what 
 came from the plantations in Virginia and the 
 Bermudas, took the trade into his own hands, and 
 became Tobacconist-general to the state. In his 
 proclamation on the formation of a Royal govern- 
 ment in Virginia, he comes to the point with man- 
 liness and candour, — " Whereas the tobacco of 
 those plantations cannot be managed for the good 
 of the plantations unless it be brought into one 
 hand, &c, we resolve to take the same into our 
 own hands and to give such prices for the same as 
 may give reasonable satisfaction." 1 In another 
 prohibition, proclaimed in 1627, he continues the 
 same policy : — " No person shall henceforth buy 
 any tobacco here, but from our commissioners, 
 which tobacco shall be sealed and stamped, and 
 when sold again, a note shall be made expressing 
 the time when bought, and the quantity and 
 quality thereof." 2 
 
 Charles, therefore, cannot be considered an 
 enemy, but rather an encourager of the use 
 of tobacco. He merged the morality in 
 the vast wealth he foresaw would accrue to him 
 from a luxury so universally courted. No 
 monarch of that era acted with the sound political 
 foresight of Charles. Louis XIV. like James I. 
 hated tobacco with the most heroic disgust, 
 although it formed one of his best sources of 
 revenue. In 1635, this monarch issued an edict, 
 forbidding any one from selling tobacco except 
 Apothecaries, who were in their turn prohibited 
 from dispensing it without the sanction of a 
 Physician. 
 
 I know not whether Charles II. inherited the 
 dislike to tobacco his predecessors entertained ; 
 
 1 Foedera, vol. xviii., p. 18. 
 3 Anderson's Comm. vol. ii., p. 326, 
 
41 
 
 but it is said that on one occasion he sent a letter 
 to the University of Cambridge forbidding the 
 members to wear periwigs, smoke tobacco, or read 
 their sermons ! Lord Rochester said of his master, 
 with more truth than lay on the surface, Charles 
 
 Never said a foolish, thing, 
 And never did a wise one — 
 
 to which the witty monarch, when told of his 
 favourite's sarcasm, retorted, " it is all very true, 
 but the reason is obvious, my deeds are my 
 ministers', my speech is my own." 
 
 In 1590, Shah Abbas of Persia enacted a law 
 against the use of tobacco ; but numbers of the 
 inhabitants of cities unwilling to abandon the habit 
 they had acquired, fled to the mountains, where 
 they hid themselves rather than forego the pleasure 
 of smoking ; and in 1624, His Holiness Pope 
 "Urban VIII. published a bull of excommunication 
 against all those who should be found taking snuff 
 in church. 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 Ira feri mota est ! nee fulmine lenius arsit : 
 Lux micat ex oculis, spiratque e pectore flamnia. 
 
 Ovid. 
 
 You must now follow the plant to the Hyper- 
 borean regions and take a peep at the 
 
 Vox fera, trux vultus, verissima martis imago, ' 
 
 of the Head of the Eastern Church, whom you will 
 find far outstripping in zeal and cruelty the simple 
 policy of the Pope. Indeed the course pursued 
 on the present occasion by these sovereigns, was 
 marked by the usual difference which distinguishes 
 the savage from the saint. The one satisfies him- 
 self with the mere prohibition of a nuisance, 
 whilst the track of the Northern Bear is signalised 
 by all the marks of physical brutality which usually 
 indicate the haunts of that animal. In the year 
 1634, Feodor of Russia, commonly called the 
 Duke of Moscow, interdicted the practice of 
 smoking throughout his dominions, from the fear of 
 incendiarism. He instituted a special court of law 
 for trying and punishing the offenders, and when 
 any one was convicted of the offence of smoking 
 tobacco after the promulgation of the decree, he was 
 punished by having his nose cut off. This act of 
 atrocity is in perfect harmony with the Sauromatan 
 despotism now and then humanely manifested 
 in the application of the knout to ladies of 
 
 1 Ovidii, Trist, lib. v. eleg. 7. 
 
43 
 
 high rank, who have sometimes been actually 
 stripped naked and flogged in public. 1 
 
 This man distinguished himself by another act, 
 which I believe none but a Russian or Louis Na- 
 poleon would have sufficient moral courage either 
 to attempt or achieve. Under the mask of ex- 
 amining their claims to title, he induced the nobles 
 to bring together all their patents of nobility, 
 charters of privilege, and the like, to the palace ; 
 and when he had got them in his power he threw 
 them into the fire, telling the holders of them that 
 their nobility should in future depend on merit 
 alone ; thus reducing to practice the sentiment of 
 Juvenal. 
 
 Nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus. 2 
 
 But you will rejoice to leave these " thrilling 
 regions of thick-ribbed ice," and find yourselves 
 among the bustling little ant-hills in the Alps, 
 ycleped the Cantons of Switzerland, where some 
 of these minikin independencies becoming infected 
 with the contagion of the times, undertook 
 spontaneously to play second fiddle to the larger 
 states around them, by yelping in the hue and 
 cry raised against tobacco. 
 
 In the year 1653, the Council of Apenzel, pro- 
 hibited in awful solemnity the use of tobacco, and 
 not only cited smokers before them and punished 
 them for their delinquencies, but also published 
 an order requiring all innkeepers to inform against 
 such as were found smoking in their houses, &c. 
 
 It is difficult to know at this distant day whether 
 the disciples of Zuinglius and Bullangarius were 
 
 1 Madame Lapouchin received this punishment in the 
 reign of the Empress Elizabeth. But it has been repeated on 
 other ladies since that time, by the command of male 
 sovereigns ! 
 
 2 Sat. viii. 20. 
 
44 
 
 actuated by the same stern fanaticism as the other 
 persecutors of tobacco ; but if not, their conduct is 
 distinguished by a characteristically narrow- 
 minded and restricted republican freedom. In 
 1661 you will find among other proscriptions 
 issued against tobacco, that the police of the canton 
 of Bern drew up to their immortal honour a body 
 of regulations which they distributed among the 
 ten commandments, each commandment being a 
 text to the succeeding regulation ; and the regula- 
 tion a comment on the text ; and in this modifi- 
 cation of the Decalogue, the prohibition of smoking 
 tobacco stood in the list next after — 
 thou shall not commit adultery ! This regu- 
 lation remained in force till the middle of the 18th 
 century. 
 
 There is no end to the vagaries of these repub- 
 lican cantons. They resemble certain larger states 
 of that denomination, who only knowing the 
 essence of liberty by name, make an idol of its 
 shadow, and offer on its altar whole hecatombs of 
 human victims. On the principle of omne ignotum 
 pro magnifico, they are loud in the cause, and 
 resolute in the defence of a liberty they never ex- 
 perienced, whilst they carry their restrictions upon 
 freedom into the very hearths of the people. As 
 an additional example of Swiss freedom, I may 
 mention that dancing is not permitted in the can- 
 ton of Zurich, unless by special permission of the 
 Government, which is almost uniformly refused ; 
 and in Glarus and St. Gall, neither man nor woman 
 can marry without the consent of their respective 
 parents ; so that a man at the prudent and sober 
 age of 50, may be prevented from marrying by his 
 father withholding his consent! The difficulty is got 
 over at St. Gall, by an appeal to the Council, which 
 in the very spirit of self-stultification deliberate 
 on the case, and if the councillors consider the 
 opposition frivolous and vexatious they advise the 
 
45 
 
 parents to let the lovers have their own way. 
 Risum teneatis, amici ? 
 
 In the year 1690 the Nicotian war was renewed 
 in Italy by his Holiness Pope Innocent XII., who 
 was probably actuated by the same motives which 
 inspired his predecessor. — Be that as it may, this 
 successor of St. Peter, instead of operating on the 
 ears, according to the rights derived from 
 Apostolical succession, only excommunicated all 
 persons convicted of taking snuff or using tobacco 
 in the Church of St. Peter at Rome, for it 
 appears snuff was taken to great excess all over 
 Italy ; we are told by Ramazzini, it was used in 
 his time by man, woman, and child ; " Hujus 
 seculi (about 1650) saltern in Italia nostra, in- 
 ventum, seu vitiosa consuetudo est pulvis iste ex 
 herba Nicotiana compositus, nihilque eo fre- 
 quentius est cum mulieribus, turn viris, pueris 
 quoque, ut illius emptio inter quotidianas familias 
 impensas numeretur. 1 
 
 In Turkey, about the beginning of the 17th 
 century, the custom of smoking tobacco, which 
 was then beginning to be adopted by the faithful, 
 was considered so disgusting and ridiculous, that 
 it was forbidden by the Pasha, and any Mussul- 
 man found smoking was led through the streets on 
 an ass, with his face turned to the tail, and a 
 tobacco pipe stuck through his nose. Again, in 
 1638, Amurath IV. believing, for some unex- 
 plained reasons, that tobacco rendered the 
 persons using it impotent, published an edict 
 making the use of this luxury, now so prevalent 
 in Turkey, a capital offence, which, according to 
 the custom of the Turks, was formerly punished 
 on the spot. The Turks are celebrated above all 
 other nations for doing this sort of business in an 
 off-hand and gentlemanly style. Their Sultans 
 
 1 Morb. Artif. cap. 16. 
 
46 
 
 used to pique themselves on their dexterity in 
 slicing off a head ; it was no more to them than 
 the decapitation of an onion. Long and extensive 
 practice had rendered them dexterous to such a 
 degree that the person decapitated knew nothing 
 about it. Once upon a time one of the Solymans 
 was boasting of the nicety of his touch as a 
 headsman, when he observed a new made courtier, 
 who perhaps had been only a barber the week 
 before, smiling, " dost thou doubt my skill ?" said 
 Solyman. " I doubted not your highness's skill," 
 replied the man of three tails. " Allah kerim !" 
 ejaculated Solyman. " Take a pinch of snuff?" 
 the courtier took the pinch and applied it to his 
 nose, when up went his shoulders to sneeze, but 
 before the sneeze got vent, his head was rolling a 
 yard off, and it continued to roll, and roll, and 
 roll ; the effects of the unfinished sneeze acting on 
 the head like a steam engine ; and it might have 
 rolled till the second appearance of Mahomed, 
 had it not rolled into the Bosphorus. 
 
 This will probably remind you of the anecdote 
 of Doll, in Gay's Trivia, where he describes a fair 
 held on the ice of the Thames, above London 
 Bridge. 
 
 " Doll every day had walk'd these treacherous roads ; 
 Her neck grew warpt beneath autumnal loads 
 Ot various iruit : she now a basket bore ; 
 That head, alas ! shall basket bear no more. 
 Each booth she frequent pass'd, in quest of gain, 
 And boys with pleasure heard her thrilling strain. 
 Ah, Doll ! all mortals must resign their breath, 
 And industry itself submit to death ! 
 The crackling crystal yields ; she sinks, she dies, 
 Her head, ch pp'd off, fr m her lost shoulders flies; 
 Pippins she cry'd ; but death her voice confounds ; 
 And pip — pip — pip — along the ice resounds." 
 
 Thus far only have I deemed it useful or ex- 
 pedient to comment on the mere origin and progress 
 of tobacco. What follows, relates chiefly to its 
 
47 
 
 physical properties, and its effects on animal life, 
 a topic of infinitely more importance than any 
 thing you have yet learnt of its history. 
 
 It is surprising with what rapidity tobacco cast 
 its spell over the whole globe ; how readily a 
 stinking weed was converted into a general 
 luxury ; with what facility its use became first a 
 settled habit, and then a human necessity in every 
 country — savage, barbarous, and civilized ; and 
 how pertinaciously and successfully it, or rather 
 the influence of depraved taste, finally triumphed 
 over every attempt to extirpate the nuisance. I 
 am not acquainted with any other plant that has 
 been so caressed and decried; nor any vegetable 
 production of the same nature and slender claims 
 to consideration that has been opposed and perse- 
 cuted with such hostility and dislike, and supported 
 with such constancy and attachment. Almost on 
 its first entrance into Europe it excited an 
 epidemic frenzy in its favour, accompanied with 
 an insatiable craving for the enjoyment of its 
 fascinating and pernicious narcotism ; and you have 
 just seen the effects of this general hallucination. 
 Kings in vain cried havoc ! and let loose the dogs 
 of war : fools shot their bolts but shot them 
 beyond the mark, and the hierophantic denunci 
 ations fulminated by churches ended only in 
 smoke. But that which will appear to you most 
 inexplicable is, that in proportion to the fierceness 
 of the opposition it met with, this plant lived, 
 flourished, and increased the more ; it throve like 
 the sycamore under oppression, and that which 
 would have crushed any other object conduced 
 most of all to sustain it, and ultimately establish 
 it in security. 
 
 Now, although one might be considered rash to 
 aifirm that things in the moral world increase 
 under tyrannical restraints, yet there is truth in 
 the predicate. Persecution was its best friend ; 
 
48 
 
 it conferred on the poison a character, it invested 
 it with an interest far above its deserts, and then 
 delivered it over to the iron voice and the hundred 
 tongues of fame which finally crowned it with 
 victory. To inquire how and whence this anti • 
 peristatic success emanates, would be foreign to 
 the present subject ; I may, however, refer you 
 for an answer to the contradictory elements of 
 our own nature. The issue of a thousand san- 
 guinary experiments shows, and it might safely be 
 received as an axiom, that persecution in general 
 only waters the crop it would eradicate. You will 
 learn this truth in the history of mankind, particu- 
 larly where it recounts the rise and progress of our 
 religion. If you carefully examine into those 
 atrocities called persecutions, in behalf of Religion, 
 which from the beginning of Christianity the 
 strong have perpetrated against the weak, and 
 dyed the annals of their respective eras in blood, 
 you will not fail to discover some such clue to 
 the solution of the problem. Wherever the 
 tyranny of armed injustice is exercised, you will 
 clearly discern in the midst of the work of ven- 
 geance, and arising out of the discordant passions 
 of men, a host of countervailing agencies always 
 resolute in defence of the oppressed, perhaps 
 springing as often from the gratification of opposing 
 the oppressor, as from a love of impartial justice. 
 But the result is the same, and thus they are 
 brought into public view. The ephemeral breath 
 of popular admiration magnifies their misfortunes 
 and their merits, places them in such social 
 conditions and surrounds them with such an array 
 of friendship, as would probably never have dis- 
 tinguished their career had they been left to float 
 silently down the stream of time without notice or 
 molestation. Such for the most part is the course 
 of events in I he moral world : and you will see 
 that persecution is generally pretty uniform in 
 
49 
 
 all its leading circumstances and results, whether 
 its cruelties be exercised upon an individual or a 
 nation ; nor does it alter the general fact whether 
 the victim be a man or a plant. These reflections 
 are both strengthened and exemplified in the 
 foregoing sketch of the life and adventures of 
 Tobacco. Had this fascinating weed been left to 
 rest solely on its own merits, it would perhaps 
 either have silently relapsed into its pristine 
 obscurity, or sunk into the insignificance of a 
 name in the nomenclature of the science that owns 
 it; whereas opposition gave it momentum, and, 
 like rumour, it gathered strength as it proceeded. 
 Tertullian warns the persecutors of the Christians 
 in a strain confirmatory of these remarks, " The 
 more you mow us down," says he, " the thicker we 
 will rise : the Christian blood you spill is like the 
 seed you sow." — There are some exceptions to the 
 general truth of these conclusions, the only one at 
 present that occurs to me, is the hypothetical 
 history of the Cagots of the Pyrenees. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 Bob.— Sir, believe me, upon my relation, for what I tell you the world 
 shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies, where this herb grows, where 
 neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more, of my knowledge, have 
 received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one 
 and twenty weeks, but the fume of this 6imple only : therefore it cannot be 
 but 'tis most " divine " Further take it in the nature, in the true kind ; 
 so, it makes an antidote, that, had you taken the most deadly poisonous 
 plant in all Italy, it should expel it, and clarify you, with as much ease as I 
 apeak. And for your green wound,— sTOut Balsamum and your St. John's 
 wort are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado. Your 
 Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of it for expulsion of 
 rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstruction, with a thousand of this 
 kind ; but I profess myself no quacksalver. Only thus much ; by Hercules, 
 I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most 
 sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of 
 man. — Ben Jonson.i 
 
 I will now acquaint you with the opinions and 
 speculations of some of the early writers on the 
 vaunted excellencies of tobacco ; and state 
 impartially its good effects, and the various uses to 
 which it has been reported to be successfully 
 applied in medicine. 
 
 It is not probable that a plant endowed with 
 the peculiar properties ascribed to tobacco, could 
 remain long unknown to savages so sagacious and 
 skilful in practical botany as the native Americans, 
 since it possesses, according to their report and 
 the testimony of travellers, the very virtues most 
 required in savage life where war and hunting 
 are their trade and pastime. The Mexicans, and, 
 indeed all the American Indians, held tobacco in 
 the highest estimation as a remedy for various 
 bodily ailments, particularly for cold in the head, 
 toothache, pains in the bowels, and wounds. 
 They had very early discovered its remarkable 
 power as a narcotic, in pain, hunger, and distress ; 
 
 ' Everv Man in his Humour, act iii., scene 2. 
 
51 
 
 and they smoked it to procure sleep, to soothe the 
 anxieties of the mind, and induce that state of 
 quietism which the present " Indians inhabiting 
 the forests of the Oroonoka call with great 
 simplicity, dreaming with the eyes open." 1 But 
 besides these common uses, it served another 
 equally essential purpose to the savage whose 
 precarious mode of life exposed him to long- 
 continued miseries, hunger, and thirst. Living 
 for the most part upon flesh-meat, as he has done 
 from time immemorial, it is an extraordinary 
 circumstance that his instincts should have led 
 him to a discovery in tobacco smoke, of a means 
 of retarding the change of matter, or decay in the 
 tissues of his body, and thereby making hunger 
 more endurable. 2 
 
 "The smoke," says Sir John Hawkins," satisfieth 
 their hunger, and therewith they live four or five 
 days without meat or drink, and this all the 
 Frenchmen used for the same purpose; yet do 
 they hold opinion withall, that it causes water 
 and phlegm to void from their stomachs." 3 The 
 Indians perform long journeys through the 
 deserts, to places far apart from each other, and 
 when their food fails them they chew a pill about 
 the size of a pea, composed of tobacco, by the 
 help of which alone they are enabled to travel 
 for the space of four days together without any 
 other sustenance. 4 
 
 Sir William Vaughan believes that a pipe taken 
 fasting in a raw, rainy morning in the months of 
 May, June, and July, to be a singular and sudden 
 remedy against the megrims, the toothache, the fits 
 
 1 Humboldt, Pers. Nar., vol. v., p. 666. 
 
 2 Liebig, Animal Chemistry, #e., p. 179. 
 
 3 Op. Cit., p. 341. 
 4 Nicolaus Monardes, Dos Libras de las Cosas que si traen 
 de las Indias Occidentals, que sirven al uso de Medicina. 
 See also his Hist. Rer. Indicarum. 
 
52 
 
 of the mother, the falling sickness, the dropsy, the 
 gout, and against all such diseases as are caused of 
 windy, cold, or waterish humors. 1 
 
 Nicot, in his Dictionaire, at the word, speaks 
 thus of its virtues — Nicotiane est une espece 
 d'herbe, de virtu admirable pour guerir toutes, 
 navrures, playes, ulceres, chancres, dartes, et 
 autres tels accidents au corps humain. Franciscus 
 Redi knew men who were in the habit of curing 
 incisions and simple wounds by the application of 
 the powder of tobacco alone. The Rev. Father 
 Antonio Veiro, the Jesuit, who lived thirty years 
 in the Brazils, told him that " in these countries 
 there is no medicine in such high repute for curing 
 diseases as the fresh juice and the leaves of 
 tobacco." %i There are," continues Redi, " persons 
 who chew and swallow small portions of the 
 leaf daily with perfect impunity, whereas a small 
 drop of the essential oil taken into the stomach is 
 followed by the most distressing and deadly effects." 
 Speaking of the various ingenious ways men have 
 devised for the purpose of enjoying the smoke of 
 tobacco, he observes that, not content with using 
 it by the mouth, men had lately invented an 
 instrument by which they can fill the intestines 
 with the smoke intead of enema, in cases of many 
 of the most contumacious disorders of the bowels, 
 but they have found it to be particularly beneficial 
 in ileus, &c. 2 Redi is the first author with whose 
 works I am acquainted, who mentions this now com- 
 mon and sometimes useful application of the smoke 
 of tobacco. Horstius, a celebrated German 
 physician, bestows uncommon praise on the pro- 
 perties and uses of this herb. He says it is useful 
 in catarrhs whether it be snuffed in the form of 
 
 1 Directions for Health. 1613. 
 2 Esperienze intorno a diverse cose Naturali particolarmente 
 a quelle clie ci sono portate dalT Indie. 1671. 
 
53 
 
 powder by the nose, or inhaled in smoke by the 
 mouth fasting, after having attended to the bowels, 
 &c. ; — that it stills^the sensations of hunger and 
 thrist, and in this respect it had saved the lives of 
 thousands of soldiers during the long German war, 
 when their provisions had become both scarce and 
 bad, and the waters of their encampment so filthy 
 and unwholesome that they were unfit for use. 
 After expiating on its soothing, concoctive, and 
 hypnotic virtues, and the extraordinary benefit 
 derived from its constant use by the hall-famished 
 soldiers, he says, " Taceo quod animi nonnihil ad 
 cordatius pugnandum addiderit" 1 I presume this 
 quite agrees with modern experience. Epipha- 
 nius Ferdinando, another respectable Spanish 
 physician of the same period, extols its abstergent, 
 tramautic,and various other virtues, more especially 
 a decoction of the leaves in empyema, which it 
 cures like a charm. 2 Tobacco, with this author, 
 seems to possess all the qualities of Cato's cab- 
 bage. 
 
 Van Helmont, or Helmontius, as he is generally 
 styled, the most renowned and learned physician 
 of his time, supports many of the opinions of 
 Horstius respecting the apositic and adipsous 3 
 properties of the plant. 4 
 
 Frederick Hoffman, one of the most skilful 
 physicians of any age, an ornament to all, and 
 whose writings gave the first rational turn to 
 medicine since its emergence from the ignorance 
 and tolly of the barbaric ages, treating of the cure 
 of spasmodic colic or ileus says, " The smoke of 
 
 1 Herbar. Horst. and Obs. Med. et Pharm. 
 2 Cent. Obs. Med. Obs. 33. 
 3 Hunger-quelling and thirst- quenching. These two words 
 are very expressive, and not unnecessary to the English lan- 
 guage, rich as it is. I trust this will be sufficient apology to 
 critics for their introduction. 
 
 4 Tractat. de Mortis occasione. 
 
54 
 
 tobacco applied through a tube, is supposed to be 
 superior to almost every other kind of remedy for 
 procuring a passage." He cannot vouch for its 
 good effects in this respect in human subjects, but 
 he knows it to be of remarkable efficacy in the 
 constipations of horses ; he has known, also, some 
 common persons instantly cured of violent gripes 
 by swallowing the smoke of tobacco. 1 
 So an old author says : — 
 
 We buy the dryest wood that we can finde, 
 And willingly would leave the smoke behinde ; 
 But in Tobacco a thwart course we take, 
 Buying the herbe onely for the smoke's sake. 
 
 John Heath. 1610. 
 
 Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius, a skilful and 
 very learned physician of Louvain, who, I may 
 remark in passing, was the only one of all his 
 assailants on his discovery of the circulation of the 
 blood, to whom Harvey condescended to give an 
 answer, expresses the same sentiments as those of 
 Horstius, and others already quoted. His opinions 
 on the cause of tobacco allaying the sensations of 
 hunger and thirst however are hardly correct. He 
 says, " this is effected by its exciting abundance of 
 pituitous humours in the mouth, which being 
 swallowed allay these sensations." 2 Monardes and 
 Stalpertius Vanderwiel hold similar opinions ; 
 while Neander and Thonerus assign the more 
 physiological reason of stupefaction of the sense. 
 
 Chrysostum Magnenus has great confidence in 
 the reputed efficacy of tobacco on diseases gene- 
 rally, and denies what some have asserted, that 
 the brain is ever discoloured, or structurally 
 affected by the abuse of tobacco. He adduces 
 many instances wherein its use had afforded the 
 
 1 Pract. Med., part ii., sect 2. 
 2 De Togatorum Valetudine tuenda, cap. 4. 
 
55 
 
 most signal relief. He was in the habit of em- 
 ploying it in the form of an oil, which, he says, he 
 obtained by infusion — (per infusionem) ; meaning 
 perhaps, an infusion of the tobacco in oil ; for I 
 cannot understand otherwise how he could procure 
 an oil of tobacco in this way, seeing that it yields 
 only two oils, the concrete volatile oil obtained by 
 simple distillation, and the empyreumatic oil pro- 
 cured by destructive distillation, as in the bowl of a 
 tobacco pipe. It differed also very materially from 
 that used by Redi, Moses Charas, and Harderus, 
 inasmuch as he applied it medicinally with great 
 success in various affections, such as arthritis, 
 disorders of the kidneys, and colic. 1 Mr. 
 Chippendale mentions two cases proving the great 
 efficacy of tobacco in neuralgia when applied to 
 the part affected, night and morning, in the form 
 of extract. 2 But it appears to me that an equally 
 efficacious application might be made with nicotina, 
 or either of the oils of tobacco diluted with simple 
 cerate : it would at least have the advantage of 
 being a more elegant form, if not more eligible in 
 other respects. 
 
 Piso, who practised in both the Indies as well as 
 in South America, declares that by chewing 
 tobacco the body is sustained in strength and 
 energy as long as if it were supported by food ; a 
 fact which he experienced in his own person by 
 chewing it while he was travelling through unin- 
 habited regions, for he experienced neither hunger 
 nor fatigue. 3 In a monthly magazine, entitled 
 " Reipublicse Literarise Acta," formerly published 
 in France, there is a curious account of a crazy 
 person of the name of Isaac Henry Stiphont, who, 
 
 1 Exercitationes de Tabaco. Exercit. xi. and xvi., sect. 4. 
 1 Lancet, March 1, 1845. 
 •De Indiae Utriusque re Naturali et Medica, lib. iv., cap. 
 45. 
 
56 
 
 after being shut up in the mad-house at Haarlem, 
 began to manifest his insanity by supposing him- 
 self the true Messiah, and he declared that he 
 would fast for forty days and forty nights. He 
 accordingly began to put his boast in execution on 
 December 6th, 1684, and, notwithstanding all that 
 could be said or done to divert him from his mad 
 undertaking, and to induce him to take food, he 
 persevered in his voluntary fast with all the 
 doggedness and obstinacy natural to maniacs, until 
 he actually completed his undertaking on the 15th 
 February, 1685. Although strictly watched, he 
 was never observed to take the least nourishment, 
 he only continued the use of tobacco, to which he 
 had been accustomed, and took a little water 
 occasionally, which he used more for the purpose 
 of washing his mouth than for sustenance." 1 
 
 Stalpertius Vanderwiel says, — "We know from 
 experience that many sailors and travellers who 
 have suffered shipwreck and other disasters, 
 have been able to support their lives, in the 
 absence of food, for several days together by 
 tobacco alone." He adds, " a certain Monk re- 
 lates that the inhabitants of Canada, during the 
 famines with which they are frequently visited, 
 often support themselves for several weeks 
 successively with nothing but tobacco." 2 
 
 Theodorus de Mayerne, physician to Charles I. 
 of England, advises the fumes of tobacco to be in- 
 haled for the relief of asthma ; 3 and Locke con- 
 siders it conducive to keeping up regularity of 
 the bowels. 4 
 
 " It gives a secret delight to those who take it, 
 says Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the persons once 
 
 1 See the number for February, 1685. 
 8 Obs. Par. Cent. Post. P. P.'Obs. 15. 
 
 3 Mangeti. Bibl. Script. Med., t. il, p. 283. 
 
 4 Thoughts on Education, p. 23. 
 
57 
 
 accustomed thereto, find a difficulty to leave it off; 
 and, doubtless, it contributes to alleviate fatigues, 
 and discharge the body of weariness. It is also 
 commonly said to open the passages and draw off 
 the humours ; but, like opiates, it manifestly 
 disturbs the head." 1 
 
 Michael Etmuller, the accomplished and skilful 
 physician of Leipsic, entertains the same favourable 
 opinions as Magnenus, Monardes, Horstius, &c, 
 of the useful qualities of tobacco. 2 Neander has 
 investigated at considerable length the various 
 properties ascribed to it, and seems to have deter- 
 mined them with great precision and judgment. 
 He animadverts on the vague assertions and the 
 irrational conceits commonly indulged in respect- 
 ing its powers, advocates its proved virtues, and re- 
 commends the employment of it in several diseases, 
 He recommends the salt of tobacco ashes as 
 possessing wonderful power in whitening the teeth. 
 Etmuller believes implicitly in the property which 
 tobacco is commonly said to possess, of supporting 
 life in circumstances where food and drink are 
 deficient ; and, like most of the forementioned 
 authorities, he condemns only the intemperate use 
 of it as a luxury. He also relates from JEgidius 
 Everhardus, that the juice of tobacco has the 
 property of counteracting poisons; — in proof of 
 which he mentions the case of a pilfering cat to 
 which some neighbours had given a dose of poison ; 
 and as an antidote, a bolus of tobacco leaves and 
 butter was crammed down Grimalkin's throat. — 
 The case ended favourably. 3 This notice of so 
 valuable an effect of tobacco has been 
 lately confirmed in America. — The cases will 
 be given in a future page. Tobacco was used 
 
 1 History of Life and Death, sec. viii. 
 
 2 Tractat. de Fame Lsesa. 
 
 3 Tobacologia, p. 34. Lugduno-Batav. 1662. 
 
58 
 
 as an antidote to the wounds occasioned by poi- 
 soned arrows among the Indians, as well as against 
 morbific poisons, such as syphilis. Castor Duranti 
 enumerates all its virtues thus : — 
 
 The herb which borrows Santa Croce's name, 
 
 Sore eyes relieves and healeth wounds ; the same 
 
 Discusses the King's-evil, and removes 
 
 Cancers and boils ; a remedy it proves 
 
 For burns and scalds ; repels the nauseous itch, 
 
 And straight recovers from convulsive fits ; 
 
 It cleanses, dries, binds up, and maketh warm ; 
 
 The headache, toothache, cholic, like a charm 
 
 It easeth soon ; an ancient cough relieves, 
 
 And to the reyns and milt and stomach gives 
 
 Quick riddance from the pains which each endures ; 
 
 Next the dire wounds of poisoned arrows cures ; 
 
 All bruises heals, and when the gums are sore, 
 
 It makes them sound and healthy as before ; 
 
 Sleep it procures, our anxious sorrows lays, 
 
 And with new flesh the naked bone arrays ; 
 
 No herb hath greater power to rectify 
 
 All the disorders in the breast that lie ; 
 
 Or in the lungs. 1 
 
 But there is no end to the catalogue of virtues 
 and vices ascribed to tobacco. Primirosius of 
 Paris, positively denies, and with good reason, that 
 tobacco smoke or anything else can penetrate into, 
 or tinge the brain ; he rejects much of the non 
 sense current respecting the plant, and gives it a 
 fair share of censure and praise where he thinks 
 they are merited. 2 
 
 Harderus observes, " Tobacco is used variously; 
 some chew the leaves with impuntity, others 
 regale themselves with the smoke, and some pre- 
 pare a medicine from it superior to any antidote," 
 &c, &c. 3 Vanderwiel says, he formerly knew an 
 old man, who, after he had lived more than a 
 
 1 Hymnus Tabaci 
 2 De Vulg. Erroribus in Medicina, Kb. x., cap. 33. 
 3 Obs. Pract. Anat. 
 
59 
 
 hundred years, was supported by the Gallican 
 Church (at the Hague), and being worn out with 
 old age, he lay continually in bed as immoveable 
 as a block, without taking any food or drink, so 
 that it was hardly possible to distinguish him from 
 a corpse, except when the smoke of tobacco was 
 applied to his nose, and then by the sucking 
 motions of his lips he gave signs of life. By the 
 stimulus of the smoke he was soon enabled to 
 open his mouth so far as to admit the end of a 
 tobacco pipe to be thrust between his jaws, when by 
 leisurely inhaling the smoke by small and repeated 
 inspirations, he was able to hold the pipe until the 
 whole of its contents were consumed. 1 Sir William 
 Temple was in the habit of putting a leaf of 
 tobacco into his nostrils for an hour night and 
 morning, for disorders of the head and eyes. 2 
 
 Thorius, like Etmuller, recommends the ashes of 
 tobacco as an excellent dentifrice — 
 
 Denique mortales, quantum est, conducit in usus, 
 Nee quicquam, ut suis occisi, non utile ; flammse 
 Qui superat post fata cinis rubigine fceda 
 Defricat, et navos facit excandescere dentes. 3 
 
 Which is thus " done into English" by Peter 
 Hausted — 
 
 Nothing tobacco hath but what is good, 
 As of a slain sow every part is food, 
 The ashes, which after the flame do ly 
 As of no use, do turn to ivory 
 Rusty and yellow teeth. 
 
 1 Loc. cit. 
 
 2 Essay on Health and Longevity, vol. 1, part iii., p. 283. 
 
 3 De Paeto, lib. ii 
 
LETTER VI 
 
 Q riJQ irapcowtrijf peyaXijf dvayKtjQ rXrjvat kcikov aKs<raff9ai 
 fiiaanan ko.ku>. 
 
 AXKtMVS. 
 
 The original depravity of our nature has encum- 
 bered our inheritance with so liberal an entailment 
 of mental annoyances and bodily ailments, whilst 
 at the same time we have so small a chance of re- 
 demption, that we are glad to accept as an uncon- 
 ditional blessing, any thing that promises to 
 mitigate or diminish the common amount of human 
 sufferings, even when we are conscious that the 
 properties of the boon are pernicious, and their 
 application never exempt from danger. The 
 sword can destroy the life it is formed to defend ; 
 and the blandest food we can choose may become 
 the most virulent poison by surfeit. There is, 
 therefore, no alternative left to keep us undecided ; 
 and we can only regret with Aretseus, in the 
 epigraph of this letter, the dire necessity that 
 compels us to have recourse to such contami- 
 nating remedies as our sufferings frequently 
 oblige us to use. The serpent whose bite 
 was instant death, was converted by the inge- 
 nuity or credulity of the ancients into a remedy 
 against its own virus, as well as against some of the 
 most formidable diseases. " Acrium more medi- 
 corum," says Sidonius Apollinaris, " qui re- 
 medium contra venena cum ratio compellit, et de 
 serpente conficiunt. 3 The principal ingredient of 
 the celebrated theriaca of Andromachus was the 
 flesh of the viper, for the numerous virtues of 
 
 1 Lib. ix., Epist. 9. 
 
61 
 
 which I can only refer you to Galen 1 and his 
 followers, among whom Avicenna goes so far as 
 to assert that the constant use of vipers' flesh 
 prolongs life, invigorates the constitution, and 
 preserves the body in unfading youth. 2 As the 
 ancients were led captive by the fascinations of 
 the serpent, in like manner we moderns are 
 enslaved by the seductive charms of tobacco. 
 
