Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860




"In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2
ounces,--three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff;
in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2
ounces per head;--in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by
official returns, 14 pounds per head." We doubt if these quantities
much exceed the European average, particularly of Germany and Turkey in
Europe. "In some of the States of North America the proportion is much
larger, while among Eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is
believed to be greater still."

The average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been
reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce
and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of
pounds! "At eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and
a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under
tobacco-cultivation."

"The whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain
weighs only four and one-third million tons." The reader can draw his
own inferences.

The United States are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing
one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world. According
to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds.
All the States, with five exceptions,--and two of these are Utah and
Minnesota,--shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great
staple. Confining our attention to those which raised a million of
pounds and upwards, we find Connecticut and Indiana cited at one million
each; Ohio and North Carolina, at ten to twelve millions; Missouri,
Tennessee, and Maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; Kentucky
and Virginia, about fifty-six million pounds.

Of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and
twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home
consumption.

Not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also,
from Cuba, Turkey, Germany, etc., about four million pounds, in Havana
and Manila cigars and Turkish and German manufactured smoking-tobacco.
Thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million
pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant
of the United States, against seventeen ounces in England, and eighteen
ounces in France. From 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the United
States, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three
pounds eight ounces. Here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the
producer. In most of the countries of Europe it is either subject to
a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its
cultivation, and its manufacture and sale. France consumes about
forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched
eighty-six million francs _per annum_. Not only is the poor man thus
obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of
a much inferior quality to ours. "_Petit-caporal_" smoking-tobacco, the
delight of the middling classes of Paris, hardly suits an American's
taste. In Italy more than one _pubblicano_ has enriched himself and
bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. In
Austria the cigars are detestable, though Hungary grows good tobacco,
and its Turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. German
smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their
excellence to their mode of manufacture.

Tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt,
as the article most universally and largely used by man,--we mean,
of course, apart from cereals and meats. It is unquestionably the
widest-used narcotic. Opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third;
but the opium--and hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of
tobacco to their other indulgences.

From these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two
prime points for our argument.

1st. That an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality
producing _a desirable effect_.

2d. That an article so widely used cannot produce _any marked
deleterious effect_.

For it must meet some instinctive craving of the human being,--as bread
and salt meet his absolute needs,--to be so widely sought after and
consumed. Fashion does not rule this habit, but it is equally grateful
to the savage and the sage. And it cannot be so ruinous to body and mind
as some reformers assert; otherwise, in the natural progress of causes
and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under
its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no
aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions
exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from
excess, and they have no weight in the argument.

Now, what are these qualities and these effects? We can best answer the
first part of the question by a quotation.

"In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes
through three successive stages.

"First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef
and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is
attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food a
wonderful similarity of chemical composition prevails.

"Second, he seeks to assuage the cares of his mind, and to banish
uneasy reflections. Fermented liquors are the agents by which this is
effected." [They are variously produced by every people, and the active
principle is in all the same, namely, Alcohol.]

"Third, he desires to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal,
and for the time to exalt them. This he attains by the aid of narcotics.
And of these narcotics, again, it is remarkable that almost every
country or tribe has its own, either aboriginal or imported; so that
the universal instinct of the race has led, somehow or other, to the
universal supply of this want or craving also."

These narcotics are Opium, Hemp, the Betel, Coca, Thorn-Apple, Siberian
Fungus, Hops, Lettuce, Tobacco. The active principles vary in each, thus
differing from foods and stimulants. Our business is now to inquire into
the chemical constituents of tobacco.

The leaves of this plant owe their properties to certain invariable
active principles, which chemistry has enabled us to separate from those
ingredients which are either inert or common to it and other forms of
vegetation. They are two in number,--a volatile alkali, and a volatile
oil, called _nicotin_ and _nicotianin_, respectively. A third powerful
constituent is developed by combustion, which is named the _empyreumatic
oil_.

Starch, gum, albumen, resin, lignin, extractive, and organic acids exist
in tobacco, as they do, in varying proportions, in other plants. But
the herb under consideration contains a relatively larger proportion of
inorganic salts, as those of lime, potassa, and ammonia,--and especially
of highly nitrogenized substances; which explains why tobacco is
so exhausting a crop to the soil, and why ashes are among its best
fertilizers.

The organic base, _nicotin_, (or _nicotia_, as some chemists prefer to
call it,) exists in tobacco combined with an acid in excess, and in this
state is not volatile. As obtained by distillation with caustic soda,
and afterwards treated with sulphuric acid, etc., it is a colorless
fluid, volatilizable, inflammable, of little smell when cold, but of an
exceedingly acrid, burning taste, and alkaline. Nicotia contains a much
larger proportion of nitrogen than most of the other organic alkalies.
In its action on the animal system it is one of the most virulent
poisons known. It exists in varying, though small proportion, in all
species of tobacco. Those called mild, and most esteemed, seem to
contain the least. Thus, according to Orfila, Havana tobacco yields two
per cent of the alkaloid, and Virginia nearly seven per cent. In the
rankest varieties it rarely exceeds eight parts to the hundred. The
same toxicologist says that it has the remarkable property of resisting
decomposition in the decaying tissues of the body, and he detected it in
the bodies of animals destroyed by it, several months after their death.
In this particular it resembles arsenic.

_Nicotianin_, or the volatile oil, is probably the odorous principle of
tobacco. According to some, it does not exist in the fresh leaves, but
is generated in the drying process. When obtained by distillation, a
pound of leaves will yield only two grains; it is therefore in a much
smaller proportion than the alkaloid, forming only one half of one per
cent. It is a fatty substance, having the odor of tobacco-smoke, and
a bitter taste. Applied to the nose, it occasions sneezing, and taken
internally, giddiness and nausea. It is therefore one of the active
constituents of tobacco, though to a much less degree than nicotin
itself. For while Hermstadt swallowed a grain of nicotianin with
impunity, the vapor of pure nicotin is so irritating that it is
difficult to breathe in a room in which a single drop has been
evaporated.

When distilled in a retort, at a temperature above that of boiling
water, or burned, as we burn it in a pipe, tobacco affords its third
poison, the _empyreumatic oil_. This is acrid, of a dark brown
color, and having a smell as of an old pipe, in the pores of which,
particularly of meerschaum clay, it may be found. It is also narcotic
and very poisonous, one drop killing reptiles, as if by an electric
shock: in this mode of action it is like prussic acid. But this
empyreumatic oil consists of two substances; for, if it be washed with
acetic acid, it loses its poisonous quality. It contains, therefore, a
harmless oil, and a poisonous alkaline substance, which the acetic acid
combines with and removes. It has been shown to contain the alkaloid
nicotia, and this is probably its only active component.

Assuming, