Tobacco : its history, nature, and effects on the body and mind ... / By Joel Shew.

  • Joel Shew
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco : its history, nature, and effects on the body and mind ... / By Joel Shew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In the city of New York there are about four hundred thou- sand inhabitants. About one half of the population is males. Of these we will suppose that one fourth of the number smoke cigars. On an average we will suppose these smokers to consume three cigars each, or, for example, ten cents’ worth per day. This amounts, then, to no less than five thousand dollars’ worth of cigars used in the city of New York in a single day! We wili suppose that there is also about as much more used in pipes, by chewing and by snuffing. There would then be consumed in the city of New York one million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of tobacco in a single year! Let us make an estimate fora poor man. Here are multitudes of such, who have hard work, year by year, to obtain the bread they eat. Almost all of these men are inveterate chewers of to- bacco. We will suppose they use the cheapest and most miserable kinds of the weed. Ata low estimate each man uses five dollars’ worth per year, which is only a little over a single cent’s worth per day. ‘This, in the space of forty years, when reckoned, principal and interest, would amount to a sum that would be very conve- nient to a poor old man when his hairs have grown gray. The expensiveness of tobacco, then, is a very important consid- eration—important to the poor man, the rich man, the philanthro- pist, and the Christian. But there is yet a far more important con- sideration—I mean that which relates to health. If a man has once lost this best of all earthly blessings, what would he not give could it be again restored to him? All the gold and silver and pre- cious metals the world has ever produced, or can ever produce, bear no comparison to the value of health. The tobacco habit is every where increasing in public favor. It is hardly genteel not to be able to smoke. Looking at the habits of those about us, we may well regard them as addressing the “‘ GREAT Puant :” ‘Scent to match thy rich perfume, Chymic art did ne’er presume, Through her quaint, alembic strain, ° None so sovereign to the brain. Nature, that did in thee excel, Framed no second smell.