 You may recollect that in noticing the ex- 
 periments of Redi, in a former letter, I 
 casually mentioned an instrument which was 
 invented in his time, by means of which 
 tobacco smoke could with ease and good 
 effect be thrown into the intestines. This 
 was an important acquisition to medical science, 
 and an ingenious and useful mode of applying all 
 the energetic elements of a powerful therapeutic 
 agent : and it may be affirmed the world has not 
 been disappointed in the expectations formed of its 
 usefulness in the practice of medicine, after an 
 experience of two hundred years. The smoke of 
 tobacco, which contains both its principles, is 
 decidedly the preferable, and by far the safest 
 mode of exhibiting this active remedy, while it is 
 no less efficacious than the decoction or the infu- 
 sion. Nor is the employment of tobacco in this 
 way confined only to the complaints for which it 
 was used in the time of Redi. Surgeons have 
 found it a most useful hygeinic agent in diseases 
 of a much more desperate character. Being a 
 narcotic sedative of a very energetic nature, it has 
 proved an auxiliary of the first importance in 
 certain stages of simple and incarcerated hernia, 
 insomuch indeed, that it is considered by eminent 
 surgeons to be second only to the operation 
 
 1 De Theriaca ad Pisonem ; also de Simp. Med. Fuc. lib. ii. 
 and Porphyrius de Abstinentia, lib. i. 
 
 2 Canon ii., cap. de Serpente. 
 
itself. Sydenham reckons the smoke of tobacco, 
 strongly blown up through a large bladder into the 
 intestines by a pipe inserted, to be the best and most 
 effectual clyster he knows for the Tlliac Passion. 1 
 Sir Thomas Brown extols tobacco for containing 
 " three eminent qualities, sudorific, narcotic, and 
 purgative." 2 Hariot says " It purgeth super- 
 fluous fleame and other gross humours, and 
 openeth all the pores and passages of the body ; 
 by which means the use thereof not only prevents 
 the body from obstructions, but also (if any be, so 
 that they have not been of too long continuance), 
 in short time breaketh them : Avhereby their 
 bodies are notably preserved in health." 3 
 
 Smoking is said to be decidedly salutary in 
 damp climates, such as Holland ; which coincides 
 exactly with the statement advanced by Gregorius 
 Horstius one hundred and fifty years ago, 
 mentioned in a former letter. It is also recom- 
 mended in spasmodic and serous asthma, and in 
 rheumatic affections of the head and jaws, in 
 which case it affords almost instantaneous relief. 
 The good effects of swallowing the smoke in 
 gripes, have been already noticed in the extract 
 from the works of Frederick Hoffman. It is 
 an efficacious and certain anthelmintic, or remedy 
 for worms, especially for the small thread 
 worm, the oxyurus vermicularis, when cautiously 
 exhibited by the contrivance mentioned by Redi. 
 It is stated to be also a preventive of the infection 
 of putrid fever and plague ; and Dr. Mead, in his 
 Treatise on the Plague, recommends a trial of it, 
 though apparently with little confidence in its effi- 
 cacy. — He says " the smoking of tobacco, so much 
 applauded by some, since it may be put in practice 
 
 1 Works, Pechy's ed., p. 428. 
 
 2 Vol. iv., p. 447. 
 
 3 Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 372. 
 
63 
 
 without any great inconvenience, need not, I think, 
 be neglected." 1 But the statement, I consider, is 
 completely disproved by the unmitigated ravages 
 committed annually by the plague upon the Turks, 
 who are perhaps the most inveterate smokers in 
 the universe. 
 
 Enemas of about one drachm of tobacco to 
 eight or ten ounces of boiling water, have often 
 proved decidedly useful in strangury arising from 
 spasm : considerable loss of strength, and sometimes 
 alarming prostraction of the vital powers follows 
 its exhibition; but the water soon begins to flow. 
 Dr. Fowler, in his Medical Reports on the effects of 
 Tobacco, many years ago, employed it internally 
 in one hundred and fifty cases, and found it both 
 safe and efficacious as a diuretic in dropsy and 
 dysury, proving anodyne in painful cases, in 
 ninety-three diuretic, and in forty cathartic. 
 Bergius recommends a fomentation of tobacco 
 leaves in paraphymosis. 2 Dr. Shaw of Philadelphia, 
 employed with the happiest effects a bougie 
 medicated with tobacco, in many cases 
 of retention of urine arising from stricture. 
 Mr. Earle has published several cases in 
 proof of its efficacy in retention of urine from 
 spasm of the neck of the bladder or spasmodic 
 stricture. 3 Tobacco is also used for destroying 
 cutaneous insects, being destructive to all that order 
 of organized life, both in the animal world, on 
 the skin, the hair, and in the intestines ; and in 
 the vegetable kingdom generally. Dr. Hcberden 
 thinks that clysters do very little good except those 
 prepared from tobacco, the smoke of which is com- 
 modiously thrown up this way by such an instru- 
 ment as is now commonly used by gardeners to 
 
 1 Part ii., ch. 2. 
 
 " Mat. Med., vol. i., p. 22. 
 
 Med. Chir. Trans,, vol. iv., p. 82. 
 
64 
 
 fumigate trees in order to free them from insects, &c, 
 (bellows similar to those spoken of by the Italian 
 naturalist). The smoke of tobacco thus conveyed 
 into the rectum acts very powerfully in controlling 
 the irregular motion of the intestines, and forcing 
 them strongly to empty their contents in a natural 
 manner. 1 Dr. Elliotson extols the smoke of tobacco 
 in enteritis and colic, and considers it is very 
 manageable by a little apparatus for the purpose; 
 he observes that Sydenham was very fond of this 
 remedy, but not more than it deserved : and he 
 knows many practitioners who now employ this 
 remedy with very great success. 2 Dr. Graves 
 recommends compresses soaked in a strong 
 decoction of tobacco applied to the abdomen in 
 lead colic. 3 Dr. Vetch recommends the infusion 
 as an anodyne application in gouty and rheumatic 
 inflammations of the joints, testes, and the 
 sclerotic coat of the eye, and also in erysipelatous 
 inflammations. The natives of India use the leaf as 
 a suppository to excite the action of the bowels of 
 children. Hearne relates, that in his journey to 
 the Coppermine River he had been frequently 
 without food for five or six days in the most in- 
 clement weather, and supported himself in good 
 health and spirits by smoking tobacco and wetting 
 his mouth with a little water, an effect which can 
 only be explained by its power of retarding the 
 usual process of decay of the tissues of the body. 
 
 Sauvages recommends clysters of the smoke in 
 serous apoplexy. 4 Tobacco has been also em- 
 ployed with singular success to counteract the 
 pernicious effect of arsenic on the human system, 
 in two cases, authenticated by Dr. Eastman of 
 
 1 Comment., ch. 51. 
 2 Principles and Practice of Medicine, pp. 1047 and 1054. 
 3 Dublin Hospital Reports, vol. iv, 
 * Vol. i., p. 849. 
 
65 
 
 New Hampshire, United States. The subject of 
 the first case was the daughter of Dr. Eastman, 
 who took by mistake some arsenic which had 
 been prepared for destroying rats. The painful 
 symptoms succeeding led to the discovery of the 
 cause. Without being in the least aware of the 
 antidotal powers of tobacco against this mineral, 
 an elderly lady present recommended tobacco to 
 be taken merely with a view to excite vomiting. 
 The young lady accordingly first smoked and 
 then chewed a large quantity of strong tobacco, 
 and swallowed the juice without its producing the 
 slightest emetic effect. She next drank half a 
 pint of strong infusion, but still the tobacco was 
 without the desired effect: the distressing 
 symptoms occasioned by the arsenic however 
 gradually abated, and the patient had nearly 
 recovered when the physicians arrived, who ad- 
 ministered an emetic of sulphate of copper, which 
 acted once ; and in a few days Miss Eastman had 
 perfectly recovered her health. 
 
 The second case was a sick female who took 
 arsenic by mistake. In this case tobacco was 
 employed with equal success without the exhibition 
 of any other remedy. 1 Its good effects have been 
 felt likewise in tetanus. A physician of Dublin 
 employed it in the form of clyster repeated twice 
 or thrice daily during eighteen days, by which 
 the patient obtained signal relief. 2 It does not 
 appear however that the case was successful. But 
 Curling states that out of nineteen cases of tetanus 
 treated with tobacco, nine perfectly recovered. In 
 seven of the fatal cases the remedy had not a fair 
 trial ; and in the eighth there was organic disease 
 of the brain. He has not succeeded in finding 
 a single case in which, being fully and fairly tried 
 
 1 Silliman's Journal, May, 1836, 
 
 2 Dublin Hosp. Rep., vol. iii. 
 
66 
 
 before the constitution had given way, it has been 
 been known to fail. 1 
 
 In 1724, Dr. George Cheyne published a work 
 of sterling merit as an original production ; and as 
 it is still valuable for the salutary precepts it con- 
 tains, I will transcribe his entire sentiments on this 
 topic. He says, " Tobacco is another foreign weed 
 much in use here in Britain, though not among 
 the best, yet among the middle and inferior ranks 
 of the people. For those of gross and phlegmatic 
 constitutions, who abound in serous and watery 
 humours, who are subject to asthmatic indis- 
 positions, who labour under violent toothaches, or 
 are troubled with rheums in their eyes, who have 
 cold and waterish stomachs, and live fully and 
 freely, both smoking and chewing is a very 
 beneficial evacuation ; drawing off superfluous 
 humours, crudities, and cold phlegm, provided 
 they avoid swallowing the smoke or juice, and 
 drink nothing, but rinse their mouths with some 
 watery liquor after it, and spit it out. But to 
 those of meagre constitutions it is highly per- 
 nicious and destructive, heating their blood, drying 
 their solids, and defrauding the food of that saliva 
 which is so absolutely necessary towards concoc- 
 tion. Snuffing the leaves or the grosser cut in a 
 morning will readily promote a flux of rheum by 
 the glands of the nose, and will be of good use to 
 clear the head and eyes." 2 A writer in the Indian 
 Medical Journal recently affirmed that smoking 
 tobacco has long been recommended as an 
 efficacious remedy in difficult respiration induced 
 by an excess of mucus in the bronchi and air cells ; 
 that it is also the most usual and universal pro- 
 phylactic means used for the prevention of fevers 
 and other infectious diseases ; and that the bad 
 
 Treatise on Tetanus. 
 2 Essay on Health, &c, chap, ii., sect, 18. 
 
67 
 
 effects of malaria are said to be often prevented 
 by smoking, by inspiring the mind with confidence 
 in and belief of its efficacy. There may be some- 
 thing in this. 
 
 But with all respect to the author of this theory, 
 I maintain that neither the faith in the efficacy of 
 the remedy, nor the remedy itself, would have the 
 smallest influence in warding off or retarding the 
 encroachments of fever, if tons of it were smoked 
 by the inhabitants of some of the jungles of India 
 and Africa, and the low tidal swamps of South 
 America. Can the salvation of a single individual 
 from fever be traced to its influence in Bombay, 
 Sierra Leone, or Vera Cruz ? Or from plague in 
 Constantinople, Cairo, or Alexandria ? The same 
 writer in his experience of the good effects of 
 tobacco seems to confirm the opinions of several 
 of the older writers before mentioned, particularly 
 old Raphael Thorius and Castor Duranti. He 
 finds smoking useful in curing ulcers, ptyalism, and 
 debility induced by mercury; and also that a patient 
 can hardly be salivated if he continue to smoke 
 his pipe, the tobacco preventing the effects of the 
 mercury on the system. 1 
 
 Dr. Johnson thought it was a shocking thing to 
 blow smoke out of our mouths into other peoples' 
 mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same 
 thing done to us ; yet he cannot account why a 
 thing which requires so little exertion, and yet 
 preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have 
 gone out. 2 When I first read this passage I doubted 
 whether Johnson had not been dealing in irony, 
 but I believe he was really fond of seeing people 
 enjoy their pipe. Hawkins states he has heard 
 Johnson say, that u insanity had grown more fre- 
 
 1 M'Gregor on the Medicinal and Prophylactic Properties 
 of Tobacco. 
 
 2 Bos well. 
 
68 
 
 quent since smoking had gone out of fashion." If 
 Johnson said such a thing, he displayed less than 
 his usual caution and judgment ; perhaps he forgot 
 at the moment that the increase of population and 
 the progress of refinement were proceeding rapidly 
 during his lifetime, and that as the numbers of 
 mankind multiply, so must the evils contingent on 
 highly civilized life increase in their due propor- 
 tions. Had he stated the contrary fact he would 
 have made a closer approximation to the truth. 
 
 Dr. Forster recommends the custom of smoking 
 in close cottages, and in the great populous towns 
 liable to contagion. 1 He observes in another place 
 that tobacco pipes are found to be good weather - 
 gages. When the scent is retained longer in the 
 air than usual, and seems denser and more powerful, 
 it often forbodes rain and wind — this circumstance 
 has enabled European sportsmen, particularly the 
 English, to establish an excellent criterion of good 
 scent for hunting. When the smoke from the pipe 
 remains a long time in the same place, and seems 
 not speedily to disperse, but scents strongly the sur- 
 rounding air, we may then be sure of a good day 
 for hunting. For the same quality of the air which 
 retains the scent of tobacco, will also cause the 
 scent of the animal to remain long after he has gone 
 forward, and hence the dogs can hunt him longer 
 afterwards than usual. 2 Dr. Sigmond says tobacco 
 promotes the growth of the hair. 3 
 
 In the present state of our knowledge of it, I 
 believe these are the principal cases in which we 
 are justified in employing tobacco as a medicine. 
 But I must impress most emphatically upon the 
 attention of all who may chance to read these 
 observations, that the exhibition of tobacco inter - 
 
 Observations, &c. 
 Encyc. Nat.Phen., p. 65. 
 Lancet, vol. ii., p. 249. 
 
69 
 
 nally, either in the form of smoke, infusion, or 
 decoction, should never be even contemplated by 
 any but professional men. Its employment requires 
 not only professional judgment to discern and 
 direct when its application is necessary, but all the 
 caution and exactitude of medical experience in 
 its administration ; because want of due attention 
 in applying it, or the exhibition of a dose dispro- 
 portioned to the known powers of the patient's 
 constitution, might speedily induce the most alarm- 
 ing asphyxia, if not immediate death ; the greatest 
 caution and vigilance have sometimes failed to 
 prevent its deadly effects. Even its external 
 application is not free from danger, as you shall see 
 afterwards. 
 
 The finest compliment ever paid to a lady's 
 beauty arose from a tobacco pipe. The celebrated 
 Duchess of Devonshire, whose beauty and goodness 
 were the theme of every tongue, used to rally her 
 flatterers on the infinite inferiority of their compli- 
 ments, compared with one incidentally paid to her 
 by a poor dustman; and she used to relate the 
 anecdote with great humour. 
 
 A dustman who was sauntering along one of 
 the fashionable streets of London in the exercise 
 of his calling, had just given the last squeeze to a 
 fresh charge of his pipe, and was anxiously look- 
 ing about for a light to complete his bliss. It 
 happened that the Duchess who had been paying 
 a visit in the same street, was stepping out of the 
 door of the house to step into her carriage just as 
 the dustman was stepping past, with his mind full 
 of the ruling passion. Their eyes met, — hers 
 beaming with beauty, youth, fire, and benevo- 
 lence ; and his twinkling with hope and the desire 
 of soon being able to attain to the consummation 
 of his wishes. Here then accident afforded 
 him a rare opportunity, for he might have 
 trudged backwards and forwards from Hyde 
 
70 
 
 Park corner to Stradford-le-Bow for a hundred 
 years, without meeting with its equal ; two stars 
 of ethereal fire, glowing with a brilliance and 
 intensity that would inflame an icicle ; why should 
 they not illumine a dustman's soul? The ex- 
 change of looks was momentary, and the Duchess's 
 foot was on the step of her carriage ; now or never, 
 thought the amorous dustman, and, while his 
 heart fluttered and his pulse beat high with hope, 
 he exclaimed, " Stop, my lady, till I light my pipe 
 at your eyes ///" 
 
 lam bona decerpsi : nunc si quae incommoda ab usu 
 Obveniunt, seu sint vere, seu vera videntur 
 Expediam, longa nee vos ambage morabor. 1 
 
 1 Thorius, lib. ii. 
 
LETTER VII. 
 
 Cob. — Otis, me, I marlel what pleasure or felicity they Lave in taking 
 this roguish tobacco. It's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill 
 Liin full of smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house last 
 week with taking it, and two more the bell went for yester-night ; one of 
 them, they say, will never scape ; he voided a bushel of soot yesterday, 
 upwards and downwards. By the stocks ! an there were no wiser men than 
 I, I'd have it present whipping, man or woman that should but deal with 
 a tobacco pipe ; why it will stifle them all in the end, as many as use it ; 
 it's little better than ratsbane or resaker.— Ben Jonson.2 
 
 I confess I feel some reluctance to leave the 
 delicious perfumes, medicated cups, and soothing 
 witcheries of Circe for the dun and foggy landscape 
 where 
 
 wrapt in murky clouds 
 
 Perpetual, which nor autumn sees dispersed. 
 Nor summer ; for the sun shines never there : 
 
 vttp'eX?] 8e fiiv afi<pifitfir)K6 
 
 Kvavkiy to \iiv ovtcot Ipujii, ovliTror aiQpi} 
 ktivov t\u Kopv<p})v, avr 1 iv 9kpu avr' iv birCspr] : J 
 
 and through which I must lead you in pursuit of 
 truth, even if your path should lie — 
 
 Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms. 
 
 In the preceding pages I have brought together 
 without reserve or bias, for your instruction, 
 every case, example, or incident which I could 
 find in any way calculated to place in peculiar 
 prominence the real therapeutic excellencies of 
 tobacco. But on reviewing them I believe you 
 will find that even the long experience of nearly 
 three hundred years has not been able to place to 
 the credit of this article any great amount of 
 
 1 i.e. I marvel. 
 
 2 Every Man in his Humour, 
 
 ; Odys. xii. 73. 
 
72 
 
 gratitude from Hygeia for benefits received. Even 
 in the few virtues it is acknowledged to possess, 
 when divested of all the supplemental gloss and 
 colouring with which the hand of partiality may 
 have emblazoned them ; and when all mere 
 opinions and crude theories not based upon com- 
 petent data are rejected, you will seek in vain for 
 a single advantage which is not to be found in other 
 less dangerous narcotics ; you will soon discover 
 on the contrary that, fetor, filth, and fascination, 
 form nine-tenths of its character, and dyspepsia or 
 mania the results of its use. Smoking, chewing, 
 and snuff-taking operate with singular energy on 
 the brain, the nervous system, and the heart; 
 they induce a sedative, stupifying, or exanimating 
 narcotism upon the senses in proportion to the 
 intensity of the dose, the temperament of the ex- 
 perimenter, or state of his constitution. When 
 the saliva is impregnated either with the juice or 
 the smoke of tobacco, and is swallowed by persons 
 unaccustomed to the poison, it produces the most 
 distressing and dangerous symptoms. When it 
 is inhaled by the nostrils in the form of snuff, it 
 produces considerable giddiness, an evanescent 
 sense of intoxication, and sometimes a most de- 
 pressing sickness. 
 
 It is sometimes absolutely pernicious, but always 
 more or lesss detrimental to human health : nor 
 does it produce a single well attested hygeinic 
 effect which may not be obtained from other drugs 
 of kindred properties, with infinitely greater 
 safety. 
 
 Unlike any other poison, it is found to operate 
 equally on the brain and the heart ; and it may 
 be predicated of it that it exerts its baleful 
 influence immediately upon all the principal 
 organs of the body : and lays the foundation of 
 many grievous maladies. Its effects are the more 
 dangerous too, that while it seduces and captivates 
 
73 
 
 the senses, it makes its inroads on the constitution 
 with the silent and insidious approaches of 
 the snake. So deceptive indeed are its effects, 
 that when the venom is infused, and its 
 influences have become perceptible and urgent, 
 every cause is blamed but the legitimate one. 
 An author 1 of an exact and inquisitive turn of 
 mind conjectures that "it is probably more ex- 
 tensively used to aid the purposes of robbers than 
 is commonly believed, and there is reason to 
 suppose that porter and other liquors sold in 
 brothels are sometimes drugged with it." 
 
 Dr. Ogston communicated an interesting case o 
 this kind to Dr. Christison, in which tobacco was 
 administered to a man in whiskey, who soon after- 
 wards died in a state of insensibility. Dr. Ogston 
 detected Nicotina in the contents of his stomach. 
 
 Its first ravages are generally manifested on the 
 mucous surfaces ; and the lungs, the stomach, and 
 intestines of persons using tobacco are always 
 found more or less inflamed. The stomach, in- 
 deed, is invariably affected with a chronic form of 
 gastritis ; which explains the continual yearing for 
 repetitions of the sedative influences of the drug 
 to mitigate the gnawing and uneasy sensations 
 occasioned by its acrid principle. When the habit 
 of smoking or chewing has been confirmed, the 
 hag Dyspepsia establishes her gloomy throne in 
 the stomach, and thence administers her withering 
 powers to the remotest part of the system. 
 Envious of the blooming and florid characteristics 
 of health, she quickly blights the roses on the 
 cheek of youth, and replaces their freshness and 
 beauty with a style of features more congenial to 
 herself; she overspreads the countenance with the 
 ashy pallidness of declining health, and impresses 
 it with that complexional anxiety which so clearly 
 
 1 Taylor on Poisons . 
 H 
 
74 
 
 indicates the progress of internal mischief and the 
 premature approaches of age. When the brain, 
 by peculiarity of constitution, happens to be the 
 organ chiefly obnoxious to its virulence, the usual 
 results are dimness of sight, dulness of hearing, 
 ringing in the ears, vertigo, general prostration, 
 and trembling of the hands like that of a habitual 
 drunkard ; and it not unfrequently induces 
 paralysis and incurable mania. The heart, liver, 
 and lungs also become weakened and viiiated in 
 their functions, and ultimately diseased in their 
 structure. Within the last seven years I have 
 been witness to three fatal cases of cancer of 
 the tongue, all accompanied with excruciating 
 torture, occasioned solely by the use of tobacco. 
 The symptoms of poisoning with this narcotic are 
 nausea, vomiting, vertigo, delirium, loss of power 
 in the limbs, general relaxation of the muscular 
 system, trembling, complete prostration of strength, 
 dimness of sight, coldness of the surface, a small 
 weak and imperceptible pulse, alarming perspira- 
 tion, convulsions, paralysis, impeded respiration, 
 and death. Sometimes there is diarrhoea with 
 violent pain in the abdomen ; in some cases there 
 is a sense of sinking or depression in the region of 
 the heart passing into syncope, or creating a sense 
 of dissolution. 
 
 Sudores itaque, et pallorem existere toto 
 Corpore, et infringi linguam ; vocemque aboriii ; 
 Caligare oculos ; sonere aureis ; succidere artus. 
 
 Lucretius, iii., 155. 
 
 Gerarde, who published his celebrated work the 
 Herbal in 1597, shortly after the introduction of 
 tobacco into England, reprobates therein the 
 extravagant employment of it — " Some use to 
 drink it for wantonnesse or rather custome and 
 cannot forbear it, no, not in the midst of their 
 
75 
 
 dinner." 1 I have already explained that to drink 
 tobacco, as here expressed, means nothing more 
 than to suck in the smoke, so George Wilkins 
 says, " Thou canst not live on this side of the 
 world, feed well, and drink tobacco." 2 I have 
 observed in a former page, the custom of smoking 
 was carried to such an excess in England in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, that the use of tobacco was 
 prohibited by law, " Lest," as Camden seems to 
 fear, that " the bodies of Englishmen should 
 degenerate into the nature of savages, by indulging 
 in the same luxury as that used by savages." 
 Referring to the time when it was introduced into 
 England by Lane, &c, he remarks — " Ex illo 
 sane tempore, usu cepit esse celeberrimo in Anglia, 
 et magno pretio ; dum quamplurimi graveolentem 
 illius fumum per tubulum testaceum hauriunt, et 
 mox e naribus efflant, adeo ut Anglorum corpora 
 in barbarorum naturam degenerasse videantur, 
 quum iisdem ac barbari delectentur." 3 It was a 
 saying of King James, that if he were to invite the 
 devil to a dinner, he should have the following 
 dishes : — a pig, a poll of ling and mustard, and a 
 pipe of tobacco for digesture. This monarch's 
 opposition to the herb was conscientious as it 
 was lasting ; he avoided no trouble of mind 
 and body to arrest the vile habit of smoking, 
 and he never ceased his praiseworthy labours 
 till the end of his life, although policy forced 
 him to give it an unwilling and negative 
 support by admitting it under a heavy duty. 
 Many of the evils he imputed to it, however, were 
 clearly the work of fancy, and entirely without 
 foundation. His honest zeal for the health and 
 well being of his subjects magnified frivolous 
 
 1 Herbal, in vocem. 
 2 Miseries of Informed Marriage, 1 607. 
 " Camden, Annal. Eliz, p. 143, 1585. 
 
76 
 
 effects, and perverted his judgment with respect 
 to the pathogenic causes of certain phenomena, 
 probably got up and brought under his notice for 
 the occasion. Surely, he says, smoke becomes 
 a kitchen far better than a dining chamber, and it 
 makes a kitchen oftentimes of the inward parts of 
 men ; soiling and infecting them with an unctuous 
 and oily kind of soot as hath been found in some 
 great tobacco takers that after their death were 
 opened. 1 We are assured that, influenced by this 
 firm belief, King James actually held a public dis- 
 putation in person, in one of the Colleges of Oxford, 
 in 1605, against the mania of smoking tobacco f 
 the question being, Utrum frequens suffitus Nico- 
 tiance exoticce sit sanis salutaris ? "Whether the 
 frequent smoking of foreign tobacco was a 
 safe practice for the healthy ;" and illustrated his 
 discourse by adducing examples of persons who had 
 long laboured under incurable diseases of the chest 
 &c, &c, from the effects of this practice, in whom 
 after death the lungs were found black and 
 shrivelled as if they had been smoke-dried ! 
 
 I have already quoted the illustrious Helmon- 
 tius, who believes that it quells the sensations of 
 hunger and thirst, and appears useful in supporting 
 strength in long journeys, and in scarcity of food ; 
 but that it contains an occult poison, wherefore, 
 he execrates smoking, and declares he has found 
 the stomach of smokers tinged yellow by 
 swallowing the smoke. 3 
 
 Thomas Batholine, a famous Danish physician, 4 
 informs us, that in dissecting a man who, while in 
 life, had enjoyed to excess the pleasures of the 
 pipe — nimia tobaci suctione, for many years of his 
 life, he found the left ventricle of the heart infarcted 
 
 1 Counterblast, folio works, p. 221. 
 
 2 Caspar Hofrrnan de Med. Offic. sect, iii., cap. 30. 
 De Mortis Occasione. 4 Hist. An at. Cent. 
 
77 
 
 with a fatty substance, the lungs flaccid and 
 shrivelled, and adhering to the ribs, and weighing 
 three pounds avoirdupois. 
 
 Sir William Vaughan says, "that outlandish 
 weed" tobacco caused a dullness of the spirits, 
 dimness of the sight, and impotence. 1 
 
 Skrokius, the younger, declares the fumes of 
 tobacco not only blacken the palate, but even 
 penetrate to the brain, and by mixing with the 
 particles of the blood and confusing the animal 
 spirits there, occasion divers mischiefs, and in 
 bilious habits even madness. 2 This, I may observe, 
 is not an uncommon result in certain tempera- 
 ments. 
 
 Simon Paulli, once Professor of Physic at 
 Copenhagen, but afterwards Bishop of Arhusen, 
 wrote an admirable work on the Abuse of Tobacco 
 and Tea, wherein he inveighs against the use of 
 it in any form, and proposes many excellent reasons 
 for his strong opposition to it. He occasionally 
 indulges in some absurd notions like the other 
 early writers on tobacco ; but upon the whole the 
 views he takes of its use and abuse are correct. 
 In the epistle of Raphellengius to him, inserted in 
 his " Abuse of Tobacco and Tea," there is an 
 account of a robust youth who had been an in- 
 temperate smoker, whose brain on dissection was 
 found to be dyed of a black sooty colour. He also 
 denounces it in the form of snuif, and states that 
 many persons have become blind from the intem- 
 perate use of it ; he says, likewise, that he had 
 often known persons deprived for ever of the 
 sense of smell, and some who had suffered the 
 rupture of a blood vessel in the brain from the 
 effect of violent sternutation ; he seriously advises 
 the unconditional abandonment of the habit, and 
 warns youth not to use it unless they wish to lead 
 
 1 U. S. 2 Scholia in observat, 44 Hehigiani. 
 
78 
 
 most miserable lives and bring on a premature old 
 age." 1 Harderus denounces the use of it with as 
 much acrimony as Paulli; yet he admits that 
 persons accustomed to it can enjoy it as if it were 
 an alexipharmic, or even in the place of food, but 
 that it would prove exceedingly pernicious to 
 those not inured to its use. 2 
 
 Bartholine details the dissection of a Frenchman's 
 brain, in which was found collected, a black indu- 
 rated matter. The man had been a great snuff- 
 taker ; and Schneider 3 relates that Tulpius found 
 traces of tobacco in the viscera of persons who had 
 been in the habit of employing it by the mouth. 
 
 Augustus Thonerus, a respectable Dutch physi- 
 cian, gravely states that he was assured by a certain 
 physician that on opening the head of a person 
 who had been an excessive tobacco smoker, and 
 who never ceased night nor day from this habit, 
 he found, " stupenda res ! the whole substance of 
 the brain so dried that it scarcely equalled the 
 size of a nut I" But he has forgotten to explain 
 whether he means a hazel nut, or a cocoa nut. He 
 expresses his approbation of tobacco when tem- 
 perately used and properly applied. 4 
 
 Theodore Kirkringius, a learned physician of 
 Amsterdam, addresses his readers in this vein. — 
 " A vile habit of sucking tobacco-smoke, cacoethes 
 sugendi fumum, through tubes manufactured for 
 that purpose, prevails at present (about 1607) in 
 Europe. Now, to convince you how greatly they 
 injure their own health who indulge freely in this 
 habit, I shall expose before your eyes the state of 
 a man whom I dissected in presence of a crowd of 
 other physicians. He had been immoderately 
 addicted to these smoky delights, for it appears he 
 
 1 See also his Quadripart. Botan. Virid., cap 6. 
 
 2 Obs. Anat. Pract. 3 De Osse Cribriformi. 
 
 4 Obs. Med., lib. ii. 
 
79 
 
 scarcely did any other thing but swallow the 
 fatal juice ; so that when nature, battered as it 
 were by incessant attacks, began to give way and 
 fall into disease, he began to throw up black 
 matter from his lungs and stomach, and continued 
 so until at last he also ejected his sooty soul. 
 With the help of a dissecting scalpel I penetrated 
 into, and wandered through the gloomy tabernacle 
 she had lately abandoned ; do you ask me what I 
 saw there ? I felt as if I had entered the mansion 
 of Pluto. In the very threshold, lo ! the tongue 
 lay swollen and dyed of a black colour, and 
 steeped as it were in the poisonous juice : and as 
 to the trachsea, it appeared like a chimney lined 
 with soot. The lungs were dry and almost 
 friable ; the liver, as if it had attracted to itself 
 more of the inward burning than the rest of the 
 viscera, was inflamed all through, and from the 
 general incremation not even the bile in the gall- 
 bladder was exempted, for it had contracted a 
 purplish green colour. But among the intestines, 
 which form as it were the ballast of the body, 
 there had collected the whole of the black cinders 
 of the universal conflagration ; they were crammed 
 with black matter, which emitted an odour not less 
 offensive than Avernus itself." " These," he con- 
 cludes, " are the fruits of excessive smoking." 1 
 
 Professor Willis of Oxford ranks tobacco among 
 the causes of Vertigo. 2 Tissot, the learned Swiss 
 physician, affirms that the bad consequences of 
 using tobacco are apoplexy, gout, jaundice, tabes, 
 and other diseases of the chest. The following 
 passage is cited both because it evidently involves 
 the filthy habits under consideration, and also 
 because it serves to introduce the author's decided 
 conviction of the pernicious effects of this luxury. 
 The late Dr. Cheyne, of Dublin, in his invaluable 
 
 1 Obs. Anat. 2 Anima Brutorum, de Vertigine. 
 
80 
 
 work on " Apoplexy," 1 treating of the causes of 
 that affection, declares that he is persuaded there 
 is much more in the habits than either in the 
 original form or diethesis ; so that he ventures to 
 affirm, that in nineteen cases out of twenty of those 
 who die of apoplexy, the disease might have been 
 averted or postponed by temperance. And in 
 page 150, enumerating the habit of snuff- 
 taking among the other causes of this disease, he 
 says he is convinced that apoplexy is one of the 
 evils in the train of that disgusting practice. 
 
 An assertion to the same effect was made some 
 years ago by a correspondent of the Sydney 
 Herald, which was ridiculed but not disproved in 
 the reply of a second correspondent. The 
 question at issue between them, however, was con- 
 fined solely to the smoking of tobacco. But, as I was 
 then discussing the effects of the general uses 
 of tobacco, I endeavoured to ascertain whether snuff 
 or any of the common usable forms of tobacco had 
 ever been proved to exercise a direct influence in 
 the production of this disease. It may be grati- 
 fying to snuff-takers to know the truth on this 
 interesting subject. Dr. Christison, referring to 
 the latter of the two passages quoted above from 
 the work of Dr. Cheyne, remarks that " the state- 
 ment is questionable, as the daily experience of 
 every one must testify." 2 Now it is morally pos- 
 sible that Dr. Christison may never have met with 
 a case in point : but this is no proof that such cases 
 may not have occurred in the practice of other 
 physicians ; besides, his mode of confuting the 
 statement is too vague, and unworthy so grave an 
 authority ; for he leaves Dr. Cheyne's statement 
 just where it was, and what it was. a probable and 
 practical inference drawn from clinical observation. 
 Dr. Cheyne however is not alone in his opinions, 
 
 1 P. 146. 2 Treatise on Poisons, p. 773. 
 
81 
 
 for they are supported by the ponderous testimony 
 of professor Lanzoni of Ferrara, who relates the 
 case of a person that fell into a state of coma from 
 taking too much snuff, and died lethargic in twelve 
 days. 1 A case is mentioned in the Edin. Med. 
 and Surgical Journal 2 where smoking produced 
 most of the symptoms of Apoplexy, as stertor, insen- 
 sibility of the pupil, deep livid countenance, and 
 spasmodic contraction. Sauvages and Portal consi- 
 der the narcotic poisons, among which is tobacco, do 
 not produce true apoplexy but carus, which being 
 a doctrine, no doubt drawn from their own expe- 
 rience, is a sufficient refutation. Here, non- 
 medical readers may ask, what has carus, coma, 
 or lethargy to do with apoplexy. You and they 
 shall see ; but in order to see and also to understand 
 we must go to the fountain head and ascertain 
 whether apoplexy is a disease of one unvarying 
 type and condition, or consists of varieties or 
 degrees. 
 
