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.
- Brewer, Hampton.
- Date:
- 1870
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. Source: Wellcome Collection.
22/56 page 18
![If snuff get into the throat it gives rise to a feeling of acridity, producing coughing, and sometimes nausea and prostration of strength. Dr. Pereira says it did so in himself Lauzoni states that an individual fell into a state of somnolency, and died lethargic on the twelfth day after taking too much snuff. Dr. Cullen ascribes dyspepsia and loss of appetite to its use, and Dr. Prout observes : “ The severe and peculiar dyspeptic symptoms some- times produced by inveterate snuff-taking are well known, and I have more than once seen such cases terminate fatally with malignant disease of the stomach and liver.” Undoubtedly I can testify to the truthfulness of the first part of Dr. Prout’s statement. Very often am I asked to administer remedies to disordered digestive organs, which are brought into this condition by the use of snuff. This obstinate condition of dyspepsia is produced by the snuff passing back into the pharynx, and then being taken into the stomach, either with the saliva or food. A woman is continually coming to me in search of relief for most severe pain in her stomach after taking food. The quantity of snuff she consumes per week is excessive. Her nose is a perpetual dust- bin. Certain it is that her complaints are due to the snuff, for if she discontinue its use for a time, she is free from pain. Snuff, when used, passes undoubtedly, like any other foul dust, into the lungs. A friend of mine told me of a case in which he found snuff after death in the lungs of an inveterate snuff-taker. The young man died of consumption, the end of which my friend believes was surely hastened by the large quantity of snuff he con- sumed. It is in part through this channel that snuff produces its remote effects ; by absorption (from the mucous lining of the air-cells) of the poisonous properties of the tobacco into the blood, whereby they are carried throughout the general circulation and become visible in the different parts of the organism. Yet snuffing, with all its faults, is the most harmless way in which tobacco may be employed, and for the following reasons : Snuff, during its process of fermentation, gets rid of a large portion of its volatile alkaloid and oil, while the empyreumatic oil of course is absent, there- fore getting rid of a certain proportion of the poisonous constituents of tobacco, a fortiori it must be less powerful in its baneful effects than smoking, which retains them all; and chewing, which retains two of the three. [Note C.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28085784_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
