TEN TIMES AS DIFFICULT TO CONQUER AS THAT OF WHISKY-DRINKING.

All that we have been able to accomplish in such cases has been to check the excessive use.  We have repeatedly assured men, after a careful examination of their peculiar cases, that they would certainly drink again unless they gave up their tobacco, and have seen this opinion verified, because they took no heed to the warning.  We have also been gratified in a few instances by hearing a man say that he felt confident that he could never have accomplished his reformation as he had done, if he had not taken the advice given him about abandoning his tobacco.  In contrast with the men of weak purpose, we have to admire one who had resolution enough to break off the three habits of opium-eating, whisky-drinking and tobacco-chewing—­no trifling matter—­when the first was of ten and the last of more than thirty years’ duration.

We have been repeatedly asked which was the most injurious, smoking or chewing, and have replied, that everything depended upon the amount of nicotine absorbed in the process, and the loss to the system in the saliva spit out.  Men have died from the direct effect of excessive smoking, and quite recently a death in a child was reported from the result of blowing soap-bubbles with an old wooden pipe.  We have known a little boy to vomit from drawing air a few times through the empty meerschaum pipe of his German teacher.  The smoking of two pipes as the first essay, very nearly caused the death of a young man, whose case was reported by Dr. Marshall Hall.

The least poisonous tobaccos are those of Syria and Turkey, but the cigarettes made of them in the East and imported into this country are said to be impregnated with opium.  Virginia tobacco, for the pipe or chewing, contains a large percentage of nicotine, and the former is often impregnated with foreign matters, recognizable by the choking effect of the smoke when inhaled, or by the removal of the epithelium (outer skin) of the tongue at the point under the end of the pipe-stem.

If we fail in our efforts to reform the tobacco habit, the next best thing to do, is to show men what the nature and capabilities of the poison are, and endeavor to persuade them to use the milder varieties and in a moderate quantity.

ONE OF THE GREAT CURSES OF THE RISING GENERATION

is the passion for imitating and acquiring the evil habits of men, under an impression that it hastens their approach to manhood.  Weak, frail, delicate boys, with inherited tendencies to disease, who should, by all means, never use tobacco, or anything injurious, are often as obstinately bent upon learning to smoke, in spite of medical advice, as those in whom a moderate use would be far less objectionable.  A recent observer, in examining into the cases of thirty-eight boys who had formed the habit of using tobacco, found