 Hippocrates, the father of physic, distinguishes 
 apoplexy into the strong and the weak. He says, 
 it is impossible to cure a strong apoplexy and 
 difficult to cure a weak one. Galen considers 
 catoche, apoplexy, carus, and cataphora, the same 
 disease ; but in another place he is more precise ; 
 he says, " if only the anterior part of the brain be 
 affected, &c, the faculty of thinking is abolished, 
 and the patient is incapable of both sensation and 
 motion, but the power of breathing remains unim- 
 paired, and this affection is called carus ; but when 
 the carus affects the breathing so violently that 
 the person can hardly respire even with great 
 effort, like those who snore in deep sleep, the 
 affection is called apoplexy." 3 To this I shall only 
 add, that almost all the subsequent writers down 
 
 1 Ephem. Cur. Nat., dec. ii. an. 10. 
 2 Vol xii., p. 11. 
 3 Therap. Method, xiii. 22, Loc. Affect., iv. 2. 
 
82 
 
 to the time of Sauvages follow the dogma of Galen: 
 and Sauvages himself holds almost the same 
 opinions with respect to the identity of these 
 affections ; at least in his classification and defini- 
 tion of them he makes only a distinction without a 
 difference. But every novice knows, or ought to 
 know, that cases of what is unphilosophically called 
 true apoplexy have occasionally occurred without 
 being attended by stertor ; inasmuch, as several 
 eminent physicians, among whom Forestus, 
 Cullen,and Portal, admit that apoplexy may happen 
 without stertor being necessarily present. I 
 have myself met with many cases of apoplexy 
 without a manifestation of this symptom. Dr. 
 Mead holds cams to be only a slighter form of 
 apoplexy — Lethargia et carus sunt leviores 
 apoplxiae species. 1 Cullen says, " under the title 
 apoplexy are comprehended those diseases which, 
 as differing from it in degree only, cannot with a 
 view either to pathology or practice be properly 
 distinguished from it, such are the diseases some- 
 times treated of under the names of carus, 
 cataphora, coma, lethargus. 2 Dr. Young ranks 
 apoplexy the third species of carus as a genus. 
 Dr. Cooke considers " carus, lethargus, &c, as 
 inferior degrees of apoplexy." Dr. Mason Good's 
 arrangement is somewhat similar to Dr. Young's. 
 Dr. Cheyne seems to consider all the class of 
 paraneurismic diseases as degrees of one and the 
 same affection. He even intimates that the same 
 hopelessness which characterizes apoplexy, 
 accompanies also its less urgent varieties ; for he 
 confesses that " if the reader expects satisfactory 
 information relating to the cure of lethargy, he 
 fears he will not be gratified." Indeed, since it is 
 clear the structural lesions of the brain occasioning 
 apoplexy are the same both in the slighter and 
 
 1 Precept. etMonit., cap. ii., sect. i. 
 3 Syn. Nos. Meth. iii. 
 
severer grades of that disease, the danger must 
 necessarily also be the same ; the degrees probably 
 depending partly on predisposition and partly on 
 the magnitude or intensity of the cause ; this, 
 however, belongs to the iEtiologist to determine ; 
 my business at present being only to prove, if 
 possible, that snuff or any preparation of tobacco 
 has occasionally been the cause of apoplexy. And I 
 think, after having demonstrated that according to 
 the most eminent nosologists, apoplexy, carus, coma, 
 lethargy, &c, are only degrees of the same disease ; 
 and that besides the testimony of Dr. Cheyne, 
 Lanzoni, one of the most distinguished men of his 
 time, found snuff to have been the cause of 
 lethargy, a form, and not the least dangerous one, 
 of apoplexy, — my position is made good. 
 
 " I cannot help wondering," says Ramazzini,"how 
 the nose aping the art of cookery, happened to be 
 so ingenious as to invent the many and various 
 modes of seasoning and preparing tobacco, which 
 every one employs for the gratification of his nose, 
 some taking it in coarse powder, some in fine, 
 some scented, and some unscented ; and not only 
 the nose but the palate also delights in the smoke 
 of it sucked in and puffed out again at both mouth 
 and nose ; wherefore, as often as I see a man 
 snuffing up this powder so greedily into his nostrils, 
 or inhaling and exhaling the smoke, I cannot help 
 thinking of Orlando described by Ariosto as having 
 spilled his brains and sucking them in again by 
 his nose." 1 
 
 1 De Morb. Artif., cap. 16. 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 Ye pipe was in my mouthe, 
 
 Ye first cloud o'er me broke; 
 I was to blow another, 
 
 When a voyce came from ye smoke: — 
 
 Come, this must be a hoaxe ! — 
 
 Then I'll snuffe if I may not smoke ; 
 But a voyce came from ye boxe, 
 
 And thus these voyces spoke : — 
 
 " And would'st thou hare a swimmie hedde, 
 
 And smokie breath and blacken'd toothe ? 
 And would'st thou have thy freshness fade, 
 
 And wrinkle up thy leafe of youthe? 
 Would'st thou have thy voyce to lose its tone, 
 Thy heavenly note, a bagpipe's drone ? 
 
 If thou would'st thy health's channels choke, 
 
 Then smoke — smoke — smoke : 
 
 The pipes of thy sweet musick stuffe, 
 
 Then snuffe— snuffe — snuffe !" 
 
 Anon. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing illustrations, Sir B. 
 Brodie, in his experiments with tobacco on animals, 
 has shown that it produces symptoms very much 
 resembling apoplexy by its power of destroying 
 the functions of the brain. In these experiments 
 he made an important and curious discovery in 
 respect to the influence of tobacco. He found 
 that the empyreumatic oil confines its energies 
 entirely to the brain, and destroys life by its action 
 on that organ alone ; whereas the infusion of 
 tobacco, thrown into the intestines by way of 
 injection, kills by paralyzing the heart, without 
 acting on any other viscus. 1 Dr. Copeland 
 believes in the tendency of tobacco to produce 
 apoplexy. He says, " the use of tobacco, par- 
 ticularly in the form of snuff, has been considered 
 to favour the occurrence of apoplexy," &c. ; and 
 " connected with the use of spirituous or 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., 1811. 
 
85 
 
 fermented liquors, I may here allude to the 
 influence of the class of narcotics, particularly 
 opium, stramonium, hyoscyamus, tobacco, &c, the 
 excessive use of which sometimes occasions all the 
 symptoms of congestive apoplexy, and even 
 extravasation." 1 In France, M. Fourcroy and M. 
 Pattissier have declaimed against the deleterious 
 effects of snuff on the manufacturers, affirming, 
 that it induces bronchitis, dysentery, opthalmia, 
 and other constitutional and cutaneous diseases. 
 But this subject, observes Dr. Christison, has since 
 been investigated with great care by MM. Parent 
 du Chatelet and D'Arcy, who inquired minutely 
 in all the great tobacco manufactories of France, 
 comprising a population of above four thousand 
 persons ; and the results at which they have 
 arrived are — that the workmen very easily become 
 habituated to the atmosphere of the manufactory — 
 that they are not particularly subject to special 
 diseases or to diseases generally — and that they 
 live on an average quite as long as other trades- 
 men. 2 A later commission however took a 
 different view of its effects, and state that the 
 men who are employed in these manufactories 
 seem to labour under asthma and shortness of 
 breath, that their bodies gradually assume a 
 grayish tinge, and the constitution degenerates 
 into a cachectic state ; and later still M. Melier, 
 who is sure that the vapors in manufactories long 
 respired are injurious ; the first effects are head- 
 ache, nausea, languor, loss of appetite and sleep ; 
 the secondary are manifested by a species of 
 cachexia indicated by an altered complexion. He 
 attributes these effects to the Nicotina volatilized. 3 
 Dr. Clutterbuck and Dr. Alison also deny that 
 
 1 Diet. Pract. Med. 
 
 1 \nnales d' Hygiene et de Medicine Legale, i. 1829. 
 
 3 Brit, and For. Med. and Chir. Rev., vol. xxiv., p. 562. 
 
tobacco exerts any injurious influence on persons 
 employed in its manufacture. For my part 
 I do not hesitate to express my doubts on the 
 subject. I know from actual observation, indeed, 
 that snuff making does exert a pernicious influence 
 upon the health ; but I am not prepared to affirm, 
 whether that influence depends on the tobacco 
 alone, or on the other ingredients of which snuff 
 is composed, namely the salt, hydrochlorate of 
 ammonia, urine, powdered glass, and corrosive 
 sublimate. 
 
 Dimerbroek says, that on dissecting the brain 
 of a smoker he found it all black and ulcerated. 1 
 Stalpertius Vanderweil, referring to the abuse of 
 snuff-taking, records the case of an old man who 
 died from abscess in the brain, which he attributes 
 to his having been an inveterate snuff- taker. He 
 admits, however, that this powder taken in due 
 measure and at proper intervals, is not by any 
 means a useless medicine when the head is sur- 
 charged with humours. 2 Adrian Falconbergius 
 found, in an excessives moker, the mamillary pro- 
 cess of the brain and the extremity of the olfactory 
 nerve wanting. This in part explains Paulli's 
 views, who holds that snuff destroys the sense of 
 smell, which is probable enough ; for if the poison 
 exert its energy upon one set or branch of nerves, 
 I cannot understand why it may not equally affect 
 others. Mr. Smith records two cases of paralysis 
 of the portio dura produced by smoking tobacco. 
 He is not aware of any case of paralysis of the 
 portio dura on record having been attributed to 
 the use of tobacco, nor indeed, does he remember 
 seeing an account of any case of paralysis, which 
 has been imputed to this cause. Still he thinks a 
 result of this kind is quite in keeping with what 
 
 1 Anatom., xi., 13. 
 2 Obs. Rar. Cent. Prim. Obs., 10. 
 
87 
 
 we know of the physiological properties of the 
 oil of tobacco, and is one effect which a priori 
 reasoning upon them would expect. 1 
 
 " The absurd custom of smoking/' says a com- 
 piler on diet, " is extremely prejudicial, as it 
 weakens the organs of digestion, deprives the 
 body of many useful fluids, and has a direct 
 tendency to emaciation, particularly in young 
 persons, and those of lean and dry fibres ; to 
 these it is the more detrimental, that it promotes 
 not only the spitting of saliva, but likewise other 
 evacuations. This plant is possessed of narcotic 
 properties, by which it produces in those who 
 begin to smoke it, giddiness, cold sweats, vomiting, 
 purging, and from its stimulus on the salivary 
 glands, a copious flow of saliva. Frequent and 
 much smoking makes the teeth yellow and black ; 
 the clay pipes are apt to canker the teeth to such 
 a degree as to infect the breath, and produce 
 putrid ulcers in the gums ; delicate persons 
 especially suffer from this nauseous habit, as it has 
 a direct tendency not only to exsiccate their bodies 
 by contaminating the fluids and rendering them 
 acrid, and vitiating the digestion and assimilation 
 of food, but likewise to impair the mental 
 faculties. 2 Moreover, it is affirmed by Marc, that 
 the use of tobacco occasions functional impotence, 3 
 a statement which agrees with the reason assigned 
 by Amurath IV. for his hostility to tobacco. 
 
 Tobacco even applied externally, particularly to 
 abraded surfaces, exerts all its deleterious power, 
 and induces all its debilitating effects. A case is 
 related of three children to whose heads there had 
 been applied an ointment composed of bruised 
 tobacco leaves and butter for the cure of ringworm, 
 
 1 Provincial Journal, 1845. 
 
 2 Willich on Diet, p 531. 
 
 3 Diet, des Sciences Med. t. xxiv., p. 176. 
 
88 
 
 by which they were reduced to the last stage of 
 prostration. 1 
 
 A case is related by Mr. Weston, in which the 
 expressed juice of tobacco was applied for the cure 
 of tinea capitis, or scald-head, to the head of a 
 boy eight years old, who died in three hours and 
 a half after the application. 2 
 
 I have already referred to some cases of tetanus 
 wherein tobacco was believed to have proved ser- 
 viceable. But notwithstanding all that has been 
 reported from time to time of this immitigable 
 disease yielding to the direct agency of any par- 
 ticular medicine, we really possess no such thing 
 as reliable testimony. Dr. K. B. Todd, one of the 
 greatest authorities in medicine, in his observations 
 on the cure of tetanus, affords, I think, conclusive 
 evidence to the contrary. He considers that 
 tobacco undoubtedly reduces the polar state of the 
 cord ; but produces at the same time a state of 
 fearful depression ; and that it is likewise an un- 
 safe and not a manageable remedy. He has seen 
 more than one patient die, cured of tetanus, under 
 this remedy. 3 Magnenus confesses he has seen 
 the sight destroyed by the insane use of snuff. 4 
 Ramazzini ascribes many evils to snuff taking, 
 " Quales ergo noxas turn capiti, turn stomacho 
 affigat pulvis iste ex tabaco, satis norunt ipsi 
 tabacopcei, dum ilium praeparant." He adds, " I 
 have known a great many persons reduced to a 
 state of consumption by chewing tobacco, who 
 flattered themselves they were consulting their 
 health by continuing a flow of saliva from their 
 mouths ; and they could hardly be persuaded they 
 were ruining their health by thus exhausting the 
 
 1 Ephem. Cur. Nat., Dec. 11, An. 4. 
 
 2 Med. and Phys. Journ., vol. xiv.,p 305. 
 
 3 Lumleian Le' tures on the Pathology and Treatment of 
 
 Convulsive Diseases. — Med. Gaz. 1849. 
 
 4 Op. Cit. 
 
89 
 
 salivary glands, and the whole body of their 
 nutritious juice. So fascinating and incurable is 
 that disgusting habit of chewing and smoking 
 tobacco, that, in my opinion it will always be con- 
 demned, and yet always be continued." 1 I remem- 
 ber, many years ago, a healthy and robust youth, 
 without any constitutional predisposition, and of 
 healthy parents and family, who went directly 
 from the pure air of the couotry into a snuff manu- 
 factory somewhere about the Minories in London, 
 to learn the trade. Some months afterwards, he 
 applied to me for advice in confirmed phthisis ; he 
 attributed his complaint entirely to the effects of 
 the snuff making; — in the space of two months 
 more he was in his grave. This fact confirms the 
 experience of many of the older physicians. Yet, 
 Frederick the Great lived to seventy-four years of 
 age, although he took snuff in large quantities, and 
 wore a tin pocket to hold it ; but Napoleon, who 
 also was an immoderate snuff-taker, carrying it 
 loose in his waistcoat pocket for convenience, died 
 at an early age, from a disease which was no 
 doubt aggravated if not produced by snuff-taking. 
 
 Mr. Pilcher details two cases of immoderate 
 snuff- takers who were labouring under all the 
 symptoms of phthisis, such as muco-purulent 
 expectorations, night-sweats, &c. The mucous 
 membrane of the throat, epiglottis, and neighbour- 
 ing parts were coated with a brown fur. The 
 discontinuance of this noxious and abominable 
 habit was followed by recovery. 2 
 
 Santeuil the poet (Santolius Victorinus), was 
 poisoned by snuff. A person thoughtlessly 
 emptied the contents of a snuff-box into his wine, 
 which as soon as he had swallowed excited violent 
 
 1 Mort , Artif. cup. xvi. 
 2 Lancet, Feb. 1, 1845, p. 137. 
 
90 
 
 vomiting and excessive pain, and he died in 
 fourteen hours. 1 
 
 Franciscus Redi,the celebrated Italian physician, 
 poet, and naturalist, finds tobacco to have very 
 different effects ; for the empyreumatic oil intro- 
 duced into the wounds of small animals destroys 
 life in a remarkably short space of time, or 
 otherwise excites the most distressing symptoms ; 2 
 and Dr. Moses Charas, a celebrated French 
 chemist and pharmaceutist of his day, records the 
 instantaneous fatality of this poison when applied 
 to the mouth or to wounds of the viper. 3 Bonetus, 
 where he notices the pernicious effects of the oil 
 of tobacco, recorded by Redi, says, this oil is easily 
 procured from persons in the habit of smoking, 
 by placing a piece of cotton at the bottom of the 
 bowl of the pipe. He has seen animals killed by 
 applying it to a small wound, and even cats, by 
 rubbing it lightly on their lips. 4 
 
 Dr. John Davie Monies, the chemical and 
 medical editor of the Hortus Medicus, observes 
 " that the empyreumatic oil of tobacco, which is 
 formed whenever it is burned, and which was 
 first known among the Hottentots, who poisoned 
 snakes by putting a drop on their head or tongue, 
 is extremely poisonous," 5 &c. The traveller on 
 whose relation of the deadly effects of this oil 
 Dr, Morries evidently founds his conjectures, also 
 mentions it with manifest wonder as a novelty to 
 himself and his readers. " One of the Hotten- 
 tots." says he, u took out with the point of a stick, 
 a thick black matter which he called tobacco oil ; 
 
 1 Orfila Directions, p. 107. 
 2 Osservazioni intorno alle Vipere, 1664. Esperienze bdorno 
 a diverse cose naturali particolarmente a quelle che ci sono portate 
 dalV Indie. 
 
 3 Nouvelles Experiences sur les Viperes, 1 669. 
 
 4 Sepulc-hret. Lib. iv., sect , x , obs. 16. 
 
 * Hortius Medicus, p., 211. 
 
91 
 
 this he applied to the mouth of the snake while 
 darting out his tongue, as those creatures do when 
 enraged ; the effect of the application was instan- 
 taneous almost as that of an electric shock : with 
 a convulsed motion that was momentary, the snake 
 half untwisted itself and never stirred more." 1 
 Now any one who will take the trouble of refer- 
 ring to Signor Redi's works, or to those of Charas, 
 or of Harderus, will discover something that has 
 escaped this gentleman's research, which, as the 
 editor of such a work, he ought to have known ; 
 and if these pages, written at the utmost verge of 
 the green earth, should ever meet the eye of 
 Dr. John Davie Morries, he will learn that the 
 discovery of the empyreumatic oil of tobacco may 
 be traced to a period at least coetaneous with the 
 time when the Hottentots first became acquainted 
 with the plant. The Dutch had hardly taken 
 possession of the Cape of Good Hope at the time 
 Redi was making his experiments. Shakspeare, 
 too, it is pretty clear knew something of it, and 
 seems to ascribe the murder of Hamlet's father to 
 " the leperous distilment," dropped into his ear. 
 Dr. Paris has an interesting note on this conjec- 
 ture, from a suggestion of Dr. Gray the commen- 
 tator, which I shall take the liberty to transfer 
 entire to these pages. 
 
 It seems very probable, says the note, that the 
 " juice of cursed hebenon," by which, according 
 to Shakspeare, the King of Denmark was poisoned, 
 was no other than the essential oil of tobacco. 
 
 -Sleeping in mine orchard 
 
 My custom always of the afternoon, 
 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, 
 With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, 
 And in the porches of mine ears did pour 
 The leperous distilment. 
 
 Barrow, Travels in Africa, p. 268. 
 
98 
 
 In the first place, the learned commentator, 
 Dr. Gray, observes, that the word here used 
 " hebenon" was more probably designated by a 
 metathesis, either of the poet or transcriber, for 
 henebon, i. e. henbane. 
 
 Now it appears from Gerarde, that " tobacco" 
 was called henbane of Peru, (hyoscyamus Peru 
 vianus), and when we consider how high the 
 prejudice ran against this herb, in the reign of 
 James, 1 it seems very likely that Shakspeare should 
 have selected it as an agent of extraordinary 
 malignity. No preparation of hyoscyamus with 
 which we are acquainted, would produce death by 
 application to the ear, whereas the essential oil of 
 tobacco, would without doubt occasion a fatal 
 issue. The term distilment, has also called forth 
 a remark from Stevens, which is calculated to 
 support this conjecture. " Surely," says he, " this 
 expression signifies, that the preparation was the 
 result of a distillation." 2 
 
 Redi, then, as far as I can learn, is the first 
 author who mentions the empyreumatic oil of 
 tobacco. Moses Charas' experiments were pub- 
 lished somewhat later. This virulent poison how- 
 ever was probably known much earlier than the 
 publication of the experiments of either of these 
 naturalists ; and the knowledge of it in all like- 
 lihood was brought from America along with the 
 plant itself, the poisonous oil remaining in the 
 bowl of a tobacco pipe would very readily suggest 
 the idea of distillation to men of science. 
 
 Tobacco contains four extremely acrid poisonous 
 principles, namely, 1st, nicotina, an active, volatile, 
 
 1 This is an anachronism. Almost all the commentators and 
 biographers of Shakspeare admit the tragedy of Hamlet to 
 have been written in 1596. Queen Elizabeth died on the 21th 
 of March, 1 603 : — this play could not therefore have been 
 written to humour any prejudice of King Ja?nes. 
 1 Pharmacologic p. 691. 
 
93 
 
 and intensely poisonous agent, of which one- 
 fourth of a drop is sufficient to kill a rabbit, and 
 one drop a dog. 2nd, the essential, or concrete 
 volatile oil — which, also is an acrid and virulent 
 poison. This constituent is obtained by simple 
 distillation. When men smoke tobacco, snuff up 
 the powder, drink the infusion, or chew the 
 prepared article itself, like suicides, but without 
 the plea of temporary insanity, they take these 
 two deleterous principles into their system with 
 various but very decided results. By inhaling the 
 fumes of tobacco while smoking, a portion of 
 Nicotina is introduced into the system and works 
 its share of woe. 3rd, the empyreumatic oil, 
 which is one of the most energetic and con- 
 centrated poisons in existence, as I have before 
 shown, when speaking of the experiments of Kedi 
 and Charas. Happily, we have no instances of its 
 effects on the human system in its concentrated 
 state, but there is no doubt that what would kill a 
 dog, would have extremely dangerous effects on a 
 child, or a weak adult. A drop placed on the 
 tongue would be likely to produce convulsions, 
 coma, and extreme prostration of the vital powers. 
 4th, tobacco smoke, which is a combination of all 
 the deleterious principles, namely, nicotina, the 
 essential oil, the empyreumatic oil, to some 
 extent, carbonate of ammonia, acetate of ammonia, 
 soot, some gases, and a little moisture. 
 
 The following anecdote is told of Dr. Aldrich, 
 whose excessive devotion to his pipe had become 
 a local proverb : — One of the students of the 
 Doctor's college, who was well acquainted with 
 his insatiable love of smoking, having endeavoured 
 in vain to convince a young freshman of the 
 Dean's intemperance, laid a wager with him that 
 he was either smoking, stopping, or filling his 
 pipe, at that very hour — ten o'clock in the 
 morning. The wager was accepted, and off went 
 
94 
 
 the parties to the deanery — when, on being 
 introduced, the gentleman who had made the bet, 
 exclaimed, " I have lost my wager, I perceive," 
 for the Doctor was not smoking but had his hand 
 in his waistcoat pocket. " You have won it," 
 said the Dean, to whom the matter had been 
 explained ; " for," continued he, withdrawing 
 his hand from its place of concealment, " I am 
 filling my pipe at this moment," his pocket being 
 his tobacco box. 
 
 Fagon was one of the physicians to Louis XIV. 
 In the middle of a violent harangue he was 
 making respecting the pernicious effects of 
 tobacco on the constitution, the orator made a pause, 
 took his snuff box from his pocket, refreshed him- 
 self with a pinch, and renewed his denunciation. 
 
 " Every professed, inveterate, and incurable 
 snuff-taker," says the late Earl Stanhope, " at 
 a moderate computation takes one pinch in ten 
 minutes. Every pinch, with the agreeable 
 ceremony of blowing and wiping the nose, and 
 other incidental circumstances, consumes a minute 
 and a half. One minute and a half out of every 
 ten, allowing sixteen hours to a snuff- taking day, 
 amounts to two hours and twenty four minutes 
 out of every natural day, or one day out of 
 every ten. One day out of every ten amounts 
 to thirty-six days and a-half in a year. Hence, if 
 we suppose the practice be persisted in for forty 
 years, two entire years of the snuff-taker's life 
 will be dedicated to tickling his nose, and two 
 more to blowing it. The expense of snuff, snuff- 
 boxes, and handkerchiefs, will be the subject of a 
 second essay, in which it will appear that this 
 luxury encroaches as much on the income of the 
 snuff-taker as it does on his time ; and that by a 
 proper application of the time and money thus lost 
 to the public, a fund might be constituted for the 
 discharge of the National Debt." 
 
95 
 
 " Tobacco," exclaims Burton, " divine, rare, 
 super-excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond 
 all their panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers* 
 stone, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good 
 vomit I confess ; a virtuous herb, if it be well 
 qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used ; 
 but as it is commonly abused by most men, which 
 take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, 
 a violent purger of goods, lands, health, — hellish, 
 devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and over- 
 throw of body and soul." 1 
 
 1 Anat. Mel , part ii., sec. 4. 
 
LETTER IX. 
 
 O, would we be alle health, alle lightnesse, 
 
 Alle youth, alle sweetnessse, freshnesse, brightnesse, 
 Seeing through everything, 
 With minds like ye crystal springe ! 
 
 O, would we be just right enough ! 
 
 Not drinke — not smoke — not snuffe ; 
 
 Then would our forward course 
 
 To ye right be as naturall 
 As it is, withouten force, 
 
 For stones downwardeto falle. 
 
 Anon. 
 
 After reading the preceding observations you 
 can hardly entertain a lingering doubt of the 
 baneful influence which this poison exerts upon 
 the constitution, whether it operate at once in 
 the concentrated form of any of its principles, as 
 in the experiments of Eedi and Charas upon the 
 lower animals ; or in combination, by the slow and 
 imperceptible vitiation of the system through 
 smoking, chewing, or snuff-taking. There is no 
 fact in the history of medicine better established 
 than this, that tobacco in all its forms and prepara- 
 tions is an inexorable poison, without a single 
 redeeming quality to palliate its contamination of 
 the sources of health. The subject, therefore, is 
 not only worthy of your most serious considera- 
 tion, but it is supremely interesting, especially to 
 the habitual smoker, and to him who is ambitious 
 to be entered as a graveolent neophyte of the 
 Mephitic goddess. If you harbour a single doubt 
 on the matter, the experiments of Sir Benjamin 
 Brodie ought to banish the last scruple from your 
 mind. From them you will learn that the empy- 
 reumatic oil does not act upon the heart directly, 
 
97 
 
 but upon the brain, causing convulsions and death. 
 In a case in which one drop was applied to the 
 tongue of a cat, it caused convulsions and death 
 in the short space of two minutes, and on opening 
 the body the heart was beating regularly and 
 forcibly. 
 
 Of the effects of the infusion it appeared to him 
 that the action of the heart stopped even before 
 the animal had ceased to respire ; and this was 
 confirmed by another experiment, in which in a 
 dog killed by the infusion of tobacco, he found the 
 cavities of the left side of the heart to contain 
 scarlet blood, while in those of the right side, the 
 blood was dark coloured. The infusion renders 
 the heart insensible to the stimulus of the blood ; 
 but it does not altogether destroy the power of 
 muscular contraction, since the heart resumed its 
 action in one instance on the division of the peri- 
 cardum, and he has found that the voluntary 
 muscles of an animal killed by this poison are as 
 readily stimulated to contract by the influence of 
 the Voltaic battery as if it had been killed in 
 any other manner. 
 
 He concludes from these experiments that the 
 empyreumatic oil of tobacco, whether applied to 
 the tongue, or injected into the intestines, does 
 not stop the action of the heart and induce 
 syncope, like the infusion of tobacco ; but that it 
 occasions death by destroying the functions of the 
 brain without directly acting on the circulation. 
 In other words its effects are similar to those of 
 alcohol, the juice of aconite, and the essential oil 
 of almonds. 1 
 
 These illustrations teach you all the philosophy 
 of smoking ; and throw a flood of light on the 
 pathogenic action of diluted doses of tobacco con- 
 
 * Pail. Traas. for 1311, p; 178, 
 
 K 
 
98 
 
 tinued on the human system. I think they fully 
 explain the origin of nine-tenths of the nervous 
 and dyspeptic complaints — the grey, pallid com 
 plexion peculiar to inveterate smokers and snuff- 
 takers : and also why the abuse of tobacco in any 
 form prostrates the powers of digestion, and 
 paralyses the energies of the brain like the con- 
 tinued tippling of ardent spirits. Cullen was of 
 this opinon. 1 Dr. Prout's sentiments on this, as on 
 every other subject he undertakes to elucidate, 
 are entitled to the very highest consideration. He 
 is convinced that tobacco disorders the assimilating 
 functions in general, but particularly, as he be- 
 lieves, the assimilation of the saccharine principle. 
 He has never indeed been able to trace the 
 development of oxalic acid to the use of tobacco ; 
 but that some analogous and equally poisonous 
 principle, probably of an acid nature, is generated 
 in certain individuals by its abuse, is evident from 
 their cachectic looks and from the dark and often 
 greenish yellow tint of their blood. The severe 
 and peculiar dyspeptic symptoms sometimes 
 produced by inveterate snuff taking are well 
 known, and he has more than once seen such 
 cases terminate fatally with malignant disease of 
 the stomach and liver. Great smokers also, 
 especially those who employ short pipes and 
 cigars, are said to be liable to cancerous affections 
 of the lips. But it hajjpens with tobacco as with 
 deleterious articles of diet, the strong and healthy 
 suffer comparatively little, while the weak and 
 predisposed to disease fall victims to its poisonous 
 operation. Surely, if the dictates of reason 
 were allowed to prevail, an article so injurious to 
 the health and so offensive in all its forms and 
 modes of employment, would speedily be banished 
 
 1 Cullen, Mat. Med., ii. 74. 
 
99 
 
 from common use. 1 Dr. Chapman details the case 
 of a Member of Congress and a practising lawyer 
 who had been one of the most healthy and fearless 
 of men, but had become sick all over and as timid 
 as a girl. By ordinary noise he was startled and 
 thrown into tremulousness, and afraid to be alone 
 at night. His appetite and digestion were gone, 
 he had painful sensations at the pit of the stomach, 
 and unrelenting constipated bowels. During the 
 narrative of his sufferings his aspect approached 
 the haggard wildness of mental distemperature. 
 On inquiry he found that his consumption of to- 
 bacco was almost incredible, by chewing, snuffing, 
 and smoking. Being satisfied that all his misery 
 arose from this poisonous weed, its use was dis- 
 continued, and in a few weeks he entirely 
 recovered. Distressing as this case was, Dr. 
 Chapman saw others from the same cause even more 
 deplorable. He found two young men who were 
 brought to him for advice, in a state of insanity, 
 very much resembling delirium tremens. Each 
 had chewed and smoked tobacco to excess, though 
 perfectly temperate as regards drink. They had 
 commenced this pernicious practice early in life ; 
 " it grew with their growth" and at last induced 
 dyspepsia, derangement of the nervous system, 
 and the state of mania described. The Editor of 
 the British and Foreign Review remarks, with 
 great justice, in reference to these cases, that 
 although we cannot, as yet, compete with the 
 Americans in the practice of this disgusting vice, 
 we see too much of it not to know that even in the 
 small way here perpetrated, it is almost as injurious 
 to the health of our young men as it is nauseous 
 to the senses of their unsmoking victims. 2 
 
 1 On the Nature and Treatment of Stomach and Urinary 
 Diseases, p. 25. 
 
 2 Lancet, March 8, 1843, p. 226. 
 
100 
 
 Dr. Mott assured Mr. Mayo of the Middlesex 
 Hospital, that in the United States it is not uncom- 
 mon to see persons whose hands tremble nervously, 
 and whose minds are permanently affected by its 
 baneful influence. He has also been told that 
 many young men at Cambridge and Oxford have 
 temporarily injured their healths in a similar way, 
 though to a less extent : and he had known more 
 than one instance of men advanced in life, who 
 have been compelled to discontinue its use from its 
 effect upon the head, producing disturbed and 
 troubled sleep and headache. 1 
 
 In Dr. Elliotson the most moderate smoking, 
 such as three cigars a day, invariably produced 
 extreme gastrodynia and cardialgia so as to make 
 him quite miserable 2 — an infliction he richly de- 
 served : no man is better acquainted with its 
 deleterious effects upon others. 
 
 Dr. Waterhouse says in a public lecture he gave 
 on this subject, tobacco is particularly injurious to 
 thin, hectic, and hypochondriacal persons ; that it 
 creates unnatural thirst, leads to the use of 
 spirituous liquors, increases indolence, and, above 
 all, it is pernicious to the young, and lays the 
 foundation of all their future misery. 3 
 
 Dr. McGregor has seen some of the most severe 
 symptoms follow the administration of an enema 
 which contained only half a drachm of tobacco in 
 the form of decoction. 4 
 
 The practice of using tobacco smoke in clysters — 
 
 is condemned by many eminent practitioners. 
 
 Burserius says you must avoid such a remedy in 
 
 apoplexy as you would a mad dog or a snake ; cane 
 
 pejus et angue cavendum est in apoplexia y 5 and 
 
 1 Philosophy of Living, p. 77. 
 
 2 Princir»les and Practice of Medicine, p. 1094. 
 
 3 Sir John Sinclair, Code of Health, p. 43. 
 
 4 Lancet, August, 1845, p. 240. 
 
 5 Burserius, t. iii., p. 106. 
 
101 
 
 Portal has no confidence in them. 1 The applica- 
 tion of tobacco internally either in smoke or infusion 
 requires the utmost consideration and caution, as 
 the following lamentable case will show. 
 
 A strong man aged fifty-five, who had laboured 
 for some time under dysuria from enlarged 
 prostate, and more recently suffered from the 
 presence of ascarides in the rectum, was subjected 
 to the action of a tobacco injection made by a 
 decoction of twelve grains of the tobacco in six 
 ounces of water. Seven or eight minutes after- 
 wards the patient appeared in slight stupor, with 
 cephalalgia and unusual paleness of the face. He 
 complained of pain in the abdomen, and his an- 
 swers to questions were troubled. Two purgative 
 injections were successfully administered. A 
 stimulant potion was given ; sinapisms were 
 applied to the inferior extremities, and blood taken 
 to the amount of three porringers. Paleness 
 became more and more marked, respiration more 
 laboured, stupor, intelligence altogether lost ; con- 
 vulsive movements of the arms, then of the legs, 
 and afterwards of the whole body, which pro- 
 gressively augmented during six or seven minutes, 
 and were succeeded by extreme prostration, — the 
 patient fell into a comatose state and died. 2 
 
 Sir Charles Bell, treating of a patient with 
 strangulated hernia, says, his strength held up 
 until the tobacco clyster was administered to him 
 — after which he very suddenly fell low and sank. 3 
 Sir Astley Cooper has seen one or two drams prove 
 fatal. 4 Dr. Copeland was present when the in- 
 fusion of half a dram produced death in three 
 minutes : 5 and Desault mentions a case in which 
 
 1 Burserius, t. iii., p. 246. 
 
 2 Revue Medicate, Dec. 1840. 
 
 3 Surgical Observations, part ii., p. 189. 
 
 4 Anatomy and Treatment of Hernia, p. 24, 
 
 5 Diet, of Pract. Med., p. 377. 
 
102 
 
 the smoke used as an enema proved mortal. 1 
 Dr. Paris remembers witnessing a lamentable 
 instance of this sudden death from a similar cause 
 some years ago. A medical practitioner after 
 repeated trials to reduce a strangulated hernia in- 
 jected an infusion of tobacco, and shortly afterwards 
 sent the patient in a carriage to Westminster Hos- 
 pital for the purpose of undergoing the operation, 
 but the unfortunate man arrived only a few minutes 
 before he expired. 2 Dr. Grahl relates the case of 
 a person labouring under dyspepsia, and obstinate 
 constipation of the bowels, to whom a female quack 
 advised an injection to be administered of more 
 than an ounce of tobacco boiled far a quarter of an 
 hour ; — in two minutes after receiving the enema, 
 the person was seized with vomiting, violent con- 
 vulsions, and snoring or stertorous breathing, and 
 died in three quarters of an hour. 3 A writer in 
 the Ed. Med. and Surg. Journal says, a patient of 
 his died in convulsions after receiving a clyster of 
 an infusion of two drams of tobacco in eight ounces 
 of water. 4 A person to whom there had been ad- 
 ministered an injection composed of a decoction of 
 two ounces of tobacco became like one intoxicated, 
 and died instantly. 5 Numberless instances of the 
 same nature might be cited to prove, if proof were 
 wanting,^ deleterious nature of the plant, — and 
 to teach the important lesson of caution to all 
 persons using it, as well as to impress it on dabblers 
 in medicine, of which, unfortunately, there are not 
 a few in this colony. 
 
 A case occurred in M. Tavignot's practice which 
 terminated fatally in fifteen minutes. 6 In the Acta 
 
 1 GEuvres de Chir., t. ii., p. 344. 
 2 Paris, Pharmacologia, p. 692. 
 Hufland, Journal of Practical Medicine, lxxi. 4. 
 4 Vol ix. 
 5 J'-urnal de Chemie Med., t. iii. 
 6 Brit, and For. Med. Rev., No. xxiv., p. 562. 
 
