Revelations about tobacco : a prize essay on the history of tobacco, and its physical action on the human body, through its various modes of employment / by Hampton Brewer ; with notes by Thomas Reynolds.

  • Brewer, Hampton.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Revelations about tobacco : a prize essay on the history of tobacco, and its physical action on the human body, through its various modes of employment / by Hampton Brewer ; with notes by Thomas Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ought to command over the members of the body, or in other words to a defect of the nervous influence. A fine strong young man, a collier, once told me that for some time he was a subject to paroxysms of extreme nervousness, so much so that often he would not go underground to his daily work because he had such a forcible presentiment that he should not again come out alive “ At last,” he said, “ the thought struck me that I had never felt so until I took to smoking; I gave it up and am now well, except a shaky hand, but this is getting better.” The case is by no means unique— would that it were ! Nervous fear is most common amongst smokers, and the more I study their constitution, the more I find this sad result existing. Many great smokers are almost afraid of their shadows, and startled at each sound with which they are acquainted. At last in many cases, the nervous irritability is carried so far as to produce true insanity. Tobacco smoking is believed (and with truth) by many medical superintendents of lunatic asylums, to be the cause of bringing a large per centage of the inmates there. [Note H.] Melancholia (a species of insanity of which extreme melancholy, and nervous depression, is the characteristic) I have found resulting from excessive smoking. I have a case now under my care in which the patient first exhibited a want of memory, with extreme melancholy; then loss of reasoning power ; next, inability to comprehend ; and he now lives simply by instinct Still, he sticks to his pipe ! I was much struck with the pithy manner in which an Irishman once told me how smoking affected him. I asked him if he ever noticed his hands tremble after smoking. He replied, “ Aye, Dactor and shure I do ; there is a trembling comes over ’em whenever I smoke* and a grievous one too, and what’s more, I can ate as much again when I don’t smoke. And does yer ’onor think it does harm ?” Yes, I said ; then replied the other, “ And shure, Dacter, then I plidge myself to lave off entirely from to-night.” But the influence smoking has on the great nerve centres, does not stop at the simply trembling hand—this is only the forerunner of a worse malady; it often runs on, almost before one is aware of it, into complete paralysis. Sometimes the victim loses the use of both legs, at others of an arm or a leg, at others of all his limbs at once, in fact, he has no power over any voluntary muscle of his body. While I am writing this Essay, I have under my care a middle aged man whops paying a heavy penalty for indulging in this foolish practice.