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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![carries it to excess, loses his manhood.” This is a delicate topic to touch upon, hut I cannot refrain from testifying to the correctness of Dr. Copland’s statements, from having such instances brought to my knowledge, and not to give prominence to the fact in this Essay would betray a want of faithfulness, although it may make the hearts of legions sad. [Note Q.] I was once called upon to attend a young gentleman of good family, who was suffering in this way ; he also had lost all control ovei the lower half of his body, and was in a most pitiable condition. He had always lived an idle life, and been a great smoker from boyhood. Each of these are results which might be looked for, when we think for a moment what a powerful depressor of all nervous energy tobacco is. ^ Few are the number of those who marry, who do not wish for a healthy progeny, and few are those who would not almost forego anything, rather than that their offspring should bear about with them, in their delicate constitutions, the reward of their sire’s folly. I beg you, then, one and all, youths and young men, flee from the use of tobacco as you would from a whirlpool; shun it as a habit, the extremi- ties of the evils of which you know not, for it is uncertain when these evils may arise in full force in your own persons, and remember that every time you smoke tobacco, to use a figure, it is treacherously spinving an unseen web around you, from which you will be unable to escape, and you may, when it is too late, find that you are a mass of unhealthiness, and be utterly incapacitated to answer one main end of your being, and be in danger of creating for yourself early days in which you will say, “ I have no pleasure in them.” And now I must needs stop. Here ends the consideration of my subject. [Note R.] My Essay is imperfect in many respects, and very unequal to my own wishes. I have, however, carefully, minutely, and as far as my ability would allow, considered the history and properties of tobacco, and without prejudice weighed the effects it is capable of producing upon the human organism. It must be plain from the whole strain of these pages, that I am decidedly adverse to the use of tobacco as a medicine, and am even more so to the habits of smoking, chewing, and snuffing it. On the other hand, I grant that they may become pleasant vices, and, like all other bad habits, when once indulged in. be difficult to relinquish. D LX](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28085784_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