103 
 
 Helvetica is related the case of a -woman to whom 
 an inj ection made with an infusion of only one 
 dram of tobacco was administered, when she was 
 seized with pains in the abdomen, sickness, and 
 fainting, and died after a (ew hours. A woman was 
 persuaded by an empiric to use the infusion 
 as a cure for worms. Soon after its exhibition as 
 an enema, she was seized with violent convulsions, 
 and died in fifteen minutes. 1 
 
 Mention is made in the British and Foreign Re- 
 view of a case in which a decoction of twelve grains 
 of tobacco in six ounces of water used as an enema 
 proved fatal. 2 
 
 Mr. Eade of Blofleld, Norfolk, mentions a fatal 
 case. An hysterical looking girl was advised by a 
 friend to have a tobacco clyster administered to her 
 for obstinate costiveness. For this purpose about 
 three drachms of common shag tobacco were 
 boiled in a pint of water, and injected into the 
 bowel. In about half an hour after this, she com- 
 plained of faintness and feeling sick, and in about 
 half an hour more became quite collapsed, with 
 cold sweats, &c. In an hour and a half after the 
 administration of the injection she died. 3 Thus 
 tobacco in the hands of an unprincipled person, is 
 more dangerous and deadly than a sword wielded 
 by a madman. 
 
 Mr. Churchill records a case which nearly 
 ended fatally, of a servant maid who unconsciously 
 drank a cupful of coffee into a quart of which, 
 while it was standing for use, a young man, without 
 being aware of the pernicious consequences likely 
 to ensue, had infused an ounce of tobacco. The 
 alarming symptoms, as Mr. Churchill states, con- 
 tinued for six hours, after which and a great deal 
 
 1 Xorth American Med. and Surg. Journal, vol. vi. 
 
 2 Vol xii.,p. 562. 
 
 3 Med. Gaz., Nov. 1849, p. 823. 
 
104 
 
 of medication she quickly recovered. 1 Mr. 
 Howison the traveller, was nearly poisoned by 
 inhaling the fumes of tobacco while sleeping in the 
 cabin of a schooner loaded with the dried plant, 2 
 Sir Astley Cooper remarks that most of the cases 
 of cancer of the lip, that fell under his care, were 
 occasioned by the use of tobacco pipes, 3 an observa- 
 tion which I have verified frequently in my own 
 practice in this colony especially. I have lately 
 had two fatal cases of cancer of the tongue as- 
 cribable solely to the same cause. 
 
 As a practical illustration of these facts and ob- 
 servations, I subjoin some excellent remarks on 
 the evil consequences of the immoderate use of 
 tobacco ; they comprise the body of a commu- 
 nication read before the British Association in 
 1846, by Dr. Laycock, of York, and conclude 
 with some remarks on the same subject by Dr. 
 "Wright, of Birmingham. 
 
 The consequences of inveterate smoking are 
 investigated as they declare themselves in the 
 mucous membranes of the mouth and pharnyx, in 
 the stomach, lungs, heart and nervous system. In 
 the first of these, the simplest result of excessive 
 smoking is stated to be an inflammatory condition 
 of the mucous membrane of the lips and tongue ; 
 the tonsils also become swollen, and if the throat be 
 examined it will be found slightly swollen with 
 congested veins, and streaked with mucus. The 
 irritation extends from this part to the posterior 
 nares, giving rise to a sensation of dryness and 
 tickling, with discharge of thick mucus. The 
 conjunctiva also becomes the seat of heat and red- 
 
 1 Stevenson and Churchill, Med. Bot. Art. Nicotiana, 
 xxxvii. 
 
 2 Foreign Scenes, vol. ii , p. 279, 
 
 3 Leetures on the Principles and Practice of Surgery, &c, 
 p. 436. 
 
105 
 
 ness -with lachrymation, and a peculiar spasmodic 
 action of the orbicularis muscle, which the author 
 states is observed on awakening in the morning. 
 
 The frequent occurrence of a dull pain in the 
 forehead after excessive smoking, leads the author 
 to suspect that the frontal sinuses are also affected ; 
 but these effects are trifling in comparison with 
 the consequences which are manifested in the 
 digestive canal. These are described to be pain 
 on pressure in the epigastrium, anorexia, nausea 
 on taking food, with constant desire to expectorate. 
 
 The action of the heart and lungs is impaired 
 by the influence of the narcotic on the nervous 
 system, but in addition to this, a morbid state of 
 the respiratory passages is induced by the direct 
 application of the smoke ; the voice is hoarser, 
 and a short cough arises; in one case the author 
 thinks he has seen ulceration of the cartilages of the 
 larnyx ensue, and further states, that inflammation 
 and ulceration of the larynx in men is almost ex- 
 clusively peculiar to inveterate smokers. 
 
 Haemoptysis is another affection described as 
 distinctly traceable to the habit of smoking, but 
 the author is not able to determine whence the 
 blood is discharged, but it is brought up by 
 " hawking," rather than coughing. 
 
 The abuse of tobacco on the heart is depressing. 
 The individual usually complains of a peculiarly 
 uneasy sensation about the left nipple, amounting 
 almost to faintness. In such an example no mor- 
 bid sound can be detected, but the action of the 
 heart is feeble, and sometimes irregular. An 
 uneasy feeling is also complained of beneath the 
 pectoral muscles. 
 
 On the brain the action of tobacco is sedative. 
 It appears to diminish the rapidity of cerebral 
 action, and the flow of ideas. This the author 
 thinks is a certain result, and he believes it is for 
 this reason that smoking is a common habit with 
 
106 
 
 studious or contemplative men. The action is dif- 
 ferent from other narcotics, as it does not dispose to 
 sleep, but, on the contrary, excites watchfulness, 
 and in this respect resembles the effect of green 
 tea. Among the secondary results of smoking, the 
 author mentions constipation and hemorrhoids, 
 acne, blackness of the teeth, and gum-boils ; there 
 is also a sallowness in the complexion, and a want 
 of life and energy ; the author is not able to con- 
 firm the opinion that it impairs the sexual powers. 
 
 The action of tobacco is precisely similar in man 
 and animals. A watery infusion of the plant, in 
 whatever manner administered, produces in all 
 cases a decidedly sedative action upon the nervous 
 system. The feebleness of the heart's action so 
 commonly observed, is due to this nervous depres- 
 sion, and is not induced by the independent action 
 of the drug upon it. The essential oil of tobacco 
 produces all the effects of the infusion. When 
 given in small quantities, from two to five grains, 
 twice or three times a day, mixed with food, 
 tobacco in dogs produces a gradual and complete 
 marasmus. Dr. Wright has remarked in particular 
 a dragging action of the hind legs, and a loss of 
 venereal power ; the testes become soft and 
 shrivelled, the hair falls off, and before death, 
 sloughing of the eyelids and blindness generally 
 ensued. After death the blood was invariably 
 found deficient in fibrin and red globules. 
 
 In watching the effects of the excessive use of 
 tobacco in the human subject, Dr. Wright believes 
 that they are precisely similar to the physiological 
 effects above mentioned. He has observed that 
 the nervous system especially suffers, that there 
 has been an obtuseness of the several senses, 
 irritability, indecision, loss of courage, weakness 
 of muscular action, and depraved secretion. He 
 has also commonly noticed the condition of the 
 buccal pharyngeal membrane alluded to by Dr 
 
107 
 
 Laycock, as well as the deepened intonation of the 
 voice. He considers it as a great antagonist of 
 the functions of the nervous system, especially in 
 its relation to the organs of sense, reproduction, 
 and digestion. He has known it produce a case 
 of complete atony. He has known many cases, on 
 the other hand, in which no harm resulted from 
 the use of tobacco, but is not aware of any good 
 arising from its use that could not be obtained 
 from less objectionable means. 
 
 That it occasions a tendency to insanity there 
 can be no question ; indeed there would not be 
 much difficulty in proving, from the history of 
 many lunatics in this colony and in America, that 
 its excessive use actually induces insanity. There 
 are many evidences to testify that it has given rise 
 to some severe cases of delirium tremens. An 
 instance of this kind occurred in an old man who 
 had been an intemperate smoker many years of his 
 life. After having smoked in one day nine segars 
 in quick succession, he was shortly after seized 
 with delirium tremens. 1 
 
 " Reverting again," says Dr. Webster, u to the 
 causes producing insanity, it might be interesting 
 to state, that intemperance, owing to the improved 
 habits of the people in this country, did not seem 
 so frequent an exciting cause of that malady as 
 formerly; on the other hand, the now prevalent habit 
 of smoking tobacco had very much taken the place 
 of intoxicating drinks ; and in America where in- 
 temperance, chewing opium, and smoking were 
 enumerated amongst the causes producing mental 
 disease, considerable attention had recently been 
 directed to this subject. In his opinion, this filthy 
 custom was most injurious as well to the body as 
 to the mind ; and whether intoxication was pro- 
 duced by spirits, opium, or by tobacco, all were 
 
 1 Philad. Med. Examiner. 
 
108 
 
 abominations ; and he believed physicians eon • 
 versant with mental maladies were every day 
 becoming more and more convinced of the bad 
 effects of this narcotic weed ; whilst in some 
 asylums, its use amongst the lunatics was strictly 
 forbidden." 1 
 
 In the year 1837, Mr. Shipman's attention was 
 called to two cases of disease in the same family. 
 The symptoms and phenomena attending them 
 were so similar that it struck him at once that they 
 had a common origin. The first was that of a young 
 gentleman, D. W., a student at law, of a nervo- 
 sanguine temperament. He had been a martyr to 
 dyspepsia for two or three years ; he had spent a 
 year in the Western States, and had attended the 
 LawLectures at Cincinnati. While at the West 
 he had acute-ophthalmia, which was treated by 
 active depletion, with little benefit, as his eyes, 
 when he first saw him, were highly injected ; 
 cornea vascular and semi opaque, and the lids 
 granular. He applied to the doctor for the treat- 
 ment of his eyes, but what most afflicted him con- 
 stitutionally was low spirits, want of resolution, and 
 general hypochondriasis. His stomach would 
 receive food with a good relish, but the moment 
 he had finished his meal a train of nervous symptoms 
 came on, which harassed him for two hours, until 
 the stomach was empty. Acidity, cardialgia, 
 gastrodynia, palpitation of the heart, giddiness, 
 vertigo, and fulness of the head, with the most 
 profound gloom ; keenly alive to every feeling, he 
 was in constant fear of death, yet tempted to com- 
 mit suicide, to escape from a life more intolerable 
 than death itself. These symptoms harassed him 
 for months, with varying degress of intensity, when 
 a new symptom arose, which terrified him more 
 
 1 At the meeting of Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 
 May, 1849. 
 
109 
 
 than all the rest. His sleep had been broken by 
 the most horrid imagery in the shape of frightful 
 dreams, for more than a year ; but now, when the 
 first hour of sleep came over him, he was suddenly 
 awoke by a shock in the epigastrium, which started 
 him in great alarm from his sleep. These shocks 
 and startings were repeated several times in the 
 course of the night, and as often as he fell into a 
 slumber. They were at first confined to the epi- 
 gastrium ; but, after a few weeks, the sensation 
 was transmitted to the head, which he described 
 as more unendurable than when confined to the 
 epigastrium. It was followed by a sensation as if 
 a rush of blood took place to the head, and a firm 
 conviction in his mind that he should die with 
 apoplexy. This impression preyed upon his mind 
 incessantly. 
 
 Mr. Shipman was often summoned in the night 
 in great haste, and found him agitated with cold 
 sweats, palpitation, and terrible apprehensions of 
 immediate death. A little soothing encouragement, 
 a dose of morphine and carbonate of ammonia, 
 would dispel his fears and quiet his agitation, and 
 enable him to rest the remainder of the night with 
 tolerable composure. This state of things lasted 
 several months, during which time he was not in 
 a condition to pursue any kind of business, and 
 finding that medicines only gave him temporary 
 relief, Mr. Shipman suggested to him that tobacco 
 might have some agency in his complaints (as he 
 used it freely, by smoking, chewing, and snuffing), 
 and advised him to abandon the habit. In this he 
 was successful, so far as chewing and snuffing were 
 concerned; but he was so attached to his cigar, 
 that it was a long time before he could be induced 
 to leave that. " I will here add," continues Mr. 
 S., " that from the time he left the habit of chewing 
 and snuffing, his health in some measure improved, 
 particularly the shocks and epigastric sinking. He 
 
110 
 
 now became satisfied that this partial abandonment 
 of the habit had been productive of good, and 
 renounced the habit entirely ; and the nocturnal 
 shocks and epigastric sinking, with the whole train 
 of nervous affections, vanished as if by magic. His 
 digestive powers gradually improved ; the chronic 
 inflammation of his eyes yielded readily to appro- 
 priate treatment; the gloom and despondency which 
 had oppressed him as an incubus, cleared away ; 
 the nervous palpitations and rushings of blood to 
 the head subsided, and he was able to prosecute 
 his studies with energy, was admitted to the 
 practice of the law, and is now an able and talented 
 member of the bar, in the possession of good health, 
 spirits, and prosperity. The foregoing history I 
 copy from my notes taken at the time. There 
 were many other symptoms which are common in 
 dyspeptic cases, and many of those described are 
 found in every day practice in nervous dyspeptics 
 and hysterical habits. The sudden and complete 
 cure of all the symptoms, on leaving off the use of 
 tobacco, was too obvious to escape the observation 
 either of patient or physician." 
 
 Mr. Shipman next briefly alludes to the state of 
 a sister of the gentleman whose case he has been 
 describing, although not occurring in the order of 
 his notes. " She was married, and the mother of 
 two children ; her age, 39 ; dyspeptic for the last 
 ten years ; of a nervo-sanguine temperament ; her 
 youngest child ten years of age. Suffered since 
 her last accouchement, from leucorrhsea, partial 
 prolapsus uteri, and hypochondriasis. Has 
 smoked and snuffed tobacco for the last fifteen 
 years ; eight years ago began to have shocks of 
 the epigastrium, with a sinking sensation at the pit 
 of the stomach, cardialgia, acid eructations, a 
 sense of rushing of blood to the head, palpitations, 
 sleeplessness, and startings when first falling into 
 slumber. These kept increasing upon her, when 
 
Ill 
 
 there came on tenderness of the spine, along its 
 whole length, but more especially in the cervical 
 and lumbar regions ; rigidity of the limbs, costive- 
 ness, derangement of the catamenia, &c. She has 
 been under treatment for a long time, with little 
 or no benefit. To soothe her feelings, she had 
 taken more freely of snuff, and had smoked more 
 often, as she fancied that it gave her temporary 
 relief. Seeing the good effect from abandoning 
 the use of tobacco, in her brother, she made the 
 same experiment in part herself, and with the 
 same marked relief from many of the symptoms. 
 The shocks at the epigastrium left, her sleep 
 became quiet, her mind more cheerful, and the 
 epigastric sinking, cardialgia, acidity, and eructa- 
 tions, were greatly relieved. The spine, however, 
 required cupping and counter-irritation, and, with 
 the use of anodynes and tonics, she recovered a 
 comfortable state of health. This patient has 
 frequently ventured upon a moderate use of tobacco 
 since, but, after using it a while, she experiences, 
 though in a slight degree, her old feelings, and 
 then quickly abandons it. She is perfectly 
 satisfied of its pernicious influence upon her con- 
 stitution, and, therefore, is in little danger of 
 carrying its use again to excess." 
 
 " S. E., aet. 40, was in possession of good health 
 until 1838, when he began to emaciate, and grow 
 pallid ; his food did not digest well — with acidity, 
 heartburn, gastralgia, palpitation of the heart, 
 sinking at the pit of the stomach, and a host of 
 nervous syrnptons, gloom, hypochondriasis, and 
 apprehensions of sudden death. But what amazed 
 him, and filled his cup of misery full, was shocks at 
 the epigastrium, which attacked him when first fall- 
 ing asleep every night. These followed him two 
 years, and increased to such a degree that his 
 sleep was a succession of starts, which nearly 
 wore him out. At the end of two years they came 
 
112 
 
 upon him during the day ; he described them as 
 like shocks of electricity, and confined to the 
 epigastrium. He was incapacitated from business 
 of any kind, was weak, irresolute, and desponding ; 
 had consulted many physicians, and taken a great 
 variety of medicine, with only temporary relief. 
 On his giving me a history of his case, I was 
 struck with its similarity to that of D. W., and 
 inquired if he was not in the habit of using 
 tobacco. He stated that he was, and had some- 
 times imagined that it might have some agency in 
 producing some of his bad feelings, but had never 
 had any physician advise him to leave it off, and, 
 in reality, was too much a slave to its use to lightly 
 make the sacrifice. Upon my assuring him that the 
 symptoms and disease depended upon the habit, and 
 that nothing but a complete and total abstinence 
 from it would restore him ; I extorted a promise 
 that he would lay it aside a month at least. As he 
 was costive I prescribed the compound syrup of 
 rhubarb, and directed him to call again in a month. 
 At the end of that time I was agreeably surprised 
 to witness the improvement in the appearance of 
 my patient. His countenance, which had pre- 
 viously exhibited a sallow, palid aspect, was now 
 ruddy with health and strength ; he had gained 
 fifteen pounds of flesh in the time, and his strength 
 had increased daily from the time I last saw him. 
 But what to him was more than all the rest, the 
 annoying shocks, with the general nervous agita- 
 tion attending, had entirely left him from the third 
 day of his abstinence from tobacco. The dyspeptic 
 affection, the palpitation, the gloom and depression 
 of spirits, the apprehension of death had vanished 
 as if by enchantment. He had resumed his busi- 
 ness (that of a farmer) ; he could now sleep quietly 
 through the night, and get up in the morning 
 refreshed and buoyant in spirits, and is so con- 
 vinced that tobacco was the root of all his previous 
 
113 
 
 complaints, that it requires no advice to induce 
 him to for ever refrain from its use. This man 
 has now the most perfect health, and has taken no 
 medicine since the first month." 
 
 " C. P., aet. 43 ; nervo-bilious temperament , 
 farmer, temperate ; has been a tobacco chewer for 
 twenty years, nas been dyspeptic the same period, 
 more or less, attended with nervous palpitation 
 and acidity, hypochondriasis, and epigastric sink- 
 ing. First began to have shocks at the epigastrium 
 in 1839 in the night, on first getting asleep, which 
 started him up in great agitation and alarm ; was 
 frequently obliged to get up and sit for fear of 
 the shocks. On his consulting me, I advised him 
 to discontinue the use of tobacco, and prescribed 
 no medicine ; he left it off and the shocks imme- 
 diately subsided. He did not resume the use of 
 tobacco again for eighteen months, and was 
 healthy during the time. Being of an irresolute 
 disposition, he resumed its use again, and 
 in two months the shocks began with 
 great severity, They were now felt in the 
 chest and region of the heart, at first 
 always in the night, but after a time in the day- 
 time, with a rushing of blood to the head, which 
 would momentarily deprive him of consciousness. 
 The shocks now took place in the head ; this so 
 terrified him that he earnestly besought me to 
 prescribe something for him, and agreed to abide 
 by my advice. My opinion was, that no medicine 
 would be of the least service without a complete 
 abandonment of tobacco ; this he solemnly promised 
 he would do. I prescribed the compound syrup of 
 rhubarb with the ammoniated tincture of valerian ; 
 the shocks at once left him, his sleep became quiet, 
 his dyspeptic symptoms disappeared, his mind 
 became calm, spirits elastic, and he was capable of 
 working his farm. Two or three times since he has 
 cautiously ventured on the use of tobacco, but after 
 
114 
 
 a certain length of time, his old feelings begin to 
 appear ; so that it reduced to a demonstration 
 that, tobacco was the sole cause of his former 
 troubles. This man has increased fifteen pounds 
 in flesh, and his colour from being sallow and 
 pale, is of a ruddy hue." 
 
 " S. C, set. 63, farmer ; robust and healthy, 
 until four years ago, when he began to complain 
 of epigastric sinking, sleeplessness, palpitation, 
 irritability, and nervous tremours. Shocks at the 
 epigastrium came on at the first hour of slumber, 
 which were repeated several times in the course 
 of the night, and often in the morning before 
 breakfast. Has been a tobacco chewer thirty 
 years, and a portion of the time to great excess. 
 On his consulting me, I suggested that tobacco 
 was the agent in all the trouble which he experi- 
 enced. He said he had often suspected it, but 
 had never had fortitude and resolution to forego 
 its use, but agreed to make a trial. The shocks 
 immediately left him, together with all the train of 
 nervous affections ; his sleep became calm, his 
 strength and flesh returned, his spirits improved, 
 and he has gained twenty pounds of flesh in three 
 months. He has not resumed the use of tobacco. 
 This man was temperate in all things except tobacco, 
 neither using tea nor coffee. He was sensible 
 for years that something was wrong, but could 
 not believe that an article in such universal use as 
 tobacco, and one which he had used for a long 
 series of years, could possibly cause his troubles. 
 This, I am persuaded, is the case with hundreds 
 who are similarly situated. 55 
 
 " S. J., set. 54 ; nervous temperament ; farmer 
 by occupation ; has been in the habit of using 
 tobacco for ten years. It frequently has salivated 
 him. He spits much, is emaciated, nervous and 
 hypochondriacal. The shocks commenced about 
 two years ago, in his bowels. They came on in 
 
115 
 
 the night, when first getting into a drowse ; ta 
 length they came on in the day-time, with epi- 
 gastric sinking, costiveness, and dyspepsia. I put 
 him on the use of the compound syrup of rhubarb 
 and ammoniated tincture of valerian, and, at the 
 same time, he left off the use of tobacco. The 
 shocks immediately left him, and he improved 
 gradually, so that at the present time he is in com- 
 fortable health." 
 
 " A. C, set. 27, is of a sanguine temperament 
 and robust habit ; a farmer by occupation. Has 
 chewed tobacco for four years to excess ; was 
 taken in the summer of 1841, suddenly, with 
 sinking at the pit of the stomach, and faintness, 
 which obliged him to lie down in the field. Shocks 
 at the epigastrium came on about the same time. 
 These were first at night on getting asleep ; but 
 after a while in the day-time ; at these times he 
 wood suddenly break out into a profuse perspira- 
 tion. His digestion was tolerably good, and his 
 health otherwise little impaired. He says, that 
 previous to these symptoms, he had used large 
 quantities of tobacco, but never imagined that it 
 could hurt him. I advised him to immediately 
 discontinue its use, which he did, and the shocks 
 and fainting left him at once, and have never 
 returned. This man took no medicine." 
 
 " Rev. Mr. H., set. 30 ; of a nervo-sanguine tem- 
 parament ; addicted to the use of tobacco fifteen 
 years. For many years he was troubled with 
 epigastric sinking, and lately with shocks in the 
 same region. He is in tolerable health in other 
 respects, and, but for the annoyance which they 
 occasion him when first getting asleep, would not 
 think of asking medical advice. I recommended 
 him to quit his tobacco, which he did, and a per- 
 fect cure was the result." 
 
 " J. S., set. 40 ; of a nervo-billious temperament ; 
 followed the sea many years ; commenced smok- 
 
116 
 
 ing for spitting up his food; soon commenced 
 chewing, and carried it to excess, often using a 
 pound a week. Five years ago, began to feel a 
 sinking sensation at the pit of the stomach ; then 
 starting from his early slumbers, with a shock 
 through the epigastrium, and sometimes chest; a 
 rising sensation like an aura, to his head ; oppres- 
 sion at the chest great, and sudden difficulty of 
 breathing, palpitation, choking, sudden faintings, 
 unquiet sleep, frightful dreams, dyspepsia, and 
 hypochondriasis. From being strong, robust, and 
 resolute, he became weak, nervous, and timid. 
 In this condition he applied to me for advice. It 
 was with great difficulty that I could persuade him 
 to quit his tobacco, and, when he attempted it, was 
 often a backslider. But soon he perceived the 
 good effects, and was at length induced to lay it 
 entirely aside ; and with it went all his former 
 bad symptoms. I have since ascertained that he 
 was somewhat addicted to the use of ardent spirits, 
 which may have contributed in a measure to some 
 of the complaints." 
 
 "Remarks. — I might multiply cases, that have 
 fallen under my observation, to demonstrate the 
 fact that tobacco is capable, in certain constitutions, 
 and under certain circumstances, of producing a 
 specific set of phenomena, which are peculiar and 
 pathognomonic. All the symptoms are more or 
 less attendant on dyspepsia, hysteria, and hypochon- 
 driasis. But the shocks at the epigastrium are so 
 prominent a symptom, and so uniformly left when 
 tobacco was abandoned, as to constitute a striking 
 peculiarity. The habitual use of any narcotic is 
 liable to produce derangement of the digestive 
 organs, and through that, a long train of 
 nervous derangements, which baffle the skill 
 and tire the patience of the physician. The 
 digestion once impaired, the great nervous, 
 or ganglionic system takes on a chain of sympa - 
 
117 
 
 thies, which are often at a distance from the first 
 organ affected. 
 
 " The habitual use of tobacco, when not carried 
 to excess, does not always produce disease, and 
 perhaps we may say that it does not generally do 
 so. From the nature of the substance, and its 
 peculiar narcotic properties, an individual cannot 
 start off at once on a free and liberal use of it. 
 Nature has so fashioned us, that when we trans- 
 gress her bounds (especially in reference to 
 tobacco), we are reminded, by nausea, of the extent 
 we are allowed to go. If it were not for this, how 
 many would destroy themselves before a habit 
 could be formed, rendering its employment so safe 
 that large quantities can he taken almost with 
 impunity. It is the same with all narcotics. 
 Opium, for instance can be taken, if a habit is 
 once established, in immense quantities, and 
 apparently with little harm; still, there are 
 constitutions that have long held on under 
 the use of narcotics, that will receive gradually, 
 and almost imperceptibly, an injury which nothing 
 can remedy, so long as the pernicious habit is 
 persisted in. This is emphatically true as regards 
 the use of tobacco. The martyrs themselves little 
 suspect the secret enemy that is sapping the 
 foundations of health and life. They have been 
 accustomed to it, perhaps, from childhood. 
 Their grandfather, father, and brothers, have 
 used it before them. They never heard a word 
 spoken in disparagement of it, and their own 
 inclination is a powerful advocate for the pernicious 
 article : perhaps, too, their physician has spoken a 
 good word in favour of their common friend, 
 which has done much to establish it still stronger 
 in their good graces. They may, however, now 
 and then have misgivings, as they lay awake night 
 after night, taking an inventory of their wretched 
 feelings ; but this is laid to the charge of dyspepsia, 
 
118 
 
 or the wear and tear of business, until finally they 
 ascertain the true cause, or some acute malady 
 comes to their relief, which, while it lasts, compels 
 them to abandon (for a while, at least) the article, 
 while nature re-asserts the violated laws. 
 
 " As a general rule, those who use tobacco to 
 excess are much troubled with wakefulness ; and 
 when they do sleep, it is not " tired nature's sweet 
 restorer," but a succession of broken slumbers, 
 interrupted by startings and disagreeable dreams. 
 Excessive smoking has been known to produce a 
 state of the system in all respects similar to 
 delirium tremens. Most of the narcotics, I believe, 
 when habitually indulged in, render sleep broken 
 and disturbed with dreams of frightful imagery." 
 
A COMPARISON, 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Ne tibi pallentes moveant fastidia eaules. 
 
 Martial. 
 Pallidus offertur misero tibi caulis. 
 
 Juvenal. 
 
 I wish to make a digression here. I feel a strong 
 desire to relieve my lungs from a sense of 
 indescribable oppression ; let us, therefore, emerge 
 from the noxious and depressing atmosphere 
 which we have been so long respiring, and make 
 a short detour to the classic regions of Hellas, 
 inhale for a while the pure and bracing air of the 
 mountains of Attica, and then return by the Seven 
 Hills of the Eternal City. The excursion will 
 combine the utile dulci ; it will be both salubrious 
 and amusing, although our ramble should extend 
 no farther than the kitchen-gardens of the 
 primitive citizens of those two famous states. If 
 you can find u sermons in stones, and good in 
 every thing," you cannot fail to find something 
 palatable in a cabbage. 
 
 This king of vegetables is a perfect analogue of 
 our idolized tobacco. In its moral history it will 
 bear a close comparison with that of the Indian 
 weed. All things considered it is of equal insig- 
 nificance ; it was once encumbered with a similar 
 disproportion of praise, and regarded with the 
 same universal respect ; it only differs from it in 
 possessing in a small degree the quality of useful- 
 ness. After treating you, then, with a dish of 
 krambe served up in the old style, I shall return 
 recruited to my subject. 
 
120 
 
 At present this vegetable forms at most a whole- 
 some adjunct to other dishes ; but it is of so little 
 real value in itself as an article of substantial diet, 
 that it could but ill supply the place of any kind 
 of nutritive food. Eaten alone, without flesh- 
 meat or the like, it only mocks the cravings of 
 hunger ; and taken with substantial aliments it is a 
 mere diluent; a thousand pounds weight of it 
 contains almost nine hundred of water, and it 
 requires seven hundred pounds weight of fresh 
 cabbage to supply the place of one pound of 
 wheaten bread. In a medicinal point of view it 
 may be considered as an inferior sort of epicerastic. 
 
 Its value was far otherwise estimated by the 
 ancient voluptuaries of Greece and philoso- 
 phers of Kome. In those jovial days of 
 compotations and festivity, when Bacchus with the 
 satyrs and nymphs tripped it on the light fantastic 
 toe, and by their joy-inspiring example taught 
 gloomy mortals how to smooth the wrinkled brow 
 of care, this vegetable was held in extraordinary 
 esteem at the revels of the Bacchanalian — its 
 presence there was absolutely indispensable, as it 
 served in the momentous two-fold capacity of 
 general prophylactic against ebriety, and exorcist 
 of blue devils ; which is the true meaning the 
 divine Plato attaches to the word KpanraXr]. 1 Nor 
 was it less in vogue as a panpharmacon ; there 
 was not an evil in Pandora's box which it 
 did not utterly annihilate. It had a more general 
 character among the Pomans than the Greeks, but 
 an equally high reputation. 
 
 The confidence which the ancients placed in its 
 powers is almost incredible, and nothing affords a 
 better illustration of the influence of taste and 
 custom than the fact that its reputation remained 
 
 1 See Sympos, sub initium, where the guests are discussing 
 how they should drink their wine. 
 
121 
 
 untarnished through the rise and fall of a hundred 
 states. Its fame was mature at the infancy of the 
 greatest empire the world ever beheld, and it out- 
 lived its wreck more than a thousand years. The 
 Greeks regarded it with a degree of veneration 
 bordering on superstition. Extravagant encomiums 
 on its properties and uses may be read in the works 
 of every Greek and Roman physician, naturalist, re- 
 tailer of anecdotes, and writer of dramas from the 
 era of Pythagoras, A.C. 540, to that of Paulus iEgi- 
 netainthe seventh century. You will find it eulogised 
 by Roman authors from the birth of their Common- 
 wealth till the last of the Caesars. And after the 
 decline of classic literature in Europe you will see 
 its remarkable qualities emblazoned in all the 
 beauty of eastern amplification by the Arabian 
 writers on medicine and dietetics from the time 
 of Isaac the Jew about the 5th century, until the 
 epoch of the restoration of ancient medical 
 literature in Europe by Constantinus Africanus in 
 1060; after which its fame floats in calm un- 
 diminished lustre down the stream of mediaeval 
 writers, until its glory becomes all at once extin- 
 guished towards the end of the last century. 
 
 The theory that it cured all diseases, dissipated 
 crapula, prevented intoxication, preserved the con- 
 stitution, &c, &c, the silliest and perhaps most 
 untenable that ever was proposed to human 
 credulity, reminds one of nothing so much as the 
 wild rhapsody of Castor Duranti on tobacco ; yet 
 it existed as a general dogma, and was received 
 even by philosophers with the confidence due to a 
 first principle, for a space of perhaps three 
 thousand years. We can trace it holding a con- 
 spicuous place in one of the oldest customs of 
 Athens, which was probably coeval with the city 
 itself. The festival called amphidromia 1 or running 
 
 Plato in Taeset, 160 E. (Ed. Heind.) 
 
 M 
 
122 
 
 round the fire was religiously observed from time 
 immemorial on the fifth day after the birth of a 
 child. On this occasion the cabbage was always 
 present as a principal member of the ceremony. 
 It 'was first fried in oil and then given to the 
 mother ; from that time it formed a leading article 
 of her diet during the period of nursing, in order 
 to increase the secretion of milk. It is thus 
 mentioned by Ephippus in his verses on this 
 custom : — 
 
 *Et|/e/v r l\aih) pd<pavov ^y\aioryu£v^v. 
 
 Timeeus declares that the Sybarites, before they 
 began to mellow their clay with the blood of the 
 grape, always fortified their stomach against its 
 effects by eating cabbage. 1 Aristotle and his pupil 
 Theophrastus both acknowledge the anti- crapulous 
 properties of the cabbage. 2 Cato the elder is its 
 stoutest champion among the Romans ; with him 
 there is no disease it will not prevent or eradicate. 3 
 Dioscorides 4 and Pliny agree in stating that " it 
 prevents intoxication if it be taken at the com- 
 mencement of a swill ; and eaten at the finish it 
 dislodges blue devils." 5 Athenseus informs us 
 that the Egyptians were wine-bibbers of which 
 this is the proof — that among them alone it was an 
 established custom (wc vofii/uiov) at their feasts, not 
 to taste food until they had first eaten cabbage and 
 thus prepared themselves for their compotations. 6 
 He adds, " many persons eat even the seeds of the 
 plant before wassail to preserve them from ebriety." 
 It appears indeed, that whenever wine was drank 
 to any extent cabbage was eaten to counteract its 
 effects. Their bane and antidote were both before 
 them. But they amplified on the example of old 
 
 1 Athen, in Deipnos. lib. ix. 2 Problemat., iii., 17 
 
 3 De Re Rust., cap. 156. 4 Lib. ii., 33. 
 
 5 Nat. Hist., xx., 9. e Athen. Deipnosopli., 1. 
 
123 
 
 Mithridates, 1 that bravest of men, whom no poison 
 could destroy from the habit of taking it with its 
 antidote, they took the antidote both before and 
 after they swallowed the poison. 
 
 " O wife !" cries Eubulus, " bring me some 
 cabbage to relieve these horrors." "There is no 
 remedy," says Amphis, " so effectual in drunken- 
 ness as the sadden occurrence of an accident, for 
 it arrests in a wonderful manner the delirium of 
 intoxication, the cabbage itself is not more effica- 
 cious." But Cato who loved to " warm his old 
 heart with a glass" says it is good for everything — 
 ad omnes res salubre est. He adds a precept which 
 every tippler and epicure should treasure up in 
 his mind, for Cato is a great authority on the 
 subject. — His words are, " Si voles in convivio 
 multum bibere ccenareque Ubenter, ante ccenam esfeo 
 (eat) crudam (brassicam) quantum voles, ex aceto ; 
 et item, ubi ccenaveris, comesto aliqua quinque 
 folia; reddant te quasi nihil ederis biberisque, 
 bibesqae quantum voles. 2 It is evident from this 
 that Cato knew indeed, mero caluisse virtus. 
 
 Similar doctrines are inculcated by Galen/ 
 Oribasius, ^Etius, Alexander Trallianus, and Paul 
 of iEgina. Alexander, like Galen, recommends 
 it both externally and internally. Speaking of the 
 cure of headache produced by wine he prescribes 
 cabbage leaves softened in hot water to be bound 
 on the head. 4 
 
 The sentiments of Hali- Abbas coincide precisely 
 with those held by the Greeks and Romans on the 
 powers of the cabbage ; — he recommends large 
 fleshy cabbages for crapulous headache arising 
 from intoxication ; and observes, that it prevents 
 
 1 Profecit poto Mithridates saepe veneno. 
 
 Toxica ne possent saeva nocere sibi. — Martial, v. 77. 
 
 2 De Re Rustica, cap. 156. 3 Kara totcovq. 
 
 4 Lib. v., c. 10. 
 
124 
 
 the gross fumes of wine from ascending into the 
 brain. — * Sherris sack ascends me into the brain" 
 says Falstaff. 
 
