Practical observations on the use and abuse of tobacco : greatly enlarged from the original communication on the effects of tobacco smoking which appeared in Medical Times and Gazette, August 5, 1854, accompanied with cases, illustrated by coloured plates, the drawings after nature / by John Lizars.

  • John Lizars
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Practical observations on the use and abuse of tobacco : greatly enlarged from the original communication on the effects of tobacco smoking which appeared in Medical Times and Gazette, August 5, 1854, accompanied with cases, illustrated by coloured plates, the drawings after nature / by John Lizars. 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.

    18/44 page 18
    stimulus. But I have kuuwn instauces iu both classes of individuals manfully giving them up. There is an officer in Her Majesty's Service, who had upwards of ten severe attacks of delirium tremens, and is now a teetotaller, and he has been so for upwards of iift<ien yeai's. The followng case, from the Hah-Yearly Abstract of the Medical Sciences, for January onwiu'ds to July, 1854, page 70, satisfactorily shows, that Tobacco can be given up. It is liliewise a terrible illustration of its baneful effects on the constitution. Drs. Rankin and Radcliffe, the editors, head it—A case of Angina Pectorin, resuUiiuj from the Use of Tobacco, and thus introduce it — The following case possesses a very high degree of interest. Tlie history of the case is related as follows by Dr. Corson of New York. A highly intelligent man, aged sixty-five, stout, ruddy, early married, temperate, managing a lai'ge business, after premising that he commenced chewing Tobacco at seventeen, swallowing the juice, as is sometimes customary, to prevent injmdng his lungs from constant spitting, and that years after he suffered from a gnawing, capricious appetite, nausea, vomiting of meals, emaciation, nervousness, and ])alpitation of the heart, dictated to Dr. Corson recently, the following story — Seven years thus miserably passed, when one day after dinner I was suddenly seized ^vith intense jjain in the chest, gasping for breath, and a sensation as if a crowbar were pressed tightly from the right breast to the left, till it came and twisted in a Icnot round the heart, loMch now stopped deathly still for a minute, and then leaped like a dozen frogs. After two hom's of death-like suffermg, the attack ceased; and I found that ever after, my heart missed every fourth beat. My physician said, that I had organic disease of the heart, must die suddenly, and need only take a Httle brandy for the painfid paroxysms; and I soon found it the only thing that gave them any relief For the next twenty-seven years I continued to suffer milder attacks Hke the above, lasting from one to several minutes, sometimes as often as two or three times a day or night; and to be sickly-looking, thin, and pale as a ghost. Simply from revolting at the idea of being a slave to one vile habit alone, and without dreaming of the suffering it had cost me, after thirty-three years' use, I one day threw away Tobacco for ever. Words cannot describe my suffering and desire for a tune. I was reminded of the Indian, who, next to all the rum in the world, wanted all the Tobacco. But my firm will conquered. In
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3