CHAPTER X.
TOBACCO AS AN INCITANT TO THE USE OF ALCOHOLIC STIMULANTS, AND AN OBSTACLE IN THE WAY OF A PERMANENT REFORMATION.
BY DR.

R.P.HARRIS, PHYSICIAN OF THE "FRANKLIN REFORMATORY HOME." When we consider the almost universal use of tobacco, especially in the form of smoking, among our male population, it is not to be wondered at that this powerful poison has come to be regarded as an innocent and almost necessary vegetable production, not to be used as food exactly, but greatly allied to it as an article of daily consumption.

Few stop to reason about its properties or effects; they remember, perhaps, how sick they were made by the first chew or smoke, but this having long passed, believe that as their systems have become accustomed, _apparently_, to the poison, it cannot be doing them any real injury.

When we reflect that tobacco contains from one to nearly seven per cent, of _nicotine_--one of the most powerful vegetable poisons known--a few drops of which are sufficient to destroy life, it is not difficult to perceive that this faith in the _innocence_ begotten of use must be fallacious.

We have met with instances where the poisonous effects of tobacco were manifest after every smoke, even where the attempt to accustom the system to its use had been persevered in for many years; and yet the men never realized what was the matter with them, until they had, under medical advice, ceased to use the drug.
Before the discovery of anaesthetics, tobacco was used as a remedy to produce relaxation in cases of strangulated hernia; and although very cautiously administered in the form of tea, or smoke per rectum, proved fatal in many instances.