 ( 'onstantirms Africarms one of the founders of 
 the celebrated Schola Salernitana, expresses the 
 same sentiments as those of his predecessors. 1 
 
 Petrus Crescentius in 1225, records its won- 
 derful properties. 2 Lsevinius Lemnius in 1550, 
 places its virtues among the hidden mysteries of 
 nature. 3 And thus the fame of its qualities is kept 
 in a blaze by eminent writers till the end of the 
 eighteenth century. Camerarius, and, if I re- 
 member right, Fabius Colonna, also Gerarde, 
 Matthioli in his Comm. on Dioscorides, Etmuller, 
 Thomas Bartholine, Frederic Hoffman, and Dr. 
 .Robert James, are all enthusiastic admirers of the 
 virtues of the cabbage. Some of these eminent 
 men even give credit to the mutual antipathy 
 which was affirmed by Androcydes to subsist 
 between this vegetable and the vine ; and main- 
 tain its power both of dispelling crapula and pre- 
 venting ebriety. Thomas Bartholine extols it in a 
 strain of fervour which almost transcends the en- 
 comiums of Cato Major. After dilating on the 
 abundance and quality of the cabbage of his native 
 country he observes, — " On this account when a 
 certain foreign physician came into Denmark with 
 a design to settle and practice there, and saw the 
 gardens of the country people so well stocked with 
 cabbage he prognosticated with good reason that 
 he should meet with little encouragement in that 
 part of the world." 4 
 
 It would well repay your trouble to peruse both 
 the chapter quoted, and the following one of Cato's 
 little treatise de Ee Eustica, where you will find 
 
 1 Loci Comm, lib. v., c. 95. 
 2 De Agricultura, in vocem. 
 
 3 De Occult. Nat. Mirae., ii., 48, and iv., 10. 
 
 4 De Medicina Danorum Doniest., Dissert. 1. 
 
 I 
 
125 
 
 an eulogium on the properties and various uses of 
 the cabbage as a medicine and an article of diet, 
 which completely obumbrates anything to be met 
 with except the systematic puffs of Scribonius 
 Largus and his plagiarist Marcellus the Empiric. 
 We cannot, however, justly compare the simple 
 and frugal times of Cato the elder, or even those 
 long posterior to him, with the exuberant and 
 luxurious paraphernalia of our own tables. In 
 the days of Cato there is no doubt the cabbage 
 occupied the place at the Roman tables which is 
 now so well supplied by the potato at ours. It 
 was therefore entitled to an appreciation commen- 
 surate with the value of those articles of food 
 which we possess in such abundance. I believe 
 indeed we can form but a very imperfect con- 
 ception of the real worth of this vegetable to them, 
 for whilst its praises are sounded in strains which 
 might appear ridiculous to modern ears, it is but 
 justice to suppose their encomiums were no more 
 than proportionate to their experience and con- 
 viction of its worth. A hungry king now-a-days 
 might feel some reluctance to feast on a dish of 
 cabbage ; but in former times it seems to have 
 been cultivated as much for the use of the king 
 as of the beggar, and was enjoyed no doubt with 
 equal relish by both ; we are told by Columella, 1 
 
 toto quae plurima terras 
 
 Orbe virens paritur plebi, regique superbo 
 Frigoribus caules, et veri cymata mittit. 
 
 That lierb which o'er the whole terrestrial ball 
 In great abundance nourishes for all ; 
 Yields the poor peasant and the haughty king 
 Cabbage in whiter, — juicy sprouts in spring. 
 
 Drusus Caesar following the corrupt example 
 of the cook Apicius despised the cabbage and 
 
 1 Lib. x. 
 
126 
 
 treated it as vile food, and his father Tiberius 
 gave him a severe lecture for the depravity of his 
 taste. 1 
 
 As a further proof of the high esteem in which 
 this pot-herb was held in the good old times, we 
 are informed by several of the poets, &c, quoted 
 by Athenseus 2 that it was considered sacred, and 
 an object by which persons sometimes swore. 
 Nicander in his Georgics says, " the ancients 
 called the cabbage the prophet {fiavrig) of the 
 pot-herbs." Menander calls the cabbage sacred; 
 and it is thus spoken of in the Iambics of Hipponax 
 — " The bending suppliant adored the seven-leaved 
 cabbage" &c. " I swear by the cabbage," says 
 Ananius, " that of all men I love thee most," &c, 
 &c. ; and Athenaeus assures us " there was no 
 absurdity in this, since Zeno the founder of the 
 Stoics, in imitation of Socrates' mode of swearing 
 by the dog, 3 swore by the caper" &c. Pliny 4 says, 
 in consideration of its value Chrysippus the 
 physician and Dieuches wrote each an entire work 
 on the uses of the cabbage and its adaptation to 
 the several members of the body according to 
 their diseases. He adds that during the space of 
 six hundred years from the building of the city, 
 the Romans cured every disease and healed every 
 sore with the cabbage alone." " Sententiam 
 (Catonis) vel eo diligentius persequi par est, ut 
 noscatur qua medicina usus sit annis sexcentis 
 Eomanus populus." But it must be observed 
 here, that during this long interval the Eomans 
 had not the benefit of a single physician in the 
 whole of their territories ; so that on one occasion 
 when the city had been ravaged by a pestilence 
 for three years without intermission, — " Triennio 
 con tin uo vexata pestilentia civitas nostra," 5 they 
 
 1 Plin., xx. 19. 2 Deipnos. ix. 
 
 3 Plato in Apol. Socr. 4 Lib. xix., 9. 
 
 * Valer. Max., i., 8. 
 
127 
 
 were under the necessity of bringing the image of 
 ^Esculapius, or, as others say, the god himself 
 in the shape of a large brown serpent, from his 
 temple at Epidaurus to Rome to cure the plague. 1 
 But you will be surprised when you learn the 
 cause of this absurd belief. The origin of the 
 general confidence in the anti-crapulous virtues of 
 the plant is involved in the same web of mytholo- 
 gical perplexity which mystifies most of the 
 early history of Greece. Let us, however, en- 
 deavour to disentangle it so far as to elucidate our 
 subject, — it is always worth the labour to trace 
 effects to their cause. Virgil accounts the man 
 happy who can do so : 
 
 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. 
 
 The Greeks say that Jupiter being once placed in 
 a dilemma at having to explain two oracles which 
 contradicted each other, laboured so hard to recon- 
 cile them that the perspiration dropped from his 
 divine face, and falling upon the ground produced 
 a cabbage on the spot. This is a very good 
 apologue, but what Cassianus 2 tells us in his 
 Georgics is more poetic, thatLycurgus was bound to 
 a vine byBacchus, as a punishment for his impiety 
 in cutting down all the vines in his kingdom, and 
 that from the tears he shed on the occasion 
 there grew up a cabbage. Hence the antipathy 
 which has subsisted ever since between that vege- 
 table and the vine. 
 
 Plutarch in his Ethics glances twice at the story 
 of the cutting down of the vines : the true state 
 of the case, however, seems to be as follows. The 
 Thracians of old as every body knows were cele- 
 brated drunkards from time immemorial, and 
 many allusions are made by the ancient poets to 
 
 1 Livius, x., 47. a Teujirovuca, lib* xii. c. 17. 
 
128 
 
 this character of them. Horace 1 denounces their 
 drunken brawls thus : — 
 
 Natis in usuni lsetitiae scyphis 
 Pugnare, Thracum est. 
 
 "lis the Thracians' delight 
 To drink and to right. 
 
 Now this Lycurgus the son of Dryas, the son, 
 I believe, of Bellerophon, which by the way 
 carries back the celebrity of the cabbage to near 
 the time of the Tiojan war, was an ancient king of 
 Thrace, who being scandalized at the immorality 
 of his people and the despicable condition to which 
 they had reduced themselves and his kingdom by 
 their continual debaucheries, and determining to 
 put a stop to their degrading habits, ordered every 
 vine without exception throughout his dominions 
 to be rooted up ; some 2 say cut down, Ovid gives 
 him the epithet bipenniferus , w T hich implies that 
 he cut them down, but either way will do. These 
 are the facts, and they show him to have been a 
 good and well-meaning though impolitic king; 
 yet every one appears to blame him for his virtue. 
 Virgil notices him as a crabbed old fellow in the 
 following lines : — 3 
 
 Terra procnl vastis colitur Mavortia campis, 
 Thraces arant, acri quondam regnata Lycurgo ; 
 
 and Propertius in his Elegy to Bacchus* calls him 
 a madman. 
 
 Vesanumque nova nequicquamin vite Lycurgum, 
 
 Plutarch also blames him for his folly and 
 impiety ; because, as he says, he could have better 
 effected his purpose by introducing the Water 
 Nymphs ; that is, by teaching his people to drink 
 
 1 Od. i., 27 1. 2 Apollodorus, hi., 5. 
 
 ^Eneid, hi., 15. * hi. E. 15, 23. 
 
129 
 
 pure water instead ot wine. Our business how- 
 ever is only to notice that this transaction of 
 Lycurgus was too true, too naked to suit the 
 delicate tastes of the Greeks, they therefore threw 
 over it a mythic mantle, and it is on the myth of a 
 cabbage growing up from the tears of Lycurgus 
 that the gist of the theory rests. For it was 
 natural for the Greeks to conclude that the cab- 
 bage, which owed its birth to his tears shed on the 
 occasion of his punishment for violating this 
 plant, would entertain an implacable enmity to 
 the vine, and take every opportunity of insulting 
 and annoying it; at least the wise Greeks 
 took such for granted, and at once adopted the 
 creed; and this belief whelped a hypothesis as 
 absurd as the fable, " That no vine will grow where 
 a cabbage is planted." Theophrastus 1 to whom it 
 is ascribed, says or hints, that the vine flies from 
 his enemy as long as he has breath to run, because 
 the olfactory nerves of the vine are exceedingly 
 incommoded by the stench emitted by the cabbage ; 
 on this account, Timaeus, Theophrastus, and 
 half-a-dozen others conclude that there exists an 
 unceasing and deadly feud between them. — " Per- 
 nicialia brassicae cum vite odia," says Pliny ; and 
 in their continual and implacable contests, it 
 appears this vegetable polecat always has the upper 
 hand owing to the peculiar endowment of an in- 
 tolerably fetid odour ; the consequence is, that the 
 vine which is by nature of a very delicate consti- 
 tution, and gentlemanly sensitiveness, and cannot 
 bear a cabbage " between the wind and his 
 nobility," uniformly flies if he can, from his burly 
 antagonist, and by this means preserves his life, 
 knowing that, — 
 
 He who fights and runs away 
 May live to fight another day. 
 
 Sib John Menkes. 
 
 1 Hist. Plant., vii., 4, and Caus, Plant, ii., 7» 
 
130 
 
 But if he happen to be tied by the leg, as is mostly 
 the case, he has no alternative but to remain in 
 hopeless durance, and be stunk to death like one 
 doomed to the hell of the Rabbins. We can hardly 
 be surprised at the belief in this popular error 
 when it is supported by such an authority as 
 Cicero, who says ; — Quinetiam (vites) a caulibus si 
 propesati sint, ut a pestiferiset nocentibus,refugere 
 dicuntur, nee eos ulla ex parte contingere. 1 
 
 We are now come to the practical application of 
 the discovery. The utilitarian Greeks were too 
 astute not to take advantage of every circumstance 
 that turned up, whether in the art of life or the art 
 of war ; so the good old teetotaller Doctor Andro- 
 cydes who lived in the time of Alexander the 
 Great, and to whom, by-the-bye, he wrote a curious 
 laconic epistle on Temperance, 2 inferred by a con- 
 venient sort of logical illation, that if this pugnacious 
 plant be so invariably triumphant over his foe in 
 the open arena of a vineyard, it is reasonable to 
 conclude that he would be no less successful if he 
 were bagged with his enemy in the narrow cockpit 
 of the human stomach ; because being contiguous 
 to his enemy there, he would be able to grapple 
 with him at once, and turn him out of doors 
 whenever a maudlin Greek found it necessary to 
 open a safety valve for the safety of his life. Caesar 
 says, st Men eagerly believe what they wish ;" and 
 with the Greeks this was the consummation they 
 so devoutly wished. As soon therefore as Andro- 
 cydes had propounded his brilliant theory, they 
 pinned their faith to it ; and it was immediately 
 resolved without a dissenting voice, that an anti- 
 crapulous patent should be taken out by which, 
 without the fear of being haunted by the spirit of 
 wine in the shape of a walking mopstick, they 
 
 1 Nat. Deor. vii., 47 : see also Palladius, Mens. Aug Tit. v. 
 For which see Plin. Nat. Hist, xiv., 5. 
 
131 
 
 would be able to enjoy their " brimming bowl" 
 from morn till dewy eve, and again from eve till 
 morn. Whilst Androcydes who was a temperate 
 man and a good, and although a doctor, was no 
 
 Doctor of tremendous paunch, 
 
 Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink — 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 might justly exclaim with the poet, on the con- 
 summation of this mighty revolution in the moral 
 world, " exegi monumentum sere perennius." 
 
 That I have only metaphrased this story of the 
 credulity of the ancients, 1 appeal to the authors 
 already quoted, especially Pliny. 1 In reading 
 him, however, I beg you to observe that he almost 
 invariably mistakes the text of Theophrastus, 
 whom he copies. In the present instance and 
 in many others he turns Pa^avoc, the Attic 
 word for cabbage, into the equivocal raphamis in- 
 stead of brassica. Quorundam natura non necat 
 quidem, sed lsedit odore aut succi mistura; ut 
 raphanus et laurus vitem. Olfactrix enim intelli- 
 gitur, et tangi (angi) odore mirum in modum : 
 ideo cum juxta sit, averti et recedere, saporemque 
 inimicum fugere. Hinc sumpsit Androcydes medi- 
 cinam contra ebrietates, raphanum fbrassicamj 
 mandi prcecepie?is. 2 
 
 There is a passage in Philostratus which 
 must be noticed here from its analogy to 
 this singular theory. He says Bacchus fur- 
 nished the vine for the common use of all creatures 
 except the owl, which he scares away from the 
 grape ; and that if a child while very young and 
 unaccustomed to wine should eat the eggs of the 
 owl, he would feel a disgust at wine all his life, 
 
 1 Nat. Hist., xvii., 24. 
 8 Consult Yarro, lib. i. Palladius Men. Aug. Tit., v. 
 Crescentius, vi., lib. i., in cauli. 
 
13£ 
 
 and also abhor those who were drunk with it. 
 T/jv yap a/JL7reXov 6 Aiovvaog irapi\u koivtiv ira&i 
 nXrjv Trig yXavKog, ticctvrjv ce fiovriv ap* cnrwdeiTai tCjv 
 j3orpvo)V, iweicr) rote avup^iroig cla&aXXei rov oivov' 
 <Ja yap tt\q yXavKog d <j>ayoi 7rai§iov vr)iri6v re koX 
 aoivov awsx^ av£TaL T(J H 0iVi $ iraaav rr)v riXiKiav, kcu 
 ovt av irioi Ka\ (JH&tiTai rovg /jLtOvovrag. 1 
 
 I have made this digression simply with a 
 view to show how nearly the men of two 
 remotely distant periods of time have appioxi- 
 mated in pursuing almost the same course of self- 
 deception, by clothing two plants in attributes 
 suited to their views, and furnishing pretexts for the 
 gratification of kindred appetites, the indulgence of 
 which levels them to the same depth of degrada- 
 tion. As to the cabbage, I grant if men endowed 
 it with visionary qualities for such purposes, the 
 indulgence in it was followed by no pernicious 
 effects, but on the contrary, it afforded a healthful 
 repast ; whereas tobacco taken on any condition 
 not sanctioned by necessity, is both prejudicial to 
 health, and forms an ungentlemanly habit. I have 
 no hesitation in saying further, that wherever the 
 practice of smoking is introduced beyond the 
 purlieus of the alehouse it becomes to every one 
 within its sphere a nuisance even more intolerable 
 than the stench of the cabbage is to the vine. 
 
 1 EiKovt£ Lib. 2, 17, 8. 
 
LETTER XL 
 
 HUMAN" HABITS. 
 
 N6/iO£, 6 7ravTujv fiaffikevg 
 QvutCjv ts Kal a9ava.Tv.v. 
 n aysi Sueawv rb jitaw^aTov 
 inrtpra-q, X H 9 1 ' — 
 
 PlXD\R 
 
 Lord Bacon has an observation in one of his 
 Essays, which is almost a literal translation of this 
 fragment of the great lyrist ; he speaks of custom 
 as being the principal magistrate of human life. 2 
 In assenting to the truth of the doctrine I should 
 consider my work only half performed if I 
 omitted to elucidate the preceding observations 
 on tobacco by a few practical remarks on human 
 habits in reference to its use and abuse. But 
 before considering the particular habits of smoking, 
 chewing, and snuff-taking — the practices to which 
 I particularly address myself, I wish to premise a 
 few observations on habits in general. 
 
 The definition of custom is perhaps more properly 
 the province of the statesman or the lawyer ; but 
 of habit, if we divide it into the moral and physical, 
 as the pious and logical Bishop Butler has done in 
 his incomparable " Analogy of Religion," the defi- 
 nition will belong exclusively to the priest and the 
 physician. Let it answer our present views, how- 
 ever, to settle it somehow in this manner — Custom 
 exerts its influence on communities, habit on 
 individuals ; i.e. custom is the habit of states or 
 societies, habit the custom of persons. Custom 
 
 1 Scholiast Ad Nem. ix. v. 35 . 
 2 Essays, No. 40. 
 
134 
 
 has often the force of a law by long prescriptive 
 usage and governs masses of individuals ; habit 
 never extends beyond the government of the 
 individual, for it is the despot of himself only. 
 The laws of some of the Grecian states were 
 nothing but customs. Solon founded his laws 
 on those of Athens. King Pepin ordained that 
 where there should happen to be no laws custom 
 should be complied with. 1 General customs 
 frequently arise from personal habits, or from 
 accident, as in the case of the Macrocephali one of 
 the ancient tribes dwelling near the shores of the 
 Euxine somewhere about Colchis. Hippocrates 
 says they were named Longheads, because they 
 differed from every other race in the length of their 
 heads. This disproportion was at first the effect 
 of custom — 6 vofiog atTiwrarog iyivzro, k. t. A. "This 
 custom," he adds, "arose Irom the idea of noble- 
 ness which they attached to the length of the head." 2 
 The Greeks considered habits and morals as one 
 and the same for they justly included the one in 
 the other ; and Hesiod clearly means character, 
 the aggregate of morals, where he describes the 
 mental qualities of Pandora — 
 
 'Ev c apa ol OTr)9toai fociKTOpog ' Apy Ei<p6vTr)g 
 tytvota 9' aifivXiovg re \6yovg /ecu tTriicXoTrov i)9og 
 T £ D£f. 3 
 
 Next, Hermes taught her how the heart to move, 
 "With all the false alluring arts of love, 
 Her manners all deceitful , and her tongue 
 With falsehoods fruitful and detraction hung 
 
 Hippocrates will be readily understood by every 
 one who has enjoyed the comforts of a good bed 
 or felt the discomforts of a hard one — Kotrrj rj f 
 
 1 Laws of the Lombards, ii. 4 ' , 6 . 
 
 2 Hippocr. iripi dkpwv, vccitojv, tottojv. Sect. 20. 
 
 3 Oper. et. Dies. 
 
135 
 
 Trapd to Wog fiaXOaKi), ttovov ejulttoUei, kcu (TfcArjjOr/ 
 irapa to Wog. 1 Whether the bed be soft or hard, 
 it is equally incommodious to him who is unac- 
 customed to it. Ovid mourns that he has no 
 prospect of dying in his accustomed bed, and no 
 doubt he had some reason, considering the 
 difference of temperature in winter between Tome 
 on the Black Sea, and Rome — 
 
 2 Nee mea consueto languescent corpora lecto. 
 
 Aristophanes employs Tpoirog for that acquisititious 
 habit, or temper of mind, called humor. 3 Eyw Ss 
 tovtov tov Tpoirov 7rwc zljjl aft. 4 St. Paul 5 admon- 
 ishes thus, Mtj TrXavacrOE tyOupovmv rjdr) yor\<jTa 
 ofjLiXtai Kcucai, — Be not led into error. Evil inter- 
 courses corrupt useful habits. Cicero employs 
 "consuetudo" indiscriminately for custom and habit. 
 " Consuetudine jus est quod aut leviter a natura 
 tractum aluit, et majus fecit usus ut religionem ; aut 
 siquid eorum quae ante diximus ab natura profectum 
 majus factum propter consuetudinem videmus ; 
 aut quod in morem vetustas vulgi approbatione 
 perduxit ;" 6 and in another place, " Anicula? 
 ssepe inediam biduum aut triduum ferunt : subdue 
 cibum unum diem athletse, Jovem Olympium eum 
 ipsum cui se exercebit, implorabit, ferre non posse 
 clamabit. — Consuetudinis magna est vis. 7 A 
 poor old woman will endure hunger for two or 
 
 1 Vict in. Morb. Acut., sect. 23. 
 * Trist. iii. 3. 339. 
 3 So graphically described by Ben. Johnson : — 
 
 ■When some one peculiar quality 
 
 Doth so possess a man that he doth draw 
 All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, 
 In their connuctions, all to run one Avay, 
 This may be truly said to be a humor. 
 
 Every Man out of his Humor. 
 
 4 Plut. 246. * i Corinth, xv. 33. 
 
 6 De Invent, ii. 54. 7 Tusc. ii. 17. 
 
136 
 
 three days together; but, withhold food from a 
 wrestler for only one day, and he calls his 
 God to witness, and swears he cannot live. 
 — So great is the power of habit. So also 
 Quinctilian, " Superest igitur consuetudo : nam 
 fuerit pene ridiculum, malle sermonem quo locuti 
 sunt homines, quam quo loquantur. Et sane quid est 
 aliud vetus sermo, quam vetus loquendi consue- 
 tudo ?' n and, again — " consuetudo et exercitatio" — 
 habit and practice—" facilitatem maxime parit : 
 quae si paululum intermissa fuerit non velocitas ilia 
 modo tardatur, sed et vapK^ixa ipsum coit atque con- 
 currit." 2 I must remark here that I have not 
 preferred these examples in a critical point of view, 
 but to show partially the practice of the ancients 
 in respect to the interchange of habit and custom. 
 All the occupations which formally engage the 
 attention or employ the physical energies of men 
 in operations repeated with uniformity and fre- 
 quency are nothing but habits, each distinguished 
 by some technical definition. The habits of civilized 
 men must necessarily far exceed in number and 
 complexity those of the savage. The habits of the 
 latter are only his instincts " carried into act." 
 Self preservation, the supply of animal wants, the 
 ardours of love, the bitterness of hatred, and the 
 desire of revenge, are both the fountain and the 
 compass of his habits ; the energy of his genius or 
 the sagacity of his mind is seldom employed on 
 grander conceptions than the dextrous exercise of 
 the rude arts which subserve his limited necessities, 
 or humour his passions ; so that his habits form 
 only a minute portion of the interminable series 
 of human engagements. On the other hand, in 
 civilized communities the march of intellect, 
 the progress of refinement, and the insatiety 
 of human desire have multiplied the sources of 
 
 1 Inst. Orat. i. 6. 2 Id. x. 7. 
 
137 
 
 gratification to a boundless extent, and the eata 
 logue of habits has swelled pari passu to the 
 dimensions of a cyclopedia. 
 
 Habit bears some analogy to a law of organic 
 life ; and like a natural law it admits of a full and 
 satisfactory explanation. It is a means of sur- 
 mounting many difficulties connected with our 
 well being which would remain insuperable without 
 its aid. It is therefore essential to rational beings, 
 because as rational beings our instincts are insuffi- 
 cient and our reason often fallacious ; so that it 
 exerts a necessary influence on our moral conduct, 
 our mental operations, and our muscular actions. 
 In these relations it penetrates to the deepest 
 recesses of the system, and takes a leading part in 
 the moulding of human character. When it is 
 once established in the constitution, it may with 
 difficulty be disused ; but it can never be effaced 
 from the memory. 
 
 All our moral, intellectual, and physical habits 
 are founded on a groundwork of particular bodily 
 movements, or particular modes of thinking re- 
 peated frequently under the direction of the will 
 and attention, until they are performed with such 
 readiness and ease that they are begun and ended 
 without the will, or even consciousness taking any 
 cognizance of them; the more frequently and 
 regularly such actions are repeated the sooner is 
 the habit formed ; because every repetition renders 
 it more familiar, and impresses it as it were more 
 deeply on the mind. Habits are also acquired by 
 slow degrees and almost insensible efforts; and 
 neither the organs of the body, nor the faculties of 
 the mind can be forced into habits, or suddenly in- 
 vested with them, good or bad. 
 
 Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, 
 
 As brooks make livers, rivers run to stas. 
 
 Dryjl>en. 
 
138 
 
 Yet Bishop Butler thinks that such effect is possible. 
 " Nor do we know/ 5 he says, " how far it is possible 
 in the nature of things that effects should be 
 wrought in us at once equivalent to habits. 1 " 
 Nemo fuit repente turpissimus 2 — " no man ever 
 suddenly became a sinner." No ! nor a saint 
 either. He must be gradually exercised in what- 
 ever constitues a vice, a virtue, or anything else, 
 before it can become habitual. To suppose a 
 habit could be formed by a single effort of the 
 mind, or a single act of the organs, is to 
 suppose what logicans would call a moral 
 impossibility, or something like an effect with- 
 out a cause. For if the mechanism of habits, 
 if I may so express myself, be considered, you 
 will find such an occurrence wholly at variance 
 with the laws of nature. When you examine the 
 materials of which they are constituted, the laws 
 by which they operate, and the combined agency 
 which establishes them in the constitution, you 
 will see that habit is based on a principle of 
 organization and acts as determinately by a law 
 as any other function. 
 
 As, however, it is impossible here to enter into 
 detail on so complex and voluminous an enquiry 
 as is involved in the full consideration of habit 
 and its relations to the whole philosophy of the 
 human mind, I must limit myself to the difficult 
 task of endeavouring to convey to you a knowledge 
 of the subject in outlined miniature. 
 
 All ) habits are essentially referable to the 
 influence of the nervous principle and the circula- 
 tion of the blood. And it is a very old and 
 popular maxim that the impressions which are 
 made on the human mind in infancy and youth 
 are both the deepest and most lasting of all acqui- 
 
 1 Analogy, &c , part 1 , chap. v. 
 2 Juvenal, Sat. ii. 83. 
 
189 
 
 sitions ; a maxim which our after experience 
 proves to be correct. The reason which physio- 
 logists assign for these effects, is, that in those 
 periods the sensibility of the nerves which impart 
 the sensitive power to the organs of the body is in 
 its most excitable condition, and more susceptible 
 of impressions made on these instruments both 
 within and without the body, than at any other 
 stage of life. 
 
 It has been conjectured by some philosophers 
 on apparently solid grounds, that the human mind 
 at birth is as destitute of ideas as a blank sheet of 
 paper : such is Aristotle's notion. But the pro- 
 position is still undetermined, and it will be as well 
 for you to leave so subtle a question to the 
 decision of the judges, and take it in the mean time 
 only as a theorem. But beyond all controversy 
 there are primitive emotions in the mind 
 before birth, though they can be only very 
 limited and slight, taking into consideration the 
 undeveloped state of the organs of the intellect. 
 Aristotle grants something of this kind, in the to 
 7rE<£uicoc. But do not emotions however faint 
 imply a cause ? an idea traced on the mind ? and 
 is not the idea itself the result of an inward 
 impression or suggestion ? An idea, speaking 
 generally, is the represensation made on the 
 mind, by the impression of objects with which 
 the nervous villae come in contact ; an innate 
 independent perception originating in the mind 
 itself is also an idea. This approximates the 
 notion which Plato entertained of certain immuta- 
 ble essences existing from all eternity in the Divine 
 mind, which were the archetypes of the universe. 
 
 The brain is the organ of sense, of motion, and 
 of the intellectual faculties ; it communicates with 
 the rest of the body by means of the nerves, which 
 are cords or filaments distributed in myriads 
 through the system. The whole surface of the 
 
140 
 
 body is protected from injury by a panoply of 
 nerves like the linen hauberk of King Amasis, so 
 delicate minute and close in texture that the 
 point of the finest needle could not find space in 
 the meshes without touching numbers of 
 their tactile extremities. All these nerves ter- 
 minate mediately or immediately in the brain. 
 
 This complex organ consists essentially of two 
 portions distinguished by the name of the grey 
 and the white substance. The grey, or hemis- 
 pherical ganglion forms the circumference, though 
 not confined to the surface alone ; and the white 
 constitutes the great proportion of the central mass, 
 whose office it may be conjectured is to secrete or 
 evolve a certain vital principle to be noticed below. 
 The grey portion does not dip far into the substance 
 but is spread over certain deep winding folds or 
 convolutions, which fit without pressure into each 
 others bosoms, and thus gives a vast extent of 
 surface to the grey neurine. 
 
 This interminable congeries of folds forms 
 a system of independent organs connected 
 with each other in office and structure, and are 
 now generally considered, and with great proba • 
 bility, to be the organs of the intellectual faculties. 
 All the nerves pass through the white tubular or 
 dielectric matter, and terminate in the grey neurine. 
 Each nerve is double and consists of a sensory and 
 motor filament, and are endowed with a singular 
 vital property, called sensibility, which fits 
 them for the service they have to perform. 
 The nerves of sensation are sometimes called 
 centripetal, because they convey all impressions 
 from the circumference of the body to the grand 
 centre of the nervous system — the brain; and 
 those of motion, centrifugal, being the messengers, 
 as it were of the mind, conveying all mental com- 
 mands from the centre to the various organs and 
 parts of the body. 
 
141 
 
 All impressions made on the sensory papillse of 
 the nerves of sensation forming the special senses, 
 as touch, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, are 
 conveyed along these conductors to the brain, 
 which by an inscrutable process instantaneously 
 excites the idea or image of these impressions on 
 the mind. Each organ receives its own special 
 impression which is immediately manifested in the 
 evolution of the corresponding phenomena of 
 sensation, thought, or emotion. Let us suppose for 
 example an object of distress makes its impression 
 on the sight, it is first painted on the retina of the 
 eye, the visual image is then transmitted with the 
 speed of lightning along the optic nerve to the 
 organ of benevolence, when the idea of pity is 
 instantaneously perceived in the mind, and is the 
 commencement of a train of mental operations 
 which may excite to acts of charity. Thus we feel, 
 perceive and act, and hence we know that we exist, 
 and exist in relation to something else. This is 
 consciousness ; and our consciousness proves 
 beyond all controversy that the nerves are the 
 inlets of our knowledge, the messengers of our 
 will, and the medium through which we recognize 
 our relation to a First Cause. 
 
 To be perfectly correct, however, you are not 
 to understand the nerves to be the positive con- 
 ductors of the materials of thought or the positive 
 emissaries of the mind's behests ; they are only 
 the channels by means of which all communica- 
 tion is carried on with the sensorium. There is a 
 vital principle, subtle and invisible, called the ner- 
 vous fluid, the nervous principle, the vis nervosa, 
 the 7rv£u/ia, galvanism, &c, which pervades in their 
 specialties all organisms, gives energy to, and 
 vitalizes the animal machine ; it follows the blood 
 in its circulation, and the juices in their meander- 
 ings into the minutest crypts of living matter, and 
 it uses the nerves as its proper canal, like the 
 
142 
 
 conducting rods of electricity, to and from the 
 sensorium. The properties of this wondrous 
 principle are to flow wherever it is required, to 
 serve as messenger from the circumference to the 
 centre, and from the centre to all parts and organs 
 of the system ; and to animate and maintain all 
 the compages of the body, in due vigor and vital 
 harmony, while the blood maintains and supplies 
 this vital spirit which is secreted from it in the 
 brain. " The life of the flesh is the blood," is a 
 physiological axiom as old as creation. 
 
 Now these two principal elements, the nervous 
 fluid and the blood, are the chief instruments in 
 the formation of habit. The blood nourishes the 
 body, maintains the innate heat and supplies all 
 waste. The nevous fluid supports the vital actions 
 and is the medium of intelligence between matter 
 and mind, and furnishes the material of all intel- 
 lectual operations ; and as long as the various 
 organs of the body perform their functions in 
 harmonious relation, the distribution of these 
 principles to all parts of the system proceeds with 
 isomeric influx. Every part and organ is furnished 
 with a supply suited and proportioned to its ordi- 
 nary wants. But when the equlibrium of any part 
 or organ is disturbed by increased action, nature in 
 her abhorence of pause allows no interval of 
 suspense. It is a principle of all animal organisms 
 that wherever increased activity reigns there must 
 be increased expenditure of the vital energies, 
 and therefore an instantaneous supply is sent to 
 maintain the power and activity of the organ 
 under exercise. As the action continues the 
 waste proceeds ; the equilibrum between loss 
 and supply may be at first maintained at the 
 expense of the parts around but ultimately the 
 brain is called upon for additional supplies. 
 The increased action, whatever it be, must be 
 supported, and supported it is by a continued 
 
143 
 
 evolution and continued influx. I am speaking of 
 the single effects of a single action, and how that 
 action is sustained while it lasts ; when it ceases, the 
 natural equality of supply and demand is restored. 
 
 But when the same action is frequently repeated, 
 nature, in order to provide according to her own 
 laws for the new action set up, elaborates an 
 increased supply, and establishes a ready means 
 of furnishing it by enlarging the vascular and 
 nervous system of the organ or parts in action, to 
 admit with facility and regularity the quantity 
 required. Every part of the organ receives in- 
 creased nourishment even to the bone. 
 
 A dilatation of the vessels of the parts operating 
 commences, and if the action be continued through 
 a period of time, even at moderate intervals, a per- 
 manent augmentation of size is effected, and an 
 increased influx of the elements of nutrition and of 
 vital energy circulates thenceforth in the parts. 
 It is in this wonderful and facile adaptation or 
 bending to circumstances, that you will discover 
 how nature quietly engrafts on the constitution 
 what is commonly called a second nature, which 
 rules like a law equally our pyschicai moral and 
 physical system. The same causes produce the 
 same results. Every thought as well as every act 
 effects a change in the sensorium; and mental 
 habits are acquired with equal readiness and ease, 
 and by the same means as those of the body. For 
 the organs of the mind being the most vascular in 
 the body, are liberally supplied with the pabu- 
 lum of life and activity, and undergo enlargements 
 or acquire accumulations of gray matter 
 according to the degree in which the intellectual 
 faculties are exercised. This is no theory. You 
 have learnt that all the organs increase by exercise, 
 and the fact is beautifully and graphically illus- 
 trated in the progressive development of the 
 convolutions during the process of growth and 
 
144 
 
 education; and in the collapse and decrease of 
 the same organs by long disuse, madness, and 
 paralysis. According to the investigations of A. 
 Desmoulins, and Magendie, the brain begins to 
 form its corrugations only about the end of the 
 sixth or beginning of the seventh month of fetal 
 life. The depth and number of these convolutions 
 increase progressively after birth. So that in the 
 brain of the new born infant which may be 
 appositely termed the zero of human intellect, the 
 corrugations are ill denned, and the sulci without 
 depth : in that of the clown the progress of 
 development is, as it were, arrested at the freez- 
 ing point, the highest to which his necessities 
 have permitted or required his intellects to soar ; 
 and in that of the philosopher the greater size 
 and vascularity of the organs and the depths of 
 the folds display not only the measure of his 
 mental capacity, but almost the degree to which 
 the organs have been exercised and increased 
 by the diversified operations of his mind. And 
 the law is the same, whether you lift a pin, 
 wield a sledge hammer, or resolve the difficult 
 and abstruse problems of mathematics — one 
 result invariably ensues, an increase of the circula- 
 ting fluids and a supplemental influx of nervous 
 energy to the parts exercised, proportioned and 
 adapted to the violence, the intensity or the 
 continuance of the action. 
 
