“Second, That its lesser and second, or after effect, is to excite and invigorate, and at the same time give steadiness and fixity to the powers of thought.”

Either of these effects will predominate, we conceive, according to the intellectual state and capacity of the individual, as well as in accordance with the amount used.

The dreamy Oriental is sunk into deeper reverie under the influence of tobacco, and his happiness while smoking seems to consist in thinking of nothing.  The studious German, on the contrary, “thinks and dreams, and dreams and thinks, alternately; but while his body is soothed and stilled, his mind is ever awake.”

This latter description resembles, to compare small things with great, the effects of opium, as detailed by De Quincey.

“In habitual smokers,” says Pereira, “the practice, when moderately indulged, produces that remarkably soothing and tranquillizing effect on the mind which has caused it to be so much admired and adopted by all classes of society.”

The pleasure derived from tobacco is very hard to define, since it is negative rather than positive, and to be estimated more by what it prevents than by what it produces.  It relieves the little vexations and cares of life, soothes the harassed mind, and promotes quiet reflection.  This it does most of all when used sparingly and after labor.  But if incessantly consumed, it keeps up a constant, but mild cerebral exhilaration.  The mind acts more promptly and more continuously under its use.  We think any tobacco-consumer will bear us out in this definition of its varying effects.

After a full meal, if it does not help, it at least hides digestion.  “It settles one’s dinner,” as the saying is, and gives that feeling of quiet, luxurious bien-aise which would probably exist naturally in a state of primeval health.  It promotes, with most persons, the peristaltic movements of the alimentary passages by its relaxing properties.

Smoking is eminently social, and favors domestic habits.  And in this way, we contend, it prevents drinking, rather than leads to it.  Many still associate the cigar with the bar-room.  This notion should have become obsolete ere this, for it has an extremely limited foundation in fact.  Bachelors and would-be-manly boys are not the only consumers of tobacco, though they are the best patrons of the bar.  The poor man’s pipe retains him by his own fireside, as well as softens his domestic asperities.

Excess in tobacco, like excess in any other material good meant for moderate use, is followed by evil effects, more or less quickly, according to the constitution and temperament of the abuser.  The lymphatic and obese can smoke more than the sanguine and nervous, with impunity.  How much constitutes excess varies with each individual.  Manufacturers of tobacco do not appear to suffer.  Christison states, as the result of the researches of MM.  Parent-Duchatelet and D’Arcet among four thousand workmen in the tobacco-manufactories of France, that they found no evidence of its being unwholesome.  Moderate tobacco-users attain longevity equal to that of any other class in the community.