Tobacco and the diseases it produces / by Charles R. Drysdale ; being the substance of an address delivered at Exeter Hall, London, May, 1873, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, March 27, 1873, and at Guildford, on March 6, 1875.

  • Charles Robert Drysdale
Date:
[1875?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco and the diseases it produces / by Charles R. Drysdale ; being the substance of an address delivered at Exeter Hall, London, May, 1873, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, March 27, 1873, and at Guildford, on March 6, 1875. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    7 per cent in Virginian tobacco, it has been calculated that in a single cigar there is enough nicotine, if given pure, to kill two men ; and, in about a quarter of an ounce of tobacco, there may be as much as two grains of this very dangerous poison. A smuggler, mentioned by INamias to the Academie des Sciences, was dangerously poisoned by covering his naked skin with tobacco leaves, in order to escape paying duty. The great danger of chewing tobacco will thus at once be evident. Taylor (on Poisons, p. 749) mentions that the volatile vapour of tobacco given off in the process of manufacture has been shown to have an injurious effect on tobacco operatives. The first results are headache, nausea, languor, loss of appetite, and sleeplessness, followed by a general disturbance of the health. A Melsens chemist said he had collected SO grammes of nicotine from 4,500 grammes of tobacco- smoke, which he conveyed through water. The analyses made by Eulenberg and Vohl {Ann. d’Hygiene, April, 1873, from Vierteljahrsch fur ger. Med) seem, however, to controvert the old theories that the injurious effects of tobacco-smoking are due to the presence of nicotine in the smoke; but attribute them rather to the alkaloids produced by its decomposition, and which have many similar physiological properties. The smoke from tobacco in pipes and cigars was passed first through a solution of potassic hydrate and then through one of dilute sulphuric acid. The former solution was found to contain a mixture of carbonic, hydrocyanic, sulphuric, acetic, formic, metacetonic, butyric, valeric, and carbolic acids, creasote, and several hydrocarbons. The acid solu¬ tion contained rosolic acid, ammonia, traces of ethylamine and many of the pyridine bases, to the last of which the injurious action is due. The bases found were pyridine, C5H5N, which is more abundant in pipe than in cigar smoke, picoline C6H7N, lutidine C7H9N, collidine CsHnN, which is more abundant in cigar than in pipe smoke, parvoline C9H13N, coridine Ci0H15N, rubidine CnH17N, and a residue corresponding to viridine Ci2H19N. As will be seen, the more volatile of the bases, as pyridine, were most abundant in pipe smoke, while the less volatile, as collidine, were most abundant in cigar smoke.
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