 As the operations of the mind increase in number 
 and variety, so the gray substance of the brain 
 augments in quantity. But the size of this organ 
 being amenable to the laws of organised life which 
 limit its growth to a due proportion with the rest 
 of the system, the Author of Nature has provided 
 a means of enlarging the organ of thought without 
 disturbing the general symmetry, by giving to the 
 convolutions the power of deepening, or acquiring 
 additional matter according to the active energy 
 
145 
 
 of the mind and the nervous system. Every line, 
 nay, even the smallest divisible part of a line which 
 the furrows acquire in depth, increase-s by so much 
 the capacity of the intellect. Convolutions of great 
 depth are generally manifested by an appreciable 
 difference in the structural length of the head: and 
 it expresses less a metaphor than a physiological 
 axiom to say of any person endowed with a high 
 order of talent, that he is " a long-headed fellow," 
 for in that popular dogma a just tribute is paid to 
 the actual possession of great intellectual capacity. 
 So that a man thus gifted is large brained without 
 being abnormally large headed ; and if the brain 
 be also fine as to quality he is both capacious in 
 intellect and powerful in thought ; he is, or ought to 
 be a genius. 
 
 Pericles and Cicero were remarkable for the 
 length of their heads : and Pericles mistaking this 
 configuration for a blemish was ashamed of it, and 
 always wore in public a helmet to conceal the 
 supposed deformity. Cicero's head besides being 
 long was also higher on one side than the other. 
 I do not however believe the latter abnormity to be 
 any advantage ; many persons having this mal- 
 apposition of the cerebral hemispheres have come 
 under my notice, and I can only say of them that 
 every one was insane, or became idiotic afterwards. 
 I have had numbers of this irregular condition of 
 the hemispheres under my care in this Institution 
 who were not only insane but proved to be incur- 
 able. 
 
 Such is the law of habit, 1 whether it consist in 
 muscular movements or mental operations. It is 
 simply the result of a permanent relation estab- 
 lished between the brain and the part excited 
 
 1 See Reil's Fieberlehre, iv. 5 ; Feuchtersleben's Prin- 
 ciples of Medical Psychology, chap. iii. ; and the admirable 
 work of Dr. G. C. Holland, the Philosophy of Animated 
 Nature, passim. 
 
146 
 
 in the actions or trains of thought constituting the 
 habit. You will now have seen that the sensorium 
 is an organ full of mystery, full of divinity, 
 affording one of the most striking illustrations of 
 the rapturous exclamation of the psalmist — " I am 
 fearfully and wonderfully made." As we have 
 already observed it is the instrument which 
 connects us with all external things ; the medium 
 of all our intelligence ; the mysterious agent 
 which communicates to our mortal nature the 
 greatest of all the attributes of the soul, our 
 consciousness ; and it discloses to us our relation 
 to a Divine Artificer. In every act of perception, 
 that is, every time we feel, hear, see, taste, smell, 
 or think, there is disclosed to us in these minute 
 and momentary gleams an evidence of the in- 
 herent presence of a something altogether different 
 from our material fabric ; — a soul, whose immortal 
 splendour it is that thus flashes through the massy 
 walls of its prison and irradiates with the lightning 
 glance of thought the whole universe, from the 
 floating atom of dust to the Deity. Nay, more, 
 every idea whether it momentaneously sweep 
 across the disk of the mind, or tarry in the 
 chambers of the memory, is the manifestation of a 
 " Divinity that stirs within us." What else could 
 illumine our clayey tabernacle and carry on the 
 perpetual miracle of thinking ? What construc- 
 tive energy of matter could make us gods in 
 knowledge and impart to us those senses which 
 connect us with the world without ; and that 
 consciousness, which unfolds an intellectual world 
 within ? 
 
 The formation of particular habits, or actions 
 equivalent to habits, will now be easily understood. 
 At the commencement of all muscular actions or 
 mental emotions which are intended to result in 
 permanent acquirements, as the learning of any 
 mechanical art; the playing on musical instru- 
 
147 
 
 ments, 1 dancing, reading, writing, or any 
 particular course of thinking, the attention and 
 the will are first strongly engaged on the task 
 which the organs under tuition have been re- 
 quired to learn. At first all the necessary actions 
 and evolutions are difficult and sometimes painful, 
 and the motions slow, clumsy, and awkward. 
 They are repeated from time to time, however, 
 with regularity and sufficient frequency to maintain 
 the effect of the first breaking in ; the vascularity 
 of all the vessels concerned increases to meet the 
 increased demands upon the vital and nutritive 
 elements according to the organic law, " ubi 
 stimulus, ibi humorum uberior adfluctus;" and 
 although for a length of time the actions are 
 imperfect and disheartening, yet by perse- 
 verance the parts begin to accommodate them- 
 selves to the novel positions, actions, and move- 
 ments ; the student goes on and improves ; and 
 each succeeding trial is found to grow less irk- 
 some, abstruse, and difficult. After much painful 
 exercise facility is attained, and in proportion as 
 readiness and ease approach perfection, the atten- 
 tion and the will slacken, because their aid is less 
 necessary. At last the actions become familiar ; 
 perfection has crowned the toil; and from that 
 time attention ceases to be exerted, and the will 
 takes no further concern in the movements. The 
 art, whatever it be, is accomplished, and with it 
 is established a new principle in the human 
 system, which causes the operations involved in the 
 habit to proceed in future with as perfect spon- 
 taneity and independence as the functions of an 
 involuntary organ. " I conceive it to be apart of 
 our constitution," says Dr. Eeid, ({ that what we 
 have been accustomed to do, we acquire not only a 
 facility, but a proneness to do on like occasions ; 
 so that it requires a particular will or effort to for- 
 1 Read Arist. Eth. Nicom., lib. ii., cap. i. 
 
148 
 
 bear it, but to do it requires very often no will at 
 all." 1 It is the pleasure or the pain that follows 
 after acts which we must make the test of the per- 
 fection of the habit. 2 All this comes under your 
 notice in a thousand familiar forms every day. 
 Observe what wonderful movements and difficult 
 evolutions are performed on the piano or the violin 
 with the fingers, while the attention and the will 
 are actually engaged on something else. A young 
 lady mentioned by Dr. Darwin, executed a long 
 and very difficult piece of music with the utmost 
 precision under the eye of her master, but seemed 
 agitated during the execution of it ; and when she 
 had concluded, burst into tears. It turned out 
 that her attention during the whole time, had been 
 intensely occupied with the agonies of a favorite 
 canary bird, which at last dropt dead in its cage. 
 There could be no better test that the habit was 
 perfect according to the Nicomachean rule. You 
 will perhaps better comprehend the doctrine of 
 habit by a familiar example. You are told by 
 your doctor or your own instincts that you ought 
 to take exercise for the sake of increasing your 
 strength or maintaining your health. How does 
 exercise operate in effecting these results ? It 
 operates on precisely the same principles I have 
 just been explaining. You take some particular 
 exercise, and in doing so you probably have or 
 ought to have brought every part of the body into 
 action. A general, and greater than usual expen- 
 diture of the vital principles to maintain that action 
 is the consequence ; and in course of time you are 
 informed of this waste in the plainest possible lan- 
 guage, the familar language of sensation. A bill 
 of reckoning is sent from the Brain, Blood, and Co. 
 to the Stomach, and it consists but in one or two 
 words — Exercise Debtor to Vital supplies. The 
 
 1 Essays on the active Powers of Man, p. 130. 
 
 2 Arist. Nicom. Eth., lib. ii., cap 3. 
 
149 
 
 debt being a just one, is acknowledged at once, 
 and from that moment the importunities of your 
 appetite to settle the account in order to restore the 
 balance which that waste has occasioned, by ingest- 
 ing a supply of nourishing and wholesome food, are 
 incessant and clamorous until it is satisfied. Thus 
 you keep up a constant circulation of fresh-made, 
 well secreted, healthy juices meandering like 
 fertilizing streams through enlarged and vigorous 
 organs. The strong athletic arm of the blacksmith, 
 and the muscular and well turned calves generally 
 seen on the legs of serving- men in London, 
 caused by the constant exercise of running up and 
 down stairs, frequently with considerable loads, 
 are familiar examples of the executive force of this 
 law; the nutrient and energizing elements flow 
 abundantly into those members to supply the con- 
 tinual expenditure; thus the arm of the hardy race 
 of Tubal-Cain trained in continual exercise of the 
 same perpetual unity of action, can wield with 
 perfect facility for an indefinite length of time 
 a hammer, which one unused to the weight and 
 movements would find it difficult to handle for a 
 minute. From these considerations you will easily 
 understand that habit can only be formed on the 
 immutable laws of nature through time and 
 practice ; and the proof of their naturalization is 
 when the performance of them gives no uneasiness. 
 Reference has been made in a former page to 
 the supposed blank state of the human mind at 
 birth. I believe the hypothesis rests upon solid 
 and satisfactory grounds. The undeveloped and 
 almost undefined condition of its organs leads us 
 to the conclusion that no idea has yet disturbed 
 the pure and tranquil surface of the infantine soul. 
 And when it is said that in infancy and youth the 
 understanding is in its most recipient state, it only 
 means that the creature, having everything to learn, 
 the mind is passive and acquisitive, not active, 
 
150 
 
 and receives with avidity and treasures up 
 with care whatever is offered to it by the senses. 
 During the period of growth its system has to put 
 forth a degree of energy which no future time of 
 life can command ; and to support this enormous 
 action Nature provides it with the most nourish- 
 ing and suitable of all foods — its mother's milk. 
 The brain, comparatively, is large out of propor- 
 tion, the nervous and muscular systems are super- 
 endowed, the organs are more active, and all the 
 functions performed with greater energy than when 
 the body has attained its full increment. Hence 
 the reason that the susceptibility of the system 
 is in its most excitable condition ; and that, figura- 
 tively speaking, impressions made on the mind 
 then are deeper and more lasting than at any 
 other period of life. Because it is not only unen- 
 cumbered with knowledge, but even so scantily 
 furnished that in its onward progress it has occa- 
 sion to make frequent reference to everything in 
 contact with its senses, as well as to what it has 
 already in store. Therefore ideas frequently 
 called up or used are so much better remembered. 
 The primary law of infant humanity is to learn to 
 live ; and it seems to be an instinct growing out of 
 that law, that it shall learn first what is necessary ; 
 next, what is useful ; and lastly, what is supple- 
 mental. This is another reason why early impres- 
 sion should be best remembered. We talk indeed 
 of the innate badness of human nature, and we 
 descant on the seeds of mischief being early sown 
 in the human soul. But I deny that there is any 
 proof of necessary innate corruption of our moral 
 nature. We forget that many evils elude the in- 
 experienced eye of the learner in the numberless 
 fascinations which charm and arrest his young and 
 unpracticed attention ; and it is no wonder if, in the 
 infinite and accumulating variety of novelties 
 which every day's acquaintance with life presents 
 
151 
 
 to his appetite for knowledge, he should sometimes 
 ingest a portion of poison along with the whole- 
 some nutriment of the mind. 1 
 
 The question has been sometimes agitated 
 whether the human mind grows and decays with 
 the creature. This has been the popular belief 
 ever since the time of Lucretius, who says : — 
 
 Praeterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, et una 
 Crescere sentimus ; pariterque senescere mentem. 2 
 
 On this subject I assume the privilege of thinking 
 for myself. The mind has always appeared to me 
 immortal, immutable, and independent of the 
 changes of the body. I think that from the first 
 moment the animal receives its physical existence, 
 when the heart is no larger than the eye of a 
 mite, the mind exists in all its maturity, infinitude 
 and divinity, as full and perfect as when it can 
 comprehend and explain the laws of an universe. 
 But it is ordained by the Author of Nature to 
 operate and to manifest its endless phenomena 
 through a material organ ; and as this organ can only 
 act according to progress and development in the 
 growth and expansion of the being, it seems to 
 grow with the body, and seems to diminish with 
 its decay. To suppose this was actually the case 
 would be an unjust conclusion, and it is proved to 
 be unjust by the exceptions which have frequently 
 occurred in respect to the apparent growth and 
 decay of the mind at both extremities of life. 
 
 1 Plato held that the will was naturally inclined towards 
 virtue, and that vice was contrary to nature. Aristotle's 
 opinion amounted to this, that virtue is a natural law and that 
 all men are born under that law. But chief of all, Bishop 
 Butler maintains "that this our nature, *. e. constitution, is 
 adapted to virtue, as from the idea of a watch it appears, that 
 its nature, i. e. constitution or system, is adapted to measure 
 time. — Thus nothing can possibly be more contrary to nature 
 than vice. — Poverty and disgrace, tortures and death are not 
 so contrary to it " — Preface to his first three Sermons. 
 
 2 De Rerum Natura. jib. iii., 446. 
 
152 
 
 Precocious intellects in children, and minds that 
 have survived the wreck of the body and shone in 
 full meridian power at the end of the longest 
 term of existence, are not uncommon occurrences. 
 The former of these extreme examples rests on the 
 anticipation of a natural law. In the precocious 
 infant such as the wonderful Baratier, whose brain 
 was prematurely expanded and inordinately 
 exercised, and the young, feeble, and inadequate 
 body defrauded of its due share of the vital 
 energies which were absorbed in carrying on the 
 gigantic labours of this prematurely developed 
 organ, sank into an early grave from pure inanition. 
 The philosopher who dies at the age of ninety 
 with his body worn out and his vital powers ex- 
 hausted, while his intellects remain unimpaired, 
 only proves the popular maxim to be a vulgar 
 error. Ten thousand well authenticated ex- 
 amples declare that the human mind may appear 
 to become feeble, to decay, or altogether to cease 
 at any period of life in the strongest and healthiest 
 body ; and ten thousand examples also prove that 
 the principle of intelligence has shone in all its 
 brilliance and vigor at the age of 100 years. 
 
 It is the faculties of the mind which expand 
 and decay ; and its functions which accumulate ; 
 but the mind itself is a semper idem. We say 
 the mind evolves and contracts, is healthy or 
 unsound : surely in employing such language we 
 use a metaphor and speak in metonyme. For in 
 assenting to the growth and decay, the expansion 
 and contraction of the soul we ascribe to an 
 eternal, impassive, and immutable emanation, the 
 essential properties of matter ; and without mean- 
 ing it, we subscribe ourselves materialists. 
 
 In the progressive development of the brain 
 from birth to middle age, the difference between 
 the simple stationary instinct of brutes and the 
 grandeur of the human mind is most conspicuous. 
 
153 
 
 The one is ever prone on the earth, u ventri obedi- 
 ential the other mounts by degrees from the earth 
 and soars on ceaseless wing in all the sublimity of 
 unbounded intellectual capacity to the utmost 
 verge of " all the worlds that roll around the sun," 
 as if it loved to hover near the Eternal Fountain 
 of Light, into which it is its highest hope to be 
 finally absorbed. 
 
 Thus man is the creature of circumstance and the 
 slave of habit almost from the moment of his birth. 
 And as in his " animal capacity he is qualified to 
 subsist in every climate, he reigns with the lion and 
 the tiger under the equatorial heats of the sun, or 
 he associates with the bear an^the reindeer beyond 
 the polar circle. His versatile disposition fits him 
 to assume the habit of either condition, or his 
 talent for arts enables him to supply its defects." 1 
 
 The body, moulded by the clime, endures 
 The equator's heat, or hyperborean frost : 
 Except by habits foreign to its turn 
 Unwise you counteract its forming power. 
 Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less 
 By long acquaintance.— Armstrong. 
 
 In the great journey of life there is no moment 
 of pause. 2 Man lives upon a succession of incen- 
 tives to action ; and his mind expands and exults 
 in the tumult of continued pursuit. It may be 
 said of him as of the ancient Scythians, vita semper 
 in fuga est. From the hour of his birth he is 
 goaded by new wants and agitated by fresh 
 emotions which spring up without end in his soul, 
 and keep him in a state of perpetual activity; and 
 every energy of his mind is absorbed in a tide of 
 exertion to realize the dreams of his fancy, or gratify 
 the desires of his heart. Happiness is " his being's 
 end and aim ;" but his aim is never fully accom- 
 plished; for in the ardour of pursuit, mistaking 
 
 1 Ferguson, Civil Society, part iii.,sect. i. 
 
 2 Alison's Sermons, vol. ii., p. 2 L7. 
 
154 
 
 the goddess, he clasps enjoyment to his bosom and 
 calls it his divinity. " Happiness is the prize and 
 the end of perfect virtue." 1 
 
 Our aim is happiness ; 'tis yours ; 'tis mine, 
 He said, 'tis the pursuit of all that live ; 
 Yet few attain it, if 'twas e'er attained. 
 But they the widest wander from the mark, 
 Who through the flowery path of sauntering joy 
 Seek this coy goddess, that from stage to stage 
 Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue. 
 
 Armstrong. 
 
 The unsated passions of his soul afford him no 
 repose. His imagination glows with new forms 
 of bliss and fires him to fresh efforts. This 
 phantom of human^ life still beckons him on, 
 gilding the prospects with brighter enchantments ; 
 and distant felicities start up in his imagination 
 like " spirits from the vasty deep" — 
 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Valombrosa Milton. 
 
 But all is vanity : and nothing less than true 
 happiness, if such is to be found, has the power 
 to chain this philandering, laughing, crying, hop- 
 ing, despairing, animal to her chariot wheel. For 
 the sweets of mere enjoyment soon pall on the 
 sense ; use is succeeded by satiety, and the human 
 paradox roves from one course of thought or of 
 action to another, in a cycle of fugacious pleasures 
 and disgusts, till the " scythe and spade" stop 
 him in the perpetuation of his follies. 2 
 
 But you must have observed that this systematic 
 inconstancy of human character is, after all, innate 
 
 1 Arist. Eth. 
 
 2 Praeterea, versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque : 
 Nee nova vivendi procuditur ulla voluptas. 
 
 Sed dum abest, quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur 
 Caetera : post alind, cum contigit illud, avemus ; 
 Et sitis aequa tenet vita'i semper hianteis : 
 Posteraque in dubio'st, fortunam quam vehat setas ; 
 Quidve ferat nobis casus ; quive exitus instet. 
 
 Lucretius, III. 1093. 
 
155 
 
 and instinctive, and springs from that singular law 
 of organization which has just been discussed. 
 Repetition, while it forms and establishes the habit, 
 diminishes the sensibility of the organs concerned. 
 The history of this compound of instinct and rea- 
 son, folly and wisdom, abounds with examples of 
 this law. An Athenian expressed his wonder to 
 Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher, how he 
 could go naked in the frost and snow. — " How," 
 said Anacharsis, u can you endure your face ex- 
 posed to the sharp frost of winter ?" " My face 
 is accustomed to it," replied the Athenian. " Think 
 me all face then," rejoined the Scythian. 
 
 The habit of suffering renders the body almost 
 insensible of pain ; and long acquaintance with 
 sorrow divests it of its poignancy. Nay, the foun- 
 tains of our sweetest pleasures become " stale, flat, 
 and unprofitable," by continual drinking at the 
 same source. Patience is the offspring of hope 
 frequently blighted, and the man inured to disap- 
 pointment bears the defeat of his hopes with calm 
 indifference, while he to whom blighted expecta- 
 tion is less familiar moans over his disappointment 
 with the bitterness of despair. " The mind," says 
 Simplicius, " is most struck and disturbed by what 
 comes unexpectedly. For if it had been meditated 
 on and rendered habitual to the thought, it would 
 not have either so disturbed or grieved it. A 
 clear proof of this is, that those who suffer any 
 grievous misfortune are after a time soothed 
 through habit, as if nothing of the sort had hap- 
 pened." 1 Thus while habit wears off the keenness 
 of enjoyment, and bereaves us of some of our most 
 delightful sensations, it greatly increases the powers 
 of the understanding, by giving an augmented 
 capacity for intellectual enjoyments. 
 
 The philanthropist in theory, from the influence 
 
 1 In Epictet. 33. 
 
156 
 
 of habit on his mind, induced by constantly exer- 
 cising it in the distant contemplation of misery and 
 distress, acquires an acuteness and tenderness of 
 feeling incredible to others, whilst his reasoning 
 faculty lies almost dormant and useless. But when 
 he has acquired the active habit of dispensing the 
 blessings of charity, and become exercised in les- 
 sening the miseries he had formerly commiserated 
 in theory by mingling personally in the scenes 
 which his imagination had painted, his sensations 
 lose their morbid acuteness and excitability, and 
 his intellectual powers awaken, and guide him with 
 rational and temperate zeal in his works of bene- 
 ficence and mercy. By a similar discipline, the 
 stoic could both endure pain and misfortunes in 
 himself, and contemplate the most harassing scenes 
 of suffering and distress in others, with the cold 
 indifference of a statue. Such was the voluntary 
 submission of the youth of Lacedemon to the most 
 frightful flagellations, which they bore from habit, 
 says Simplicius, almost to the point of death — 
 axpi Oavarov ax^ov. 1 Such were the Athenians 
 in their spectacles ; but worst of all, the Romans. 
 " Gladiatores," says Cicero, 2 " aut perditi homines, 
 aut barbari, quas plagas perferunt ? Quo modo 
 illi, qui bene instituti sunt, accipere plagam malunt, 
 quam turpiter vitare ? quam ssepe apparet nihil eos 
 malle, quam vel domino satisfacere, vel populo ? 
 mittunt etiam vulneribus defecti ad dominos, qui 
 quserant quid velint ; si satis his factum sit, se 
 velle decumbere. Quis mediocris gladiator inge- 
 muit ? quis vultum mutavit unquam ? quis non 
 modo stetit ; verum etiam decubuit turpiter ? Quis 
 cum decubuisset, ferrum recipere jussus, collum 
 contraxit? Tantum exercitatio, meditatio, con- 
 suetudo valet," How coolly the pagan philosopher 
 contemplates and records these scenes of systematic 
 
 1 In Epktet. 10. 2 Tuscul. ii 16. 
 
157 
 
 human butchery ! But the frigid stoicism of 
 Cicero, while he alludes to these inhuman spec- 
 tacles, gives but a faint idea of the cold, selfish 
 cruelty which habit had rendered natural to the 
 Romans. Both sexes seem to have been divested 
 of all human feeling, and endued instead with the 
 insatiable ferocity of hyenas. We shudder whilst 
 we read that modest young virgins, who would 
 perhaps shed tears of real sorrow at the death of a 
 pet grasshopper, could not only sit and enjoy the 
 sight of actual murder as their greatest delight, but 
 even sanction the commission of it for their pastime 
 and amusement. 1 But we find an eloquent pleader 
 in the cause of humanity in Lactantius, who cen- 
 sures them with as much force and feeling as his 
 great prototype seems to plead in favour of these 
 constitutional murders. " Quid tarn horribile, tarn 
 tetrum," exclaims this eloquent Christian writer, 
 " quam hominis trucidatio ? Ideo sevens simis 
 legibus vita nostra munitur, ideo bella execrabilia 
 sunt. Invenit tamen consuetudo, quatenus homici- 
 dium sine bello ac sine legibus faciat, et hoc sibi vo- 
 luptas (quod scelus !) vindicavit. Quod si interesse 
 homicidio, sceleris conscientia est, et eidem faci- 
 nori spectator obstrictus est, cui et admissor ; ergo 
 et in his gladiator um csedibus non minus cruore 
 profunditur, qui spectat, quam ille qui facit ; nee 
 potest esse immunis a sanguine, qui voluit effundi ; 
 aut videri non interfecisse, qui interfectori et favit 
 et prsemium postulavit." 2 
 
 This faculty of habituation gives man a wonder- 
 ful pre-eminence over all other animals. It renders 
 him capable of accommodating himself to the di- 
 versities of every climate, it familiarizes him with 
 
 consurgit ad ictus, 
 
 Et quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit, ilia 
 Delicias ait esse suas pectusque jacentis 
 Virgo modesta jubet, converso pollice, rumpi. 
 
 Prudentius contra Symmachum. 
 Epitom. cap. 63. See Inst. Div., lib. v., cap. 29. 
 
 P 
 
158 
 
 every mode of life, and it enables him to accom- 
 modate himself without injury to the influence of 
 new and untried physical and moral agencies, and 
 to support their effects upon his system without 
 uneasiness or danger. The being, therefore, who 
 is freest from the influence of habit may be esteemed 
 as the most unfortunate : he is deprived of the 
 firmest support to his health, and destitute of the 
 strongest bulwark of his virtue. He must be under 
 the control of some cause which counteracts, or 
 modifies its power. He is in all respects the weak 
 and tearful animal so beautifully depicted by the 
 great philosophic poet, as cast helpless on the 
 world — 
 
 ut ssevis projectus ab trndis 
 
 Navita, nudus humi jacet, infans, indigus omni 
 Vitali auxiiio, cum primum in iuminis oras 
 Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit ; 
 Vagituque locum lugubri compiet, ut aequum'st, 
 Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 If human nature, says the father of pathology, 
 were destitute of the faculty of habit, it would be 
 the portion of few to enjoy health. It is manifest 
 we are inured by habit to bear many things with 
 impunity which are injurious to those who are less 
 accustomed ; but as we are greatly assisted by 
 habit in the exercise of all the functions, so this 
 itself disposes every one of the medicative powers, 
 as well of the mind as of the body, to a faculty of 
 acting by which they can approve themselves to 
 things noxious, correct the mischiefs induced by 
 them, and more readily restore the parts affected 
 to their former integrity. Thus even diseases are 
 rendered by habit more supportable and docile, 
 and poisons themselves become mild. 1 
 
 St. Chrysostom appears to have been well ac- 
 quainted with the inveterate force of habit when 
 
 1 Gaubius, Inst. Path. 644. 
 
159 
 
 he said, that the hardest lesson to acquire is to 
 unlearn. The observation embraces more of the 
 philosophy of habit than you will perceive at first ; 
 but you will comprehend its meaning better by 
 connecting it with a fine passage of Quinctilian to 
 the same effect, where he treats of the early edu- 
 cation of children, which is like a comment upon 
 it. — " Et natura tenacissimi sumus eorum, quae 
 rudibus annis percipimus; ut sapor, quo nova 
 imbuas, durat ; nee lanarum colores, quibus sim- 
 plex ille candor mutatus est, elui possunt. Et haec 
 ipsa magis pertinaciter haerent, quae deteriora sunt. 
 Nam bona facile mutantur in pejus : nunc quando 
 in bonum verteris vitia ? Non assuescat ergo, ne 
 dum infans quidem est, sermoni, qui dediscendus 
 sit." 1 And this recalls to mind an aphorism of 
 Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, that the 
 human disposition will correspond to that on which 
 one thinks most frequently ; for the soul is tinc- 
 tured, as it were, with the colour and complexion 
 of its own thoughts. 2 It is manifest that although 
 the force of habit is universally admitted, few 
 consider the prodigious influence it exerts on the 
 conduct of after life, the intimate relation it has 
 established with the whole nature of him who is 
 its especial subject, and its effects on the existence 
 and character of society. 
 
 Habits exert an incredible influence upon all 
 the transactions of life. From the administration 
 of governments down to the economics of the cob- 
 bler's stall, all are more or less under the restraints 
 of habit ; national character itself is founded on 
 the habits of the people ; they impart that peculiar 
 moral tone and characteristic diversity to countries, 
 which are more distinctive of nationalities than the 
 shades of the complexion. The temper of the 
 general mind, the peace and war, the strife and 
 concord, the hatred and amity of nations ; nay, 
 1 List. Orat. i. 1. 2 Medit. v. sect. 16. 
 
160 
 
 the happiness and misery even of individuals in 
 the promiscuous intercourse of civil society, arise 
 from the quality of their prevailing moral habits. 
 There is no fact better established than this, 
 that— 
 
 Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief, 
 Are consequences of our place of birth. 
 
 Hill's Zara. 
 
 The habitual intercourse of persons, the com- 
 munion of sentiments, unanimity of opinion, and 
 the silent underworking force of imitation con- 
 spire to engender a sameness of ideas, a common 
 affection, and a similitude of character among 
 members of the same group ; and these extending 
 from groups to communities cemented by the ties 
 of common privileges, unity of interests, and a 
 common attachment to place of birth, probably 
 form the groundwork of all patriotism. 
 
 Imitation is essentially an active energy of the 
 constitution of man, and one of the elements of 
 habit. In youth especially we insensibly copy 
 something of every human action or manner pre- 
 sented to our observation. It is in constant 
 operation in every stage of life, and is so potent 
 that persons living long together will insensibly 
 acquire a mutual resemblance in some points. 
 This singular fact is best exemplified in the case of 
 man and wife, where each unconsciously imitates 
 the traits and expression of the other's countenance 
 so effectually, that at last a sort of epicene likeness 
 is established. 
 
 So that it may be said all society is a school of 
 design ; and every individual is a model for good 
 or for bad to every other individual. Each takes 
 his copy too with all the secrecy of profound un- 
 consciousness, which enables the imitative faculty 
 in man to operate on the mind with an energy so 
 much the more sure and effective ; and engrain 
 the lights and shades of the pattern in the moral 
 
161 
 
 nature of the copyist with indelible fixedness of 
 coloring. 
 
 There is not any property of our constitution 
 so dangerous in effect as this proclivity, unless 
 it be corrected by a wakeful and discriminating 
 moral sense ; for it is only the elevating and ex- 
 panding influences of a refined perception of the 
 beauties and excellencies in human nature, and the 
 abhorrence of its vices, that can protect the empire 
 of the mind from the inj urious inroads of debasing 
 propensities. Wherefore it is suggestive of some 
 eminently useful points for consideration to parents 
 and guardians of youth, in respect to the choice 
 of early associates, and the selection of schools. — 
 Schools where the heart is disciplined as well as 
 the head. 
 
 Numerous defects, as well as moral excrescences 
 derogatory to the dignity of cultivated intellect/ — 
 numerous cramping prejudices, which counteract 
 the elastic powers of the understanding, may be 
 traced clearly and directly to mimetic agency in 
 youth at school. " If you associate with a cripple, 3 ' 
 says Plutarch in his Ethics, " you will soon learn 
 to limp yourself." Indeed the mischievous apti- 
 tude of this faculty to single out the blemishes of 
 its models for impropriation, becomes an actual 
 infection in the atmosphere of schools. And the 
 misfortune is that the resulting distempers are 
 brought away in the form of chronic habits, which 
 are likely to remain through life, communicating 
 a repulsive and depreciating tarnish to the most 
 brilliant natural endowments. 
 
 All habits arise from imitation, association, ex- 
 ample, or instruction ; it is affirmed indeed that 
 nine-tenths of all the men you meet are what they 
 are, good or bad, useful or worthless, by the quality 
 of their educational habits. 1 They are mostly 
 
 1 See Locke's " Some Thoughts concerning Educa- 
 tion." p. 1. 
 
162 
 
 acquired in youth, which is the reason that in 
 mature age they are so difficult to eradicate ; for 
 they adhere with all the tenacity of the Old Man 
 of the Sea, and they exercise a sway which fre- 
 quently mocks all human resolution. 
 
 Custom, 'tis true, a venerable tyrant, 
 
 O'er servile man extends her blind dominion. 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 The influence of habit in the closet and the camp 
 determines the destiny of nations : it may be justly 
 affirmed that battles are lost and won neither by 
 brute force, innate courage, nor cowardice, but by 
 the perfection or imperfection of the strategic habits 
 drilled into the soldier, — habits of such importance, 
 that Valerius Maximus designates them " prseci- 
 puum decus et stabilimentum Romani imperii;" 1 
 and this is the reason why a veteran has always 
 been preferred to a recruit. — Scientiae enim rei 
 bellicse, dimicandi nutrit audaciam. Nemo facere 
 metuit, quod se bene didicisse confidit. Etenim 
 in certamine bellorum exercitata paucitas ad vic- 
 toriam promptior est, quam rudis et indocta multi- 
 tudo." 2 And Cicero, with something of martial 
 enthusiasm, asks, " Quid exercitatio legionum ? 
 quid ille cursus, concursus, clamor, quanti laboris 
 est ? Ex hoc ille animus in praeliis paratus ad 
 vulnera. Adduc pari animo inexercitatum mili- 
 tem ; mulier videbitur. Cur ? Tantum interest 
 inter novem et veterem exercitum, quantum ex- 
 perti sumus. iEtas tironum plerumque melior : 
 sed ferre laborem, contemnere vulnus consuetudo 
 docet. 3 Nothing can be more true : and therefore, 
 in Eastern phrase, habit is the parent of victory. 
 
 For to one who is accustomed to the incidents of 
 war, the dangers and difficulties he encounters only 
 increase his martial ardour, temper his courage 
 
 1 Lib. 2, c. 7. 2 Vegetius de Re Militari, I. i. 
 
 3 Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 15. 
 
163 
 
 with presence of mind, give him confidence in 
 himself, and enable him to calculate probabilities 
 with coolness in the confusion and carnage of the 
 battle field. For proof of this why should I refer 
 to the examples furnished by Herodotus, Thucy- 
 dides, Polybius, Caesar, Tacitus, Livy, Xenophon's 
 Retreat, the Battle of Marathon, Thermophylae, 
 the elder Cyrus, the triumphs of Scipio, and the 
 fall of Carthage ? Or why should I remind you 
 of the rigid habits of temperance, frugality, and 
 military discipline which characterized the first 
 ages of Rome ? — which gave existence, sinews, 
 and universality to the Roman Empire ; or of the 
 abandonment of these virtues for its contemptible 
 decline and fall ? Picture to yourself, from your 
 memory of things, the domestic condition, or in 
 other words, the domestic habits of a general of 
 the Roman Republic. Looking back through the 
 mist of time you can imagine the shade of an elderly 
 man embrowned by toil and dust, sitting on a 
 wooden block at a small table in the chimney cor- 
 ner of his little cabin, and dining like a simple 
 Pythagorean on the vegetables his own hand had 
 cultivated in his little garden. — Need I tell you 
 this is the spirit of Roman greatness — it is Cincin- 
 natus " from the plough." Here you see in the 
 simple habits of the man, the stern customs of the 
 country, the materials of Roman virtue, and the 
 source of conquest. 
 
 Nationality itself is a habit. Nations as well as 
 individuals cannot long continue in one tenor of 
 enjoyment or suffering, of plenty or want, of peace 
 or war, without having effects arising out of, and 
 corresponding with these conditions, impressed on 
 the general mind ; whence their intellectual facul- 
 ties contract particular habitudes, inclined to this 
 or that character. The Boeotians, owing to the 
 moist and foggy nature of their climate, were con- 
 sidered the archetypes of all numskulls. Horace 
 
164 
 
 can find no better emblem of a blockhead than a 
 Boeotian — 
 
 Boeotum in crasso jurares ae're natum. ' 
 
 " You would swear he had been born in the 
 foggy atmosphere of Bceotia." And Cicero makes 
 a contrast of them and the sprightly Athenians — 
 " Athenis tenue .ccelum, ex quo acutiores etiam 
 putantur Attici : crassum Thebis, itaque pingues 
 Thebani et valentes." 2 Now before the time of 
 Epaminondas, these people had almost always lived 
 in subjection to the states around them ; but dur- 
 ing his lifetime they acquired new habits ; he in- 
 spired them with true notions of real greatness and 
 solid glory, and through the example, wisdom, and 
 courage of that great man, the whole state changed 
 the character of its habits, and rose to the supreme 
 power of Greece. Witness their courage and his 
 glorious fall at the battle of Mantinea ; after which, 
 when the soul as it were of the state, the genius 
 of their habits, had departed, they relapsed into 
 their former insignificance and pusillanimity. 3 In 
 the same manner, but by different means, Pericles 
 invested the Athenians with new manners and 
 habits, and the state with an altered character ; 
 he caused the Athenians to degenerate from the 
 virtues of their ancestors, and made them idle, 
 effeminate, babblers, avaricious, mercenary, savage, 
 and unjust. 4 
 
 In no circumstance does habit exert such mani- 
 fest dominion as in the arts of life ; and they may 
 be said to owe their perfection to it. 
 
 Per varios casus Artem experientia fecit 
 Exemplo monstrante viam. 
 
 Manilitjs. 
 
