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.
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![This case began with trembling in the leg, this was heeded little ; then came an attack of most excruciating neuralgic pain in the limb, which, after lasting twenty-four hours, gradually died off and left it useless. He has now no power over either of his legs, and cannot rise from his chair without help. He has been since boyhood a smoker. [Note I.] ^ , , I have another patient, a man sixty-eight years old, who has been suffering from shaking palsy for upwards of two years. He cannot keep either of his limbs steady for a minute at a time, nor even his head. He has smoked tobacco for about fifty years. [Note J.] It is painful to reflect on the numerous cases of apoplexy and paralysis which are occurring in the present day. We do not find these complaints attacking simply aged persons, neither youth nor early manhood escape. There is no more likely remote cause of these deplorable nervous maladies, than tobacco smoking. Defective action of the heart and disordered circulation, we find most frequently connected with apoplexy and paralysis; there is scarcely anything that affects the heart to so great an extent as tobaoco. The effects come on so insidiously, that before the victim is aware, the mischief is often irreparably done. Again, the pleasures of the use of tobacco are so deceptive, that few will believe that the nervous shakings at first, will end in paralysis. I wish to impress this forcibly on my readers, for it is every whit true. Many there are who, had it not been for the prejudice I have above described, had they listened to the voice of warning and desisted from their folly “ while it is called to-day,” would have been saved a miserable existence or an untimely grave. Dr. Copland says: “ Tobacco weakens nervous power, favours a dreamy, imaginative, and imbecile, state of existence.” He goes on to say, the smoker “ ultimately becomes partially, but generally paralyzed in mind and body, he is subject to tremors and numerous nervous ailments, and has recourse to stimulants for their relief.” That smoking impairs the memory is perfectly certain. Cases are frequently brought to notice where the memory seems dull, recollections of past circumstances indefinite, puzzled and confused, from its use. It causes an inability quickly to collect thought—sluggish circulation must necessarily obstruct fertility of imagination. I recollect an instance which exhibits this in a very striking manner. The person of whom I speak has for twenty years spent](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28085784_0035.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
