For and against tobacco, or, Tobacco in its relations to the health of individuals and communities / by Benjamin Ward Richardson.

  • Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward, (1828-1897)
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: For and against tobacco, or, Tobacco in its relations to the health of individuals and communities / by Benjamin Ward Richardson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    retained by it in different proportions ; and, as the blood under various states absorbs the same substance with various degrees of power, it follows naturally that the effects of tobacco smoke are not the same in degree in different persons, nor the same in the same person at all times. That a clear idea may be obtained in respect to the general or compovmd action of the smoke of tobacco, I will fii'st describe the conditions it induces in their ex- treme development. I will show the order of its effects in their rapid or acute form, and from that will descend, the more readily, to the consideration of the slower, and, as they maybe called, chronic effects of tobacco—those effects which are observed in persons who are said to be con- firmed smokers. The action of tobacco smoke extends to all the animal kingdom : it exerts an influence on everything living. We place a few mites from a cheese under the microscope, and direct upon them a current of tobacco smoke from an ordinary pipe. In a few seconds the little animals reel over, their limbs become convulsed, and they even ap]3ear to die; but on them the effect of the air is most active, and as the poisonous vapours exhale readily from their bodies, they recover after a time. On flies, and bees, and wasps, the same consequences may be observed, after they have been exposed to the smoke. Frogs also succumb to it but slowly, and birds very rapidly. On cats, rabbits, dogs, pigs, the symptoms produced are powerfully marked at first, and, taking into account the difference in size of the animals, the phenomena presented are the same in character. I may note, as a preliminary fact, that it is