 1 Epist. lib. ii. Ep. i. Juvenal, x. 50. Nepos. in Alcib. 
 Strab. ix. 401. 
 
 2 De Fato, 4. 
 
 3 Corn. Nepos, Plutarchus, in vita ejus. 
 
 4 Plato in Gorgia. See particularly, pp. 340, et seq. t. iii. 
 (Ed. Bekker.) 
 
165 
 
 For, as formerly mentioned, the frequent repetition 
 of the same act gives ease, readiness, activity and 
 perfection to all the operations that are under the 
 direction of the will ; as in the arts of writing and 
 composition, on which Quinctilian has finely ex- 
 pressed himself, " Celeritatem dabit consuetudo. 
 Paulatim res facilius se ostendent, verba responde- 
 bunt, compositio sequetur, cuncta denique, ut in 
 familia bene institute, in officio erunt." 1 Cicero 
 has given expression to similar sentiments. Bishop 
 Butler also may be considered as taking the same 
 view of the subject in the following passage of his 
 logical doctrine of habit. " By accustoming our- 
 selves," he says, " to any course of action we get 
 an aptness to go on, a facility, readiness, and even 
 pleasure in it. The inclinations which rendered 
 us averse to it grow weaker ; the difficulties in it, 
 not only the imaginary, but the real ones, lessen 
 the reasons for it offer themselves of course to our 
 thoughts upon all occasions ; and the least glimpse 
 of them is sufficient to make us go on in a course 
 of action to which we have been accustomed." 2 
 
 I have already called your attention to this law 
 of the human system, that when the sensibility of 
 an organ is repeatedly or violently excited, the 
 effects communicated to the mind become progres- 
 sively weaker, and at last so imperceptible that 
 the senses seem to take no cognizance of the exci- 
 tant. We often act from habit like an instinct, 
 without knowing that our senses have been im- 
 pressed, or that we have acted in consequence. 
 This fact did not escape the people of antiquity. — 
 
 Fieri istuc solet, 
 Quod in manu teneas atque oculis 
 Videas, id desideres. 
 
 Plautus. 
 
 I myself have seen an old lady search with exem- 
 plary perseverance for her spectacles whilst they 
 
 1 Inst. Orat. x. 3. Cic. de Invent, i. 25. 
 
 2 Analogy of Religion, part I. chap. y. 
 
166 
 
 were striding across her nose ; and I have known 
 a venerable old gentleman seek anxiously for his 
 pipe whilst it was sticking between his teeth. The 
 unconquerable force of habit is eminently displayed 
 in the case of a lady recorded by Dr. Percival. 
 I quote from memory. She had an apoplectic fit, 
 which continued twelve hours. Various stimu- 
 lating applications were used to excite her ; and 
 among the rest a feather dipped in hartshorn, was 
 frequently applied to her nostrils. She had been 
 all her life an inveterate snufftaker ; and now the 
 irritation produced by the hartshorn caused her to 
 press the forefinger and thumb of the right hand 
 together, raise them to her noise, and inhale through 
 her nostrils as in the act of taking snuff. When 
 the sniffing effort ceased the arm dropped, and the 
 head fell back in the previous inanimate state. 
 Every time the hartshorn was applied to the nose 
 the same phenomena were manifested, until the 
 stimulant lost the power of irritating. The lady 
 recovered, but had no remembrance of the circum- 
 stance, showing that habits " once established 
 operate of themselves easily and naturally without 
 the assistance of the memory." 1 " They who use 
 snuff," says Edmund Burke, " take it almost with- 
 out being sensible that they take it ; and the acute 
 sense of smell is deadened so as to feel hardly any- 
 thing from so sharp a stimulus ; yet deprive the 
 snuff-taker of his box, and he is the most uneasy 
 mortal in the world." 2 By the same rule the force 
 of custom becomes so imperious and invidious that 
 even the charms of beauty are compelled to resign 
 their empire, and to submit unconditionally to the 
 will of this inexorable leveller. 
 
 Nil adeo magnum, nee tarn mirabile quidquam 
 Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes 
 Paulatim. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 1 Locke, loc. cit. p. 46. 
 
 2 On the Sublime and Beautiful. 
 
167 
 
 " So that if habit brightens our wits/' observes 
 an elegant writer, " by blunting sensibility ; on 
 the other hand it drains the source of our sweetest 
 enjoyments. Pleasure and pain, those two ex- 
 tremes of sensation, in a manner approximate to 
 each other, and become indifferent to him who is 
 accustomed to them. Hence arises inconstancy, 
 or rather that insatiate desire of varying the objects 
 of our inclinations, that imperious want of new 
 emotions ; hence we possess with indifference what 
 we pursued with the utmost ardour and persever- 
 ance ; and cease to be moved by those charms 
 which once held us captive. 1 
 
 But if indeed habit dissolve the charms and 
 fascinations of beauty, it also bestows more 
 genuine sources of adoration where nature has 
 been less friendly ; the admiration bestowed on 
 the homelier features, where the heart is sound 
 and the head furnished with common sense, are 
 sure to be lasting, because less emotional, and rest- 
 ing on a substantial and permanent basis ; that 
 which is evanescent adoration in the one, remains 
 calm and settled affection in the other. Who has 
 not marked the ceaseless and ingenious round of 
 ever-varying expedients to which Cleopatra was 
 reduced in order to retain the conquests her beauty 
 had made of the hearts of Caesar and Anthony? 
 after the " habit of satiation," as Simplicius would 
 express himself, had subverted its power, and 
 produced the imperious necessity of appearing 
 constantly with new features of attraction, and new 
 devices of pleasure. 
 
 The great philosophic poet was no stranger to 
 the compensating power of habit — 
 
 Nee divinitus interdum, venerisque sagittis 
 Deteriore fit ut forma muliercula ametur. 
 Nam facit ipsa suis interdum foemina factis, 
 Moriyerisque modis, et mundo corpori' cultu, 
 
 1 Richerand. Elem. Phys. 
 
168 
 
 Ut facile insuescat secum vir degere vitam. 
 Quod superest, consuetudo concinnat amoren. 
 Nam leviter quamvis, quod crebro tunditur ictu, 
 "Vincitur in longo spatio tamen, atque labascit ; 
 Nonne \ides, etiam guttas in saxa cadenteis 
 Humoris longo in spatio pertundere saxa ? 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 The Mantuan bard sweetly sings that Love holds 
 the universe in bondage ; and Pindar, that habit 
 controls the gods themselves : therefore, this busy 
 meddler in affairs of the heart is himself syllogisti- 
 cally a slave to habit. Achilles Tatius observes — 
 If wild animals are tamed by habit, how much more 
 readily will woman's heart be softened by that 
 power. 1 
 
 What is it which binds us to parents, family, 
 friends, society, and country ? What principle 
 directs the child which an inhuman custom has 
 estranged from its mother, to show all the fondness 
 and attachment to its nurse which should have 
 chained it to the parent ? Is it a law of nature, or 
 the force of habit ? The nurse is endeared to its 
 mind and associated in its memory with everything 
 that could fascinate and delight its nascent affec- 
 tions, from the earliest moments of association be- 
 tween the helpless thing, the bosom that affords it 
 nourishment, and the heart that gives it mercenary 
 love. It can neither judge of the nature nor the 
 degrees of kindred ; and, in return for this second- 
 hand affection, it gives its all — it gives its love. If 
 it be habit — for it cannot be natural affection — it 
 leads us a step further, to inquire on what laws of 
 the human mind are founded the reciprocal loves 
 of parent and child? Are they not based on 
 original instinct on the part of the infant at least, 
 and confirmed by long habits of tenderness and 
 intimacy ? In the whole range of animal creation 
 there is no proof to the contrary. If man were 
 left to the direction of his instincts alone, supposing 
 
 1 EpwTiKwv, lib. 1. c. 9. 
 
169 
 
 them as powerful and unerring as those of the 
 brute — with his intellects unexercised, untutored, 
 and unenlightened, would his love for his off- 
 spring extend beyond that degree and that period 
 when the child is in a state capable of providing 
 for itself? 
 
 These questions are innocently intended ; God 
 forbid they should be supposed capable of tending 
 to slacken those inviolable obligations which bind 
 the parent and the child in their sacred mutual 
 duties; it is to be hoped rather, should they ever 
 be read, that they will cause mothers to pause 
 before they selfishly transfer those tender offices 
 to a stranger, which they are bound by all the 
 laws of humanity and nature to perform them- 
 selves. — They are advanced here, however, simply 
 because they form a curious psychological in- 
 quiry. 
 
170 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Oi>8* yap twv ToiovTeujv op'tu) lfi7reipovg tovq irjrpovg, itg 
 Yp>) Ciayiyvwaictiv, * * * okogo. re ruxkujv r) tpitrtg 
 cat T) t£ig tKciOTOHn iKTtKvoi 7rd6ta kcii dfoa iravToia' kcl'i 
 roi (TOJTtjpitjv r\ Qdvarov (ptpti, yiyvtuaKOfieva i) ayvoovjxiva 
 to. roiavra. 
 
 Hippocrates. 
 
 The consideration of habit is an endless theme. 
 It may be likened to the reflections of Simonides 
 on the question — What is God? — proposed to him 
 by Hiero the tyrant of Syracuse. You may 
 reasonably suppose how each day's investigation 
 led the heathen inquirer deeper and deeper into 
 a labyrinth of bewildering thoughts, until his 
 mind finding no resting place became over- 
 whelmed with dispair. And yet the great ulti- 
 mate fact he was seeking lay written before him, 
 alike in the sublime machinery of the universe 
 and in the simple physiology of a blade of grass. 
 
 The further we inquire into the influences of 
 habit the more anfractuous our course becomes, 
 and the more widely the subject expands. We 
 can follow it insinuating itself into every winding 
 of human organization, elaborating amazing 
 changes and modifications in the form ; and we 
 can discover it enthroned in the mental constitu- 
 tion, exercising an imperious sway over our moral 
 and intellectual feelings, and even determining 
 the quality and complexion of our character. 
 
 I am now to speak of it in its plastic capacity 
 as it operates on the physical part of our system ; 
 and here its influence is inconstant and variable ; 
 for while its blind operations sometimes result in 
 good, they frequently effect alterations so adverse 
 to the original standard of the being as to require 
 
171 
 
 the reparative aid of an antagonistic principle o 
 nature, personified as the vis conservatriz, to 
 repair its errors, or at least to bring them to 
 harmonize with the vital integrity of the 
 organisms. This pantheistic spirit is revealed 
 through all the works of God. Every thing in 
 nature discloses to the soul the perpetual operation 
 of a sustaining and repairing Deus in nobis, which 
 pervades all creation, maintains all order, rectifies 
 all disturbance, and supports in perfection and 
 harmony the various actions of organic life — l 
 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees. 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent ; 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal pare, 
 As full, as perfect, in a b air as heart ; 
 As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns. 
 
 PoPB. 
 
 With this conservative spirit, habit maintains a 
 perpetual struggle, the latter aiming to derange or 
 modify the type of the being, and the former to 
 restore it when injured or disturbed. With 
 respect to health accidents or injuries, they 
 commonly lay aside their feuds and co-operate to 
 produce a salutary result. 
 
 You are aware that many causes conduce both 
 to deteriorate and to improve the shape of animals. 
 In respect to rational beings, you know also that 
 as society advances in knowledge and refinement 
 the numberless useful habits which result from its 
 moral condition, contribute to the amelioration of 
 the health and the improvement of the form. 
 Better food, more suitable clothing, a more per- 
 fect sanatory police of towns, cleanliness, mental, 
 1 Comp. Virgil in Georg. Lib. iv. 221 — 
 
 Deum namque ire per omnes 
 
 Terrasque, tractusque maris, coelumque profundum. 
 
 also the Timaeus of Plato, cap. x. to xii. 
 
172 
 
 cultivation, &c, &c, will, in the lapse of genera- 
 tions, undoubtedly ingenerate a disposition in the 
 parent to produce a more perfect, a healthier, and 
 a finer offspring, and vice versa. Every degree 
 of latitude from the temperate zones towards 
 either the Equator or the Poles proves this 
 general thesis ; and it is more than likely that the 
 remarkable variety in the human species was 
 originally owing to the modifying influence of 
 climate, season, food, education, mode of life, 
 manners, and especially to national institutions, 
 where they existed. These causes are acknow- 
 ledged to exert an influence over the resilient 
 tendency which the form of organized being 
 evinces when disturbed to return to its original 
 standard ; and, on the same principle, the designs 
 of man have actually been successful in creating 
 new and more useful varieties in those animals 
 destined for his use. Tt is to this conforming and 
 reparative principle in organized life that our 
 domestic animals owe all their beauty, perfection, 
 usefulness, and diversity. Although breeders 
 have been aware of the principle ever since the 
 time of the patriarch Jacob, yet these observations 
 have a more immediate reference to the later 
 experiments of Sir John Sebright, and Colonel 
 Humphries on sheep. The former gentleman 
 was, I believe, the first who observed that if a 
 flock of sheep in which there was any defect is 
 permitted to breed in and in, the defect will 
 gradually increase among them : and following up 
 this hint Colonel Humphries selected a marked 
 variety for breeding, and succeeded in raising a 
 flock with deformed bones. This was the first of 
 that new race of sheep known by the name of the 
 Ancona breed. The name describes the shape 
 better than any representation, being derived from 
 ajKuv, the elbow ; or the arm in a bent position ; 
 the peculiarity consisting in the configuration of 
 
173 
 
 the animal's fore legs, which are elbow -shaped, 
 short, and weak-jointed. 
 
 On this by-law of organic life it is that the 
 same habit continued in operation, will, in the 
 course of time, ingenerate a tendency in the parent 
 to produce a progeny differing in some degree from 
 itself. And there is no doubt that habit, under cer- 
 tain conditions, will at last induce such modifications 
 in the structure of some parts of the body as will 
 harmonize with the original necessity, or emotion 
 that led to the formation of the habit. This is 
 faintly discerned in the difference between savage 
 and civilized man ; with few exceptions the 
 former is many degrees below the latter in the 
 beauty of his form, the capacity of his mind, and 
 the fertility of his genius. Deficiency of nourish- 
 ment, want of mental exercise, impure and filthy 
 habits, insufficient clothing, rigors of climate, 
 uncultivated and undrained soils, and above all 
 his physical necessities, which compel him to 
 peculiar modes of life, conduce to retain the 
 savage but one degree above the brute, and 
 frequently produce structural peculiarities in his 
 form ; while the other is exalted through the 
 advantage of high civilization and improvement 
 of the mind to a form of divine intelligence in 
 the grandeur of his conceptions and complexity of 
 his thoughts. 
 
 Call now to miiid what high capacious powers 
 Lie folded up in man ; how far beyond 
 The praise of mortals, may the eternal growth 
 Of nature to perfection half divine 
 Expand the blooming soul ! 
 
 Akenside. 
 
 But the effects of habit are most conspicuous 
 and energetic in cases where it has been actually 
 adopted, as it were, by nature from necessity, and 
 transmitted from parent to offspring; it is strikingly 
 manifested in the remarkable projection of the con- 
 cha of the ear in the aboriginal inhabitants of some 
 
174 
 
 countries ; such configuration being more favour- 
 able to acuteness of hearing, and these savages are 
 remarkable for their delicacy of that sense. The 
 natives of North America and of Ethiopia exhibit 
 extraordinary developments of the organs of smell ; 
 in them the ossa spongiosa and the sinuses are of 
 immense size. Accordingly, we are informed by 
 travellers, that the savages of America pursue 
 their enemies through the desert by the sense of 
 smell alone. The small feet and hands, and the 
 delicate form and complexion so especially remark- 
 able in the females of noble families, or such as 
 have descended through a long line of uninter- 
 rupted ease and exemption from labor ; the small 
 feet of the Chinese woman, the disproportioned 
 legs of most of the English peasantry, are all the 
 effects of habit transmitted. The Chinese ladies 
 and English peasantry owe their deformity 
 originally to the pressure of tight shoes and tight 
 lacing. The latter have their ancles and lower 
 parts of the leg so well braced by their high-lows, 
 that the joint is nearly deprived of motion ; and 
 the tendons of the gastrocnemii having no play, 
 these muscles for want of exercise, become more 
 like what might be expected in the figure of Star- 
 vation than on the legs of an English beef-eater. 
 
 Auxerat articulos macies, gemmmque rigebat 
 Orbis, et immodico prodibant tubera talo. 
 
 Ovid. 
 Her joints protuberant by leanness grown, 
 Consumption sank the flesh and raised the bone. 
 Her knees' large orbits bunch' d to monstrous size, 
 And ancles to undue proportion rise. 
 
 Drtdbv. 
 
 This slenderness of the leg is very common in many 
 of the counties of England, where those short laced 
 boots called high-lows are worn from infancy ; and 
 the constant pressure of the leather bracing has 
 had such effects by transmission that the slender 
 leg and lark-heels are become natural and heredi- 
 
175 
 
 tary. The large ossa turbinata and capacious 
 sinuses of the internal nares, as well as the pro- 
 jecting ears of several savage nations, must have 
 arisen in the early races from the necessity of 
 exercising these organs to the utmost extent. For 
 on the perfection of the senses of which these are 
 the organs, depended most of their safety and sub- 
 sistence in peace, and the success of their stratagems 
 in war and hunting ; these organs being enlarged 
 by continual exercise, became naturalized habits, 
 which in process of time passed into dispositions 
 in the parent, and produced the essential modi- 
 fications of the organs in the offspring which the 
 nature of their lives required. 
 
 I know not whether the flat sun-dial heads of 
 the Titicacas, and the oblique heads of the ancient 
 natives of Peru, were natural or accidental con- 
 formations, and descended to the children; but 
 there is not much doubt that these crania bear 
 relation to some original habit. This inference is 
 supported by the testimony of the illustrious phy- 
 siologist, John Hunter, who says, " As animals 
 are known to produce young which are different 
 from themselves in color, form, and disposition, 
 arising from -what may be called the unnatural 
 mode of life, it shows this curious power of accom- 
 modation in the animal economy, that although 
 education can produce no change in the colour, 
 form, or disposition of the animal, yet it is capable 
 of producing a principle which becomes so natural 
 to the animal that it shall beget young different in 
 colour and form, and so altered in disposition as to 
 be more easily trained up to the offices suitable to 
 such changes of form. 1 You will find additional 
 examples of the transmission of peculiarities and 
 acquired habits from parents to their offspring in 
 the article America, Encyclop. Brit., vol. ii., "<th 
 edit., p. 653, and in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 
 1 On the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog. 
 
176 
 
 lxxxiv., at page 457. The macrocephali afford 
 another proof of the position. Hippocrates says, 
 " When the infant is born, and while the head is 
 yet soft and tender, they shape it with their hands, 
 and force it to grow in length by applying ban- 
 dages and other contrivances adapted to that end, 
 whereby the head loses its spheroidal form. In 
 the beginning custom forced nature to adopt such 
 a conformation ; but in the course of time nature 
 became identified with the habit ; so that now it 
 is no longer necessary to force her," &c. ; and he 
 reasons on to his conclusion thus — " For if bald 
 children are produced by bald parents, blue-eyed 
 children from blue-eyed parents, and squinting 
 children from squint-eyed parents, what should 
 prevent a macrocephalus from being the father of 
 a long-head ? If such a conformation is no longer 
 produced as formerly it is because the people, 
 from negligence, have allowed the habit to fall 
 into desuetude." 1 And however absurd the cause 
 may seem which he assigns for such deviations 
 from original form, the same doctrine was lately 
 revived by the illustrious naturalist Buffon ; such 
 being the only feasible means of accounting for 
 these naturalized habits. Blumenbach also says 
 the different shapes of the head seen in different 
 nations, are the effect of absurd customs which have 
 in process of time become natural and hereditary. 2 
 This is not all. Even diseases acquire habits. 
 After having appeared once or twice they probably 
 leave some structural or functional disorder which 
 becomes ever after the predisposing cause of their 
 recurrence. It is in this manner they become 
 constitutional and perhaps hereditary as in the 
 case of mania, epilepsy, gout, rheumatism and 
 many nervous, tuberculous, carcinomatous, and 
 inflammatory distempers : and it is well known to 
 
 1 7rspi Atpiov Yccitujv. 'Vo7cu)v beet. 1 and 32. 
 
 2 I)e Gen. Hum, Tar. 
 
177 
 
 medical men that even some of the organs of the 
 human body, those which are not under the 
 direction of the mind, occasionally contract wilful 
 habits, and proceed to perform altogether new, 
 vicarious, or changed functions, with a precision 
 and regularity as determinate as if they acted 
 under the direction of a will. There is one of the 
 involuntary organs in particular, which from its 
 wayward freaks and vagaries Hippocrates, Plato, 
 Aristotle, the elegant and enlightened Aretaeus 
 and others, considered as an animal within an 
 animal. But as this is a subject I cannot discuss 
 in these pages, I may only refer to the irv\£ 
 vdTEpiKr) as the complaint whence this strange 
 doctrine seems to have received its origin and sup- 
 port. And to those medical gentlemen who may 
 wish to inform themselves on this very ancient and 
 very curious theorem, I will add, by way of paren- 
 thesis, a correct reference to the principal authors 
 who have treated of the doctrine. Hippocrates 
 de Morbis Mulier. Tit. 60, &c. ; and Tit. 141, 
 &c, (Foes. ed. ;) also de Locis in Homine at the 
 words, kcu olov cr^cuocu, k. r. A. Plato in Timaeo, 
 62, where he is speaking irEpl tt\q ^{]Tpag. Aristotle 
 de Motu Ani?n., at the words, " MaAtora Se rwv" — 
 " ojcnrsp Z>C)ov k£x w £h<tju£vov," &a, Aretaeus Caus. 
 et Sign. Morb. Acut. 1, 6, passim. Galen de Locis 
 Affectis. VI. 5, where he reasons against the 
 hypothesis. Aetius, Tetrabib. XVI. 68, Ori- 
 basius Synops. II. 47, Paulus iEgineta, III. 
 71 ; and all subsequent writers, Latin and Ara- 
 bian, down to the 17th century, among whom, 
 strange enough, Fernelius is found espousing the 
 ancient doctrine, in opposition to the reasoning 
 and authority of Galen. See Patholog. VI. 16. 
 Ballonius Epidem. II. Const. IV. JEstiva, A.D, 
 1579, and Lib. de Virginum Morb., cap. 10, 
 where he supports the views of Fernelius and the 
 ancients. I may just add here that Rudius, 
 
178 
 
 Rogerius, and Sanctorius follow Fernelius. 
 Sennertus, Riolanus, and the celebrated and un- 
 fortunate Vesalius, and most of the moderns of 
 that epoch hold with Galen. 
 
 I have only skimmed over these matters which 
 are worthy of the deepest consideration, to show 
 you the imperious force and tendencies of habit. 
 It is indeed justly considered an essential pillar of 
 the constitution in many cases of disease and acci- 
 dent; in the body physical, like custom in the 
 body politic, it neither can be implanted at once 
 nor be suddenly nor forcibly eradicated without 
 endangering the whole fabric : for, to continue the 
 parallel, if customs are so firmly established in the 
 moral world, that they long survive the fall of 
 states and the destruction of governments ; in like 
 manner some physical habits may become so in- 
 wrought in the human system, as you have just 
 read, that their effects continue through genera- 
 tions ; while the sudden desuetude of others asso- 
 ciated with the vital actions might be destructive 
 to life. Why, for instance, is the sudden stoppage 
 of an accustomed discharge from any part of the 
 body frequently followed by dangerous metastases, 
 congestive diseases, and frequently death ? Why 
 has Hippocrates, the most accomplished and in- 
 telligible interpreter of nature, and the most expe- 
 rienced physician that ever lived, given this pre- 
 caution ? " When you are about to cure old 
 hcemorrhoids, unless you keep one open there 
 will be danger of dropsy or consumption." Why 
 has Celsus, and every practitioner since his day, 
 sounded the same or similiar notes of warning, if 
 habit be not identical with nature ? For when 
 once it is fixed in the constitution, and all parts of 
 it have been brought to harmonize with the adopted 
 arrangement, it becomes while it lasts, as much a 
 part of the system, as any of its constituents. This 
 seems to have been the opinion of philosophers of 
 
179 
 
 all ages. Hippocrates declares " habit to be so 
 powerful that any sudden deviation from it brings 
 no small injury on the body." 1 Galen knew well 
 the influence of habit when he wrote that, " habit 
 conspires with nature in effecting the same end, 
 for which reason it has been appropriately said 
 that habit is an adscititious nature, eOog eiriKTrirog 
 (pvaig ;" 2 and he adds in another place — " Nature 
 always rejoices in things to which she is habitu- 
 ated." 3 Pliny the Naturalist considers habit to be 
 " the most potent master of all things." Macro- 
 bius like Galen, calls it a second nature, 4 Gellius, 
 " domina rerum." 5 Marius boasts that his life had 
 been spent so much in beneficent actions, that the 
 doing good had changed from habit into nature — 
 benefacere jam ex consuetudine in naturam vertit. 6 
 On the same principle is probably founded that 
 fine precept of the Pythagoreans. " Optimum vitse 
 genus eligito nam consuetudo faciet jucundissi- 
 mum." — Choose the most useful occupation, for 
 habit will render it the pleasantest. Olaus Magnus 
 shows by an elegant climax how habit enslaves the 
 body in vice. " Voluptas enimipsa,usum,et consue- 
 tudinem : consuetudo necessitatem ; necessitas des- 
 perationem inducit et coartat." 7 I recommend you 
 to read that curious old work. Ludovicus Cornelius 
 begins his elegant little treatise De Vitce Sobrice 
 Commodis in this manner : — Certum est usum in 
 hominibus successu temporis verti in naturam; ita 
 ut illos quodammodo cogat ad ea usurpanda quibus 
 consueverunt, sive bona ea sint, sive mala. Pari 
 modo in multis rebus videmus usum consuetum 
 habere plus virium quam rationem." Puchsius 
 says, " habit is a certain tendency and faculty of 
 
 ' De Vict in A cutis. 
 
 2 Lib. de Motu Musculorum, ii. 17. 
 
 3 Meth. Therap viii. 8. See also his Libel, de Consue- 
 tudine ; and de Hygiene, v. 8. 
 
 4 Saturnal, lib vii. cap. 9. 5 Noct. Att. xii. 13 
 Salust. Bel. Jug. 85. 7 Hist. Gent. Sept. ii. 22. 
 
180 
 
 always acting or suffering in the same way, con- 
 tracted by use in things both friendly and adverse 
 to nature." And, " So great is the consent of 
 habit with nature, that the one passes into the 
 other, insomuch that, what we are accustomed to 
 becomes itself natural, as has been appositely said 
 by the ancients, habit is an adscititious nature ; 
 i. e., a certain fundamental power, not indeed in- 
 generated, but acquired by use, which is hence 
 congenial with our nature, and it appears to he 
 nature itself indeed, except that the former springs 
 from an external, the latter from an internal and 
 innate principle." 1 The elegant scholar and ac- 
 complished physician, Dr. John Gregory, says, 
 " If we would inquire into the cause of our weak 
 and sickly habits, we must go back to the state of 
 infancy ; the foundation of the evil is laid there. 
 Habit soon succeeds in the place of nature, and 
 however unworthy a successor, requires almost 
 equal attention." 2 Bernardino Ramazzini, to whom 
 I frequently refer, and always with pleasure, says, 
 in his comment on Cornaro's book, just quoted, 
 on the Advantage of a Sober Life, " Non immerito 
 sane consuetudo altera natura passim audit ; magna 
 enim et admiranda est illius potestas, afficit quippe 
 non solum corpus sed etiam animum." 
 
 In truth you will find habit to be the tightest 
 dress you can wear : no one but he who has made 
 the attempt to divest himself of it can fully ap- 
 preciate the closeness of its adhesion. Galen hints 
 that it would be as safe to skin a man as to strip 
 him of his habit ; I think it would be as well 
 to kill him at once as to force him to abandon it 
 without gradual desuetude. Since, therefore, we 
 are to consider habits as supplemental natures, 
 which influence the whole human organization 
 and intellect, does it not appear to be a prepos- 
 terous interference with the private concerns, 
 1 Inst. Med. ii. v. 5. 2 Comp. View, &c„ p. 79. 
 
181 
 
 comforts, and perhaps the health of our brethren, 
 to urge, or even to advise gratuitously or mer- 
 cenarily the sudden relinquishment of any of our 
 habits ? In a very long professional acquaintance 
 with the various temperaments and idiosyncrasies 
 of human nature, I can say with truth, that I have 
 never known a deep-rooted habit suddenly 
 disused with safety or permanent success. Indeed, 
 I have never known or heard of a habit of this 
 sort abruptly abandoned, which was not followed 
 by very distressing or dangerous consequences ; 
 and I am not a little surprised to find men of edu- 
 cation and judgment emphatically preaching the 
 pernicious doctrine : and it is particularly grievous 
 to find some professional men insisting on the im- 
 mediate and unconditional abandonment of such 
 and such habits, without reflecting that the consti- 
 tution requires to undergo the same gradual process 
 of training to fit it for the disuse, as was necessary 
 to accommodate it to the acquisition of the habit. 
 It is inexpressibly painful to see a person who has 
 been forced to renounce his habit of smoking or 
 snuff-taking, for example, either by accident or 
 design ; the restlessness, the anxiety of mind, the 
 care-worn looks, and the guilt-like uneasiness, 
 occasioned by the imperious craving of the appetite 
 for its accustomed stimulus or sedative, can be 
 likened to nothing so much as the disease Nostalgia, 
 to which the people of mountainous countries are 
 subject when long absent from their native homes ; 
 any one who has witnessed this disease operating 
 in all its intensity, would never afterwards be able 
 to divest his memory of the painful and appaling 
 spectacle ; and to such a state have I seen the 
 victim of ill-timed and impertinent advice re- 
 duced. 
 
 It is the indifference or forgetfulness respecting 
 its union with our nature which has given rise to the 
 belief, that they may be safely and at once aban- 
 
182 
 
 doned. That the hypothesis is evidently the sug- 
 gestion of a philanthropic and Christian spirit I 
 cannot doubt, but in reducing it to practice, par- 
 ticularly in respect to many of the physical habits 
 which form part as it were of life itself, and it is 
 to them I chiefly allude, it is a dangerous and almost 
 impracticable doctrine. It cannot be admitted 
 even, as is often urged in support of the thesis, 
 that because many of the habits, moral and physical, 
 are either absurd, ridiculous, or vicious, to eradicate 
 them at once can involve neither danger nor diffi- 
 culty, and that it is consequently a peremptory duty 
 to dismiss them vi et armis. Because it may be 
 asserted, and the history of society is evidence, that 
 the most absurd customs are those which longest 
 resist the force of reason, the ridiculous are perma- 
 nent, since they are uninjurious, but the vicious 
 are commonly so deeply rooted in the rich soil of 
 a corruptible nature, that they cannot be extirpated 
 by violence — they will only yield to address and 
 time, by cultivating a course of action of an opposite 
 tendency. Seneca observes, " Nulla enim sapi- 
 entia, naturalia corporis aut animi vitia ponuntur ; 
 quicquid infixum et ingenitum est, lenitur arte, 
 non vincitur." 1 But I cannot go the whole length 
 of this sentiment, for I am convinced that the 
 human mind is capable of disentangling itself, and 
 the body too, from the worst snares in which evil 
 habits or vices may have involved them, if it be 
 subjected to the corrective influence of resolution, 
 energetic self-control, intellectual amusements, and 
 the avoidance of idleness. But these effects can 
 only be produced by time, patience, and perse- 
 verance. Besides — 
 
 There is some soul of goodness in things evil, 
 If men observingly distil it out. 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 1 Epist. 11. 
 
183 
 
 The difficulties of surmounting inveterate habits 
 are confessedly formidable, but 
 
 The wise and prudent conquer difficulties 
 By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly 
 Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and danger, 
 And make the impossibility they fear. 
 
 Row. 
 
 And as a hint towards decision of character, may 
 be added the fine apostrophe of Young, — 
 
 Is nothing more than purpose in thy power ? 
 Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed. 
 "Who does the best his circumstance allows — 
 Does well, acts nobly, angels could no more. 
 
 For although habits are mostly formed in the first 
 twenty -five years of life, yet they are acquired even 
 at a considerably advanced age : and it is on a 
 groundwork of new and better habits superseding 
 bad ones that some of our most enchanting views 
 of intellectual enjoyment are founded, as well as 
 some of our most cheering and delightful prospects 
 of futurity. In one redeemed from the dominance 
 of bad habits, or initiated into new and better, 
 •* the mind," says Dugald Stewart, " awakening 
 up from a trance to a new existence, becomes 
 habituated to the most interesting aspects of life 
 and of nature ; the intellectual eye is purged of its 
 film, and things the most familiar and unnoticed 
 disclose charms invisible before. The same objects 
 and events which were lately beheld with indiffer ■ 
 ence, occupy now all the powers and capacities of 
 the soul. The contrast between the present and 
 the past serving only to enhance and endear so 
 unlooked for an acquisition." 1 
 
 1 On the Cultivation of Intellectual Habits. 
 
LETTER XIV. 
 
 Aid TsXeog ovv fiaprvpeti ravra Travra aWrjkoiai, '6ti irdvra 
 i£a-Kivr\q fiei^io 7ro\\<£ tov fierpiov fieTafiaWofitva t7rt rd Kai 
 £7ri rd, (3Xci7TTet. 
 
 Hippocrates. 
 
 I have stated above that habits often protect the 
 body under circumstances in which it would be 
 destroyed without them. One of the most sensible 
 physicians of antiquity says, — Consuetudo nihil 
 aliud prodesse quam ut non plurimum noceantur 
 corpora potest. 1 But notwithstanding all their 
 utility the effort to familiarise the constitution 
 suddenly with them, or to relinquish them ab- 
 ruptly when formed, is equally contrary to reason 
 and to safety. I have already quoted Hippocrates 
 pronouncing habit to be so powerful that the sudden 
 disuse of it brings great detriment to the body. 
 For the same reason Celsus says, " When one 
 wishes to change his way of living he must habituate 
 himself to it by degrees." 2 " Ne subito muta 
 assueta," says Hoffman, " quia assuetudo est altera 
 natura." 3 — Make no sudden changes, for custom is 
 another nature. There is no lack of cautions and 
 precepts indeed on this point. But, in the lan- 
 guage of Seneca, example is better than precept : 
 it is a shorter and better road to the understanding. 
 — Longum iter est per pra?cepta, breve et efncax 
 per exempla. 4 Thomas Parre, a peasant of Shrop- 
 shire, was the oldest man except Jenkins, of whom 
 we have any authentic record. Parre outlived nine 
 sovereigns, and died in the tenth year of the tenth, 
 at the age of 152 years and nine months. He 
 
 1 Coelius Aurelianus, Morb Acut. i. 16. 2 De Medicina, i. 3. 
 3 Operum. t. v. 4 Epist. 6 and 52. 
 
185 
 
 expired in 1635, and the immortal Harvey who 
 dissected him states, " that he found no decay in 
 any of his organs, and he might have lived much 
 longer had he not changed his simple habit and diet 
 by becoming a dependent in the Earl of Arundel's 
 family." 1 According to Taylor his biographer, he 
 lived only six weeks after he came to London, and 
 died of congestion of the lungs brought on by the 
 sudden change of his old habits, from the coarse 
 and simple diet and pure air of the country, to the 
 luxury of a palace, and the impure atmosphere of 
 a city. 2 
 
 The fate of Parre confirms the saying of Galen, 
 that " An old man if he should attempt gradually 
 to change even a bad habit of long standing in 
 order to live better, he could not accomplish it, he 
 would labour in vain." 3 Hippocrates says, " Things 
 to which we are long accustomed, though they may 
 be worse, are less likely to injure us than those 
 things to which we are not accustomed." 4 Our 
 own great moralist declares, that " Custom is com- 
 monly too strong for the most resolute resolver, 
 though furnished for the assault with all the 
 weapons of philosophy." " He that endeavours to 
 free himself from an ill habit," says Bacon, " must 
 not change too much at a time, lest he should be 
 discouraged by difficulty, nor too little, for then 
 he will make but slow advances." u This is a 
 principle," continues Dr. Johnson, iC which may 
 oe applauded in a book, but will fail in the trial, 
 in which every change will be found too great or 
 too little. Those who have been able to conquer 
 habit, are like those who are fabled to have returned 
 from the realms of Pluto. 
 
