examination of their peculiar cases, that they would certainly drink
again unless they gave up their tobacco, and have seen this opinion
verified, because they took no heed to the warning. We have also been
gratified in a few instances by hearing a man say that he felt confident
that he could never have accomplished his reformation as he had done, if
he had not taken the advice given him about abandoning his tobacco. In
contrast with the men of weak purpose, we have to admire one who had
resolution enough to break off the three habits of opium-eating,
whisky-drinking and tobacco-chewing--no trifling matter--when the first
was of ten and the last of more than thirty years' duration.

We have been repeatedly asked which was the most injurious, smoking or
chewing, and have replied, that everything depended upon the amount of
nicotine absorbed in the process, and the loss to the system in the
saliva spit out. Men have died from the direct effect of excessive
smoking, and quite recently a death in a child was reported from the
result of blowing soap-bubbles with an old wooden pipe. We have known a
little boy to vomit from drawing air a few times through the empty
meerschaum pipe of his German teacher. The smoking of two pipes as the
first essay, very nearly caused the death of a young man, whose case was
reported by Dr. Marshall Hall.

The least poisonous tobaccos are those of Syria and Turkey, but the
cigarettes made of them in the East and imported into this country are
said to be impregnated with opium. Virginia tobacco, for the pipe or
chewing, contains a large percentage of nicotine, and the former is
often impregnated with foreign matters, recognizable by the choking
effect of the smoke when inhaled, or by the removal of the epithelium
(outer skin) of the tongue at the point under the end of the pipe-stem.