 Pauci, quos sequus amavit 
 
 Jupiter, aut ardens evexit ad aether a virtus. 
 
 Virgil. 
 
 1 Phil. Trans., vol. iii., p. 887. 
 
 s Harleian Miscellany, vol. iv. 
 3 Hygiene, v. x. 4 Aphorism, 50, sect. 2. 
 
186 
 
 They are sufficient to give hope, but not security, 
 to animate to the contest, but not to promise vic- 
 tory." 1 
 
 Many years ago, I witnessed the folly and in- 
 justice of attempting to break the habit of snuff- 
 taking abruptly in an inveterate slave to that 
 absurd practice — in truth I was a party concerned. 
 Influenced by the incessant importunities of two 
 maiden aunts of the gentleman, to give my support 
 to their clamorous exhortations to renounce the 
 snuff-box, and being at that time young and inex- 
 perienced, I was yielding enough to give their 
 solicitations the sanction of professional advice. 
 The attempt to make him leave off the habit at 
 once was made ; and the recollection of the conse- 
 quences that resulted from the disuse, will never 
 leave my memory. It taught me more practical 
 wisdom than I had learned from many years' read- 
 ing of the theories of book-makers, and writers on 
 diet. The young man commenced the ordeal, but 
 he soon became frightfully restless and wild, and 
 you would have thought that like Orestes he was 
 haunted by the furies of his murdered parent — 
 
 Ilium et parentis credideris sui 
 Fregisse cervicem, et penetralia 
 Sparsisse, nocturne- cruore 
 
 Hospitis 
 
 Horace. 
 
 He next lost his appetite, became melancholy, and 
 seemed to be fast merging into insanity. I was 
 again consulted on his alarming case, by the same 
 imprudent but well meaning aunts, who persisted 
 in ascribing even the present symptoms to the 
 permanent effects of the snuff. But by this time 
 I had taken a different view of the case, and per- 
 suaded them to place his snuffbox before him : — 
 the dog returned to his vomit, and he soon recovered 
 both his corporeal and mental health. To this you 
 
 1 Idler, 27. 
 
187 
 
 may add the experience of the illustrious Dr. Cullen 
 with respect to snuff-taking. 1 
 
 The same rule holds stringently in many other 
 examples of the application of medicine to disease, 
 for instance, in the insanity of drunkards, called 
 Delirium tremens ; few practitioners would be 
 successful if they did not act strictly with a view 
 to the previous habit; nor would it be good prac- 
 tice, cceteris paribus, to withdraw at once, or with- 
 hold any accustomed stimulus. This reminds me 
 of an excellent practical old bacchanalian precept, 
 which I have often heard prescribed for the inde- 
 scribable horrors arising from yesterday's debauch : 
 " Take a hair of the dog that bit you ;" which, by 
 the way, is a very ancient prescription, and may 
 be found among the health -aphorisms of the cele- 
 brated Schola Salernitana, 
 
 Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini 
 
 Hoc tu mane bibas iterum, fuerit medicina. 1 
 
 M. Andral mentions the case of a drunkard who 
 was thrown into prison and put on prison diet ; he 
 then became affected with delirium tremens ; he 
 was ordered a certain quantity of spirits and water 
 and recovered immediately. 3 I cite this case 
 merely as an illustration. A gentleman on whose 
 veracity I have every reason to place the most 
 implicit confidence, informs me that during the 
 last short war with America, the price of tobacco 
 rose so high that the poor in his neighbourhood 
 could no longer afford to purchase it ; snuff how- 
 ever had not risen in equal proportion. There 
 was one poor mason in particular to whom the 
 habit was so much a second nature, that when 
 compelled by necessity to relinquish it, became 
 stupid, restless, and so blind that he could no 
 longer exercise his trade. His very existence 
 
 1 Materia Medica, vol. ii., p. 437. 
 2 C. xv. 3 Precis d' Anatomic Pathol, v. ii. 
 
188 
 
 seemed to depend upon his quid ; and it is im- 
 possible to say how he would have fared, had not 
 the same necessity suggested the following ingeni- 
 ous substitute, — he procured snuff and wrapped it 
 up into little packets with linen rag, and chewed 
 one occasionally instead of tobacco, by which he 
 soon recovered his energies and sight. To talk, 
 therefore, of leaving off a habit at once, like 
 putting off a doublet, reads very well in books, 
 but is another thing in practice. 
 
 Beside the power of accustoming one's self to 
 simple, innocuous, or pleasant things, you have 
 numerous examples of the possibility of habituating 
 the body or parts of the body to things the most 
 injurious to the tissues, and repugnant to the taste ; 
 and it must afford more than common gratification 
 to a philosophical mind to contemplate the readiness 
 and accuracy with which nature gently constrains 
 organized beings to accommodate themselves to 
 sudden and violent accidents and apparently the 
 most adverse to the principle of vitality ; at first 
 adopting salutary modifications from necessity, and 
 finally making them her own for the maintenance 
 of life, and the performance of the vital functions 
 with undisturbed regularity and harmony ; illus- 
 trating that fine saying of Seneca, Necessitas for- 
 titer ferre docet, consuetudo facile — " necessity 
 teaches to bear with fortitude — habit with ease." 
 
 As an example of no unusual kind — in the 
 operation for aneurism in any of the large blood 
 vessels of the body, say those of the thigh, no 
 sooner is the immense stream of nutriment cut off, 
 than nature true to her purpose, commences the 
 process of dilating all the remaining arteries, 
 which is first manifested by a general throbbing 
 and an unusual sensation of heat in the limb, caused 
 by disturbance of the nervous principle ; and so 
 determined are her purposes that the proper and 
 due quantity shall be maintained, that in a short 
 
189 
 
 time all the neighbouring arteries are found to have 
 gained so much in calibre as to contain in the whole 
 the exact quantity which circulated in the limb in 
 its sound state. 
 
 The protective power of habit is very singularly 
 manifested in the faculty which the stomach acquires 
 of resisting the effects of the most virulent poisons. 
 Galen treating of the properties of hemlock cur- 
 sorily notices this fact. He says, " If a very small 
 portion be taken into the stomach it will not destroy 
 life, a result which the case of the old woman of 
 Athens has confirmed by experience. The cir- 
 cumstance is well known to every one. She began 
 taking a very minute dose, and increased by de- 
 grees until it amounted to a prodigious quantity 
 without injury. At first the portion she took was 
 innoxious from its parvity ; but as the dose in- 
 creased, and she persevered, the habit became 
 confirmed, and rendered the poison natural." 1 
 This fact of poisons being rendered innocuous by 
 habit is further exemplified by the Theriaki, or 
 opium-eaters of Egypt and Constantinople. The 
 quantities of this drug which they can take with 
 apparent impunity are astonishing. Prosper Al- 
 pinus says, " The Egyptians use opium very fre- 
 quently, to which, after a long time, they become 
 so accustomed that some can take the weight of 
 three drachms at once, with perfect impunity," &c. 
 — " Hence," he adds, " I suppose it happens that 
 those who are accustomed to devour it every day, 
 upon suspending it for one day undergo the most 
 distressing symptoms at the same hour when they 
 were in the habit of taking it." 2 But one of the 
 most extraordinary cases of poison eating on record 
 is related by Poucqueville. Speaking of a Theriaki 
 who was a phenomenon of longevity considering 
 the time these people usually live, he says, " This 
 
 1 Simp. Med. Fac, iii. 18. 
 a De Medicina iEgypt, iv. 1. 
 
190 
 
 man was well known all over Constantinople in the 
 year 1800, by the name of Suleyman Yeyen, or 
 Suleyman the eater of corrosive sublimate, &c. 
 He had early in life habituated himself to taking 
 opium ; but notwithstanding that he constantly 
 increased the dose, he ceased to feel from it the 
 desired effect, and tried corrosive sublimate, the 
 effects of which he had heard highly spoken of. 
 For thirty years this old man had never ceased to 
 take it daily, and the quantity he could now take at 
 one dose exceeded a drachm" 1 — (which in France 
 weighs seventy-two grains.) — This fact is well 
 attested ; and there is no doubt that had this man 
 left off his habit suddenly, the want of his poison 
 would have shortened his days ; so dangerous is it 
 to change one's mode of life in old age. Sanctorius 
 relates a singular instance of the force of habit. — 
 " An individual who had passed twenty years of 
 his life in a dark and noisome dungeon, the air of 
 which had become quite infectious, was, upon the 
 expiration of his imprisonment set at liberty ; but 
 the change of air and diet, instead of imparting 
 health and vigour to his blanched and enfeebled 
 frame, so altered his health for the worse, that he 
 could find no means of restoring it, until he was 
 again at his own earnest desire restored to the same 
 infected cell where he had spent so many years for 
 his crimes." 2 Combe, the author of Dr. Syntax, 
 a man of the most varied fortunes, and first-rate 
 talents, became so enamoured of his prison after a 
 confinement of fifteen years in the King's Bench, 
 that he declined the offers of his friends to obtain 
 his liberation, on account of the trouble it would 
 give him ; observing, " that if he were again at 
 liberty, and established in the most pleasant spot 
 round London, he should only feel perplexed by 
 having to choose his walk." 
 
 1 Travels in Greece and Turkey, p. 298. 
 
 2 Methodus Vitandorum Errorum qui in Arte Medica con- 
 tingunt. 
 
191 
 
 When attending the hospital in the year 1817, 
 I witnessed the lamentable result of suddenly 
 changing a recently contracted habit, in a poor 
 countryman whose thigh had remained dislocated 
 for the space of four months. He had got some- 
 what used to the accident, but because he halted 
 in his gait, his wife urged him to have it reduced. 
 The surgeons of the hospital forewarned him 
 frequently and solemnly of the probable conse- 
 quences : but in subservience to his wife's vanity, 
 he persisted in desiring to have the dislocation 
 reduced. Accordingly, after the usual trouble, 
 the thigh was restored to its natural position ; and 
 the result was that in twenty -four hours the man 
 was a corpse ! He died in convulsions. 
 
 Zacutus Lusitanus, in one of his " Observationes" 
 relates a curious instance of the power of habit. 
 When Sebastian, King of Portugal, was travelling 
 from Coimbra to Lisbon, he was received by the 
 people of a certain maritime town with such 
 demonstrations of joy, that they all burnt incense 
 before their doors, and the ground on which he 
 walked was strewed with flowers ; so that the air 
 was filled with incense, and resounded with music 
 and the acclamations of the people. It happened 
 that a fisherman, desirous of seeing the pageant 
 had mingled in the crowd, and being seized with a 
 sudden giddiness, fell down like a person in 
 apoplexy, and was obliged to be carried to the 
 nearest house, but could not be restored by any 
 measures the physicians employed. The King 
 then, moved with pity, sent to his relief Thomas 
 a Vega, his chief physician, who having learned 
 the case, and suspecting that he had been over- 
 powered by the unusual odour of the incense, 
 ordered him to be carried instantly to the sea 
 shore to which he had been all his life accustomed, 
 and there to be covered over with wraik and sea 
 weed ; and shortly after this was done, the man 
 
192 
 
 was restored by the accustomed smell. Aretaeus 
 alludes to the force of habit ; but it is impossible 
 to do justice to his elegant language in a translation. 
 In his treatment of phrenitis, he says Habits, or 
 things to which we are accustomed, will procure 
 sleep ; to the sailor, lying on board ship, and 
 sailing about on the sea, the sound of the shore, 
 the murmur of the waves, the rustling of the 
 winds, and the smell of the sea and of the ship ; to 
 the musician, playing on the flute in silence, or 
 singing to the harp or the lyre ; or the exercise of 
 children in singing ; to the schoolmaster, the 
 relation of childish stories, &C. 1 
 
 I wish here to reconsider the case of the old 
 man mentioned by Vanderwiel, in whom it is made 
 to appear that life was virtually supported by the 
 habit of smoking; for the case seems from the 
 way in which it is laid before us, to intimate that 
 he had lived some time on the aerial diet alone ; 
 also to the lunatic confined in the madhouse at 
 Haarlem, who we are led to suppose lived forty 
 days on the smoke of tobacco and a little 
 water. Both these cases seem incredible or 
 inexplicable. The habit of using tobacco 
 might for a limited season still the sensations of 
 hunger ; but the smoke of tobacco could not in 
 the smallest degree supply the waste of the body. 
 The madman's case is physically impossible ; how- 
 ever if these two singular cases be true, they bear 
 a striking likeness to that of Democritus of Abdera, 
 already alluded to, who had always been extremely 
 fond of honey, and upon which he had lived during 
 the greatest part of his life. Atheneeus says, " It is 
 reported of him that when he had become worn out 
 with old age, and wearied of life, he resolved to 
 starve himself to death by withdrawing a portion of 
 his food every day ; but the festival of Ceres, called 
 the days of the Thesmophorii being at hand, the 
 
 1 OZtmv vova. Qtpcnr.i., 1. 
 
193 
 
 females of his household implored him not to die 
 until these were over that they might be enabled 
 to keep that solemn festival ; he consented, and 
 ordered a pot of honey to be placed near him, and 
 thus he prolonged his life for several days, sup- 
 ported by the smell and halitus of the honey alone. 
 When the festival was over and the honey 
 removed, he died in a few days." 1 These instances 
 give some colour and support to a problem of 
 Richerand,who asks, "May not death be considered 
 a natural consequence of the laws of sensibility 1 
 Life depending on the continual excitement of 
 the living solids by the fluids which moisten them, 
 ceases, because the parts endowed with sensibility 
 and contractibility, after long habitude of the im- 
 pressions of those fluids, lose their capacity of 
 feeling them. Their action gradually extinguished, 
 would perhaps revive, if the energy of the stimu- 
 lating power were increased." 2 
 
 I should here call your attention to another danger 
 connected with habits, particularly those relating to 
 the taking of poisons, which is, that it is equally 
 dangerous to increase the dose suddenly, or make 
 any violent change in the acts in which the habit 
 consists, as it is to break them off abruptly when 
 contracted. Such rash procedure will operate on 
 the constitution with the same virulence as if no 
 habit had been induced, and it will be dangerous 
 to life according to the degree in which the increased 
 intensity, or impression is made on the constitution. 
 For, as 1 have before remarked, neither sudden im- 
 pressions form a habit, nor can the system, even when 
 inured to any set, sustain the shock of them when 
 suddenly increased; they would then prove 
 injurious — perhaps indeed break what they were 
 only intended to bend. You will better under- 
 stand this by examples. Gmelin cites two 
 
 1 Deipnosoph, lib. ii. 
 2 Elem. Phys. 
 T 
 
194 
 
 instances of death occasioned by excessive 
 smoking. One of the persons died shortly after 
 finishing seventeen pipes, the other eighteen, at 
 one sitting. In both these cases we are to suppose 
 the habit of smoking moderately had been fully 
 formed, but the custom of smoking seventeen or 
 eighteen pipes had not, and the constitution suffered 
 the same degree of violence and injury from 
 the additional number of pipes beyond the usual 
 quantity, as if the habit of smoking had not 
 been formed at all. Perhaps the system might have 
 withstood the shock of twelve pipes or so without 
 absolutely incurring death ; but in all cases where 
 change is contemplated, the system ought to be 
 humoured and broken in by degrees. In illustra- 
 tion of the evil of attempting to acquire the habit 
 of smoking at once, my friend Dr. Marshall Hall 
 of London, relates the case of a young man who 
 smoked two pipes for his first essay ; he was seized 
 with nauseous vomiting, syncope, stupor, stertorous 
 breathing, &c, and continued in this state for two 
 days ; he recovered, however, but at great risk. 
 So that you might say — 
 
 Nutritur vento, vento restinguitur ignis, 
 Lenis alit flammas, grandior aura necat. 
 
 Ovid. 
 
 These cases are submitted to the consideration of 
 the beginner who may be anxious to acquire the 
 habit at once, as well as to the fool-hardy adept 
 who, trusting too much to usage, without consi- 
 deration suddenly indulges to excess the increasing 
 demands of his appetite. — 
 
 Voluptates commendat rarior usus. — Juvenal. 
 
 Milo carried an ox for the length of a stadium 
 at the Olympic Games ; but Milo could not have 
 carried the ox had he not first accustomed himself 
 to carry the calf every day until it grew into the 
 
195 
 
 ox ; and I have no doubt that if the weight of a 
 cat had been suddenly added to that of the ox 
 whilst on Milo's shoulders, Milo would have sunk 
 under the load. I would wish you to remember 
 also that even the Hippocratic doctrine of gradual 
 change will not always avail. 
 
 I have proceeded further with this subject than 
 I at first intended, to show the relation habit bears 
 to nature, the difficulties of overcoming it, and the 
 imminent danger of renouncing it suddenly. If 
 my views are correct, and you have seen they are 
 supported by no mean authorities, it would be 
 nugatory to expatiate on the danger of dissuading 
 people from their established modes of life. I never 
 knew an instance of an inveterate smoker or snuff- 
 taker who, in attempting to regenerate himself, 
 would hold out in the virtuous course. I believe 
 it is next to impossible to divest one's nature 
 entirely of the uncontrollable longings of the 
 appetite, the feverish restlessness and uneasiness 
 attending the sudden desuetude of tobacco ; and 
 if not left off abruptly — a hazardous proceeding — 
 I am of Dr. Johnson's opinion, that half measures 
 will riot do ; yet I believe, notwithstanding what 
 has been said, that a gradual retrenchment, if one 
 could muster up fortitude to persevere in the 
 attempt, might effect the object in course of time. 
 " Those who are in the power of evil habits," says 
 Johnson, " must conquer them as they can ; and 
 conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor 
 happiness can be attained ; but those who are not 
 yet subject to their influence may by timely caution 
 preserve their freedom ; they may effectually re- 
 solve to escape the tyrant whom they will very 
 vainly resolve to conquer." 
 
LETTER XV 
 
 Sapere aude, 
 
 Incipe. Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, 
 Rusticus expectat dum denuat amnis ; at ille 
 Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis sevum. 
 
 Hor. 
 
 Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; 
 
 He who defers this work from day to day 
 
 Does on a river's bank expecting stay, 
 
 Till the whole stream which stopp'd him should be gone, 
 
 That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. 
 
 Tobacco then, as you have seen in the preceding 
 pages, has a world wide celebrity. It is known 
 and used from pole to pole, and its supporters 
 have encumbered it with a load of virtues it cannot 
 sustain. 
 
 -Siquis tantas rimari indagine causas 
 
 Aggreditur, multum immani sub pondere sudet. 
 
 Thorils. 
 
 It has often, they say, proved of essential service 
 in supporting the strength and vigor of the body 
 in the perils and privations of adventures by sea 
 and land : it is a pastime in the tranquil retreats 
 of luxurious ease ; a relief to the spirits in the 
 mind-wearing toils of academic ambition, and a 
 solace in the cabins of want and misery. The 
 divine Isaac Barrow resorted to this panpharmacon 
 whenever he wished to collect his thoughts. Bacon 
 writes that the taking of tobacco doth help and 
 discharge lassitude. It refresheth the spirits by 
 the opiate nature thereof, and so dischargeth the 
 weariness. 1 The philosopher Hobbes could do 
 nothing without a dozen pipes lying ready filled 
 beside him. Sir Isaac Newton brightened his 
 
 1 Nat. Hist., cent, viii., sect. 170. 
 
197 
 
 intellect with an occasional whiff, and discovered 
 the relation which the fall of an apple bears to the 
 centre of the earth, through a nebula of tobacco 
 smoke. Dr. Parr's face was always smutched with 
 its sooty fumes, and his fingers begrimed with the 
 juice and ashes. Philosophy and dirt are often 
 found thriving in close fellowship. Diogenes the 
 Cynic lived in a greasy tub, and never changed 
 his dun rags till they fell off his back, or became 
 animated and crept away ; and the Apostate Julian, 
 the emperor of Hypocrites, was so devoted to the 
 study ot natural history that he converted his 
 beard into a menagerie, as he boasts in his Miso- 
 pogon, to the good people of Antioch — 7ru)yu)va 
 rovra toi SiciOeovtijjv av^\Ofxai tojv <pQupb)v ogtteo 
 ev Aoyjutj 6r}pi(jjv. 
 
 The usual long life of moderate smokers shows 
 that on them at least its ill effects have not been 
 developed. To thousands and tens of thousands it 
 is asserted to have proved a solace and a comfort in 
 sickness and in sorrow : that to the poor man inured 
 to a frugal use of the herb, it has often served as a 
 temporary substitute for everything that goes into 
 the mouth, and a sovereign remedy for every evil : 
 that " the shuddering tenant of the frigid zone" 
 would think " his life were vile — a tedious circle 
 of unjoyous days," if the gloom of his dreary and 
 eternal winter were not cheered by the exhilarating 
 luxury of his pipe, to procure which he frequently 
 exposes himself to danger and risk of life ; and the 
 " naked negro panting at the line," would barter 
 all the fragrance of his " spicy groves" for the 
 "soothing incense that fumes beneath his nose." To 
 the wandering Arab also in his excursions through 
 deserts where, in the words of Collins — 
 
 -Rocks alone, and tasteless sands are found, 
 
 And faint and sickly winds for ever howl around — 
 
 tobacco is the principal comfort and enjoyment of 
 his life, and frequently his only sustenance. The 
 
198 
 
 sailor accustomed to the poison endures the severest 
 privations, undergoes every hardship, and faces 
 death in every form with indomitable fortitude and 
 resignation, as long as he is supported by his quid 
 and his pipe ; but withhold from him the consola- 
 tion of his good genius only for one day, and mark 
 the altered man ; he is no longer the same either 
 in intellect or in physical power ; he crawls about 
 the deck uneasy, stupid and churlish, and appears 
 to be labouring under some load of mental or bodily 
 affliction. Lastly, " in New South Wales" says 
 Matthews, in his Emigration Fields, "in the case of 
 convict slavery, where civilized man is subjected to 
 the thrall of his fellow-man, and where the feeling 
 of degradation is embittered by the sting of guilt, 
 tobacco smoking may be necessary ; it is even said 
 that great numbers of the convicts would commit 
 suicide or take to the bush if they did not receive 
 tobacco to drown conscience and thought. Tobacco- 
 smoking is a means of soothing misery and repress- 
 ing energy by inducing a dreamy stupefaction." 
 
 Now granting all this to be strictly true, although 
 there is no proof of truth in these propositions, 
 the same arguments may be used in support of any 
 other pernicious habit ; nor does it diminish the 
 force of the reasons deduced from experience and 
 alleged throughout these pages against the indul- 
 gence in tobacco, to say that when the habit has 
 once been acquired it has this or that salutary 
 effect on the mind or on the body. The desperado 
 who has accustomed himself to swallow arsenic, 
 corrosive sublimate, strychnia, hemlock or opium, 
 will, everything considered, be as able to fulfil all 
 the engagements of life as the slave to smoking, 
 and will, on the contrary, be as spiritless and in- 
 capable of action without his usual sedative, as the 
 latter. 
 
 But the success of such experimentalists and 
 their good fortune in escaping destruction surely 
 
199 
 
 afford no just grounds for urging that these habits 
 are either necessary or useful, seeing that people 
 can exercise the powers of their minds and the 
 skill of their hands with equal ease, expedition, and 
 equanimity without them, to say nothing of the 
 almost certain enjoyment of the transcendent 
 blessings of sound constitutions, strong and vigorous 
 minds, and a constant equability of the active 
 energies. Will the most enthusiastic devotee of 
 tobacco then seriously affirm that the sailor, for 
 example, who has not contracted the habit, is in 
 any respect less able to perform all the functions 
 of his arduous calling, whether in peace or in war, 
 in calm or in storm, than his narcotised mess-mate 
 who cannot tell the points of the compass until 
 his mouth is crammed with poison ? and further, 
 will any one deny that the former has this supreme 
 advantage over the latter, that his courage, 
 alacrity, vigor, and presence of mind are always 
 the same in safety or in danger, whether there is 
 plenty or scarcity of tobacco, whilst the courage, 
 the temper, and the general fitness of the other 
 for his duties are continually undergoing barometric 
 changes, according to the plus or minus of his 
 sedative, as I have described him in a preceding 
 page ? 
 
 The inevitable conclusion is, that the man un- 
 schooled in the mystery of these smoky orgies 
 always enjoys a state of temper and mental con- 
 sistency which enables him to proceed in one even 
 tenor with all his occupations, while the other is 
 in that happy condition only when the intolerable 
 gnawing of the sub-inflamed membranes of the 
 stomach and duodenum are soothed by the perfi- 
 dious anodyne influence of this deleterious narcotic, 
 operating on the nervous system like additional 
 cups of brandy on the drunkard. 
 
 Hence neither Isaac Barrow the divine, nor the 
 philosopher Hobbes, nor " the poor man inured to 
 
200 
 
 the habit/' nor ?* the shuddering tenant of the 
 frigid zone/' nor " the naked negro panting at the 
 line," nor " the wandering Arab/' nor the New 
 South Wales convict, would have performed his 
 respective duty one jot less efficiently if he had 
 never experienced the calming influences of to- 
 bacco. The gist of the argument and all the 
 philosophy of smoking simply amount to this : the 
 man who uses tobacco, first creates in his stomach 
 a disease, and next a want a thousand times more 
 intolerable than the disease ; and then he smokes 
 and smokes, and smokes to satisfy that want, and 
 so goes on aggravating the evil. 
 
 I have little to say to the immoderate smoker ; 
 like all other excesses, " this indulgence sows the 
 temples with untimely snow." The sword of 
 Damocles hangs over him by a hair, and is every 
 moment threatening to fall on his head ; one might 
 with aptness apply to the devotee of this luxury, 
 what Juvenal said of the ancient nobility of Rome, 
 that the occurrence of old age amongst them was 
 looked upon as a miracle — 
 
 Prodigio par est in nobilitate senectus. 
 
 But I would exhort the youthful aspirant to the 
 honors of this abominable custom to shun the voice 
 of the charmer ; there is more virtue in avoiding 
 than in abandoning a bad habit : — 
 
 " Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare." 
 
 Virtus est vitium fugere ; et sapientia prima 
 
 Stultitia caruisse. * 
 
 Horace. 
 
 Galen admonishes you to attempt the change of 
 such habits as are hurtful, even if you have been 
 familiar with them from childhood -, 1 and Ccelius 
 Aurelianus recommends you to acquire only such 
 habits as are conducive to your general welfare, 
 
 1 Hygiene, v. 10. 
 
201 
 
 and strenuously avoid contracting those which arc 
 inimical alike to your health, your morals, and 
 your interest. — " Nos vero oportet consuetudinem 
 rerum ntilium facere, noxarumque fugere. 1 
 
 In conclusion, you must have perceived from 
 the tenor of the foregoing pages that the design of 
 writing them was to fortify you against the power- 
 ful influence of bad example and the seductions of 
 a vile and pernicious practice. The use of tobacco 
 as a luxury is founded entirely on a false and 
 vitiated taste originating in the force of example, 
 and the invincible impulse to imitate, and is always 
 more or less injurious to the health. You your- 
 selves have now had the opportunity of forming a 
 correct judgment of it; and viewitin whattemper 
 of mind you may, I am convinced it is impossible 
 you can have arrived at any other conclusion. 
 
 Tobacco is not a human necessity, there is no 
 reason or instinct suggesting its use ; there is no 
 want it can supply ; there is no disease it can cure ; 
 there is no suffering it can mitigate without danger. 
 The habit therefore is as superfluous as it is irra- 
 tional and disgusting ; and carried in this country 
 to a maddening extremity. 
 
 We can afford to admit indeed that the custom 
 of smoking, chewing, and snuff taking is less vicious 
 than loathsome. But all the force of the admission 
 is lost in this serious drawback, that the habit is 
 one of a certain group which naturally manifests 
 an unconquerable affinity for others of a worse 
 character. It always has a downward tendeney : 
 and, like gravity in the scheme of the universe, it 
 becomes the centre of attraction to all the obliquities 
 in human conduct. 
 
 Although therefore it involve no particular 
 
 moral evil in itself, it is to be condemned, because 
 
 among other weighty reasons, it is the beginning of 
 
 culpable extravagance both in its separate and 
 
 1 Morb. Acut.,i. 16. 
 
202 
 
 social conditions. Extravagance is very often the 
 parent of want, and want the mother of crime ; for 
 it is 
 
 the curse of every evil deed, 
 
 That, propagating still, its brings forth evil. 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 Small beginnings have frequently great issues. 
 Remember that he who can wink at peccadillos 
 will soon learn to look unmoved upon crime. The 
 history of human depravity is written with blood, 
 and it warns you by myriads of examples that small 
 vices unchecked grow apace, ripen, and become 
 the prolific parents of great ones. Aud what is 
 this but the progress of habit ? bad habit. The 
 tyro in vice grows bolder and the habit stronger by 
 every successful repetition of the act. In the 
 triumph of crime then you discover simply the 
 practical maturation of evil habits. They steal 
 upon you with the noiseless pace of the tiger ; and 
 the danger is that they may be established before 
 you are aware they are begun. Hence the "fearful 
 power which they may acquire over the whole 
 moral system." 
 
 One of the main sources of human happiness 
 lies in the normal conditions of the bodily health 
 and of the mental functions, in their relation to 
 our moral conduct and the quality of our habits ; 
 and with bad habits " there is no health in us." 
 Hence it may be justly argued that every man 
 is the arbiter of his own fate. It is therefore of 
 the first importance that you begin early to exercise 
 over yourselves a vigorous self-control. rViofo 
 artavTov is an exhortation well worth your study : 
 it is a heavenly ordinance, for it is only by self- 
 knowledge that you can efficiently exercise a dis- 
 criminate and salutary self-control. The wise 
 Socrates held that self-knowledge and self-control 
 were the two essential requisites to the practice of 
 virtue. In order therefore to be successful it is 
 
203 
 
 indispensable to begin in season, to scrutinize every 
 act of the will and every process of the under- 
 standing. For when these, by frequently passing 
 through the mind, shall have established relations 
 with the brain and become confirmed habits, your 
 moral feelings and your whole conduct in life will 
 be precisely what these habits shall make them. 
 Whatever be their quality they are your masters, 
 and you must serve them on their own terms, 
 Every sentiment and every action must be the 
 consequence of their imperious will ; and your 
 moral character will receive its most important and 
 lasting bias from the influence they exercise 
 over you. The moral character is simply an 
 aggregate of habits — habits of thought or of action, 
 — virtuous or vicious in their tendencies, as it 
 may be. 
 
 And although the most rigid of moralists can 
 never expect heroic virtue in any mortal in the 
 present condition of humanity, because he would 
 expect an impossibility, yet you should never 
 forget that the chief aim of all mortals can only be 
 attained through a course of good habits, approxi- 
 mating as near as possible to human excellence. 
 The simple attempt at perfection in moral virtue 
 is a step towards the prize, and if continued will 
 become of itself a commendable habit tending to 
 enlarge your capacity for more exalted intellectual 
 enjoyments ; besides, while you are aiming at good 
 you are abstaining from evil. Therefore examine 
 scrupulously every inclination of your will, and let 
 no mental process, or physical act be repeated or 
 tolerated without considering well the moral results 
 likely to ensue. You will soon find, to 
 your honor and your happiness, that good 
 habits thus engraven, as it were, on the soul 
 by a well sustained discipline are more 
 than promise of improvement in virtue ; and 
 " improvement in virtue must be advance- 
 
204 
 
 ment in happiness if the government of the 
 universe be moral." 1 
 
 In the distracting turmoil of life it is impossible 
 you can always so nicely discriminate between the 
 lighter shades of right and wrong as to escape all 
 the spells and allurements of vice, masked as it is 
 by the garb of simplicity and innocence which the 
 circumstances of the world frequently throw around 
 it : when — 
 
 e en virtue 
 
 Will sometimes bear away her outward robes 
 Soiled in the wrestle with iniquity. 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 But the monitions of the moral sense, the whis- 
 perings of the still small voice ot conscience 
 are always audible to the attentive ear, and if 
 harkened to will assuredly tend to prevent repe • 
 titions of errors — the materials of which evil habits 
 are constructed. 
 
 That voice informs you that virtuous actions are 
 accompanied by no pain, no regrets, no remorse ; 
 they leave a gladness and tranquillity in the soul 
 which come nearest the peace of Heaven, while 
 vice has sorrow and shame for inseparable com- 
 panions, which engender in the heart a worm that 
 never dies. Hence though it is the most difficult 
 thing in life to resist the first attractions of for- 
 bidden pleasures . yet they must be stoutly opposed, 
 or the whole character suffers. Remember the 
 admirable rule of Thales the Milesian, " do not 
 that yourself which you condemn in others." 
 
 Declina illecebras, et quamvis parcere durum, 
 Parce tamen, certse et caveas auctaria cladis. 
 
 Thorius. 
 
 Now all this "jumble of sighs and joys," in which 
 we are destined to flounder from the dawn till the 
 sunset of our existence, is according to both reli- 
 
 1 Butler, Analog}', &c., Sect. 1, chap. v. 
 
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 gion and philosophy, nothing more or less than the 
 offspring of moral choice, or that course of conduct 
 or of thought which every one adopts and persists 
 in according to the freedom of his will ; that is to 
 say, every action of your life is voluntary ; and 
 this explains next why the doctrine of human 
 responsibility is one of the earliest and most 
 momentous maxims taught to every Christian — 
 momentous indeed, because it informs you with 
 the solemnity of a prophet's voice that you are 
 answerable to God and society for every thought 
 and every act of your life. 1 And you have seen 
 that these reproduced are the principles of all 
 habits, requiring only reiteration for their perfect es- 
 tablishment in the constitution ; they then become 
 agents destined, and destined by yourselves, to 
 form and direct your conduct. They are imperious 
 or gentle according to their kind. When they are 
 good, you possess in a small and portable compass 
 all the elements of sub-celestial happiness, which 
 will disarm your last moments of their terrors, and 
 secure for you an easy transit through the valley 
 and shadow of death. And surely this is something 
 worth considering to a Christian who knows that 
 this world is not his home. When Anaxagoras 
 was asked if he had no care for his country, he 
 replied, yes, the greatest concern, but it lies 
 yonder, pointing with his fingers to Heaven. 
 When on the contrary they are such as are op- 
 posed to the precepts of religion and a pure 
 morality, they poison all the sources of human 
 felicity ; they supplant in the heart the principles 
 of all refined and elevated pleasure ; and, in short, 
 under their tyranny the blessings of life are abused, 
 
 1 " We are free agents," says Bishop Butler. " Our consti- 
 tution is put in our own power. We are charged with it, and 
 therefore are accountable for every violation of it." — Preface 
 to hisjirst three sermons. " As matter of fact we are treated 
 by God as free agents, and that is our best proof that we are 
 free." — Analogy, part i. chap. vi. 
 
206 
 
 not enjoyed ; and it is in the nature of things that 
 what affords no enjoyment of which the conscience 
 approves, can afford no happiness. " Peace may 
 be within, but that peace is the stillness of death, 
 and unless a voice from heaven shall awake, the 
 dead the moral being is lost." Beware therefore 
 of placing full reliance on the poet who sings that 
 
 " Vice is a monster of such hideous mien 
 That to be hated needs but to be seen." 
 
 The practical moralist knows the maxim to be 
 fallacious, for that habitual association with the 
 monster not only divests him of his hideousness, 
 but too often renders him an object of desire. Sed 
 assiduitate cotidiana et consuetudine oculorum 
 adsuescunt animi ; neque admirantur, neque re- 
 quirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper 
 vident. 1 
 
 1 Cic. de Nat. Deorum, ii., 38. 
 
 Kemp ami Fairfax, Printers, Lower George-street, Sydney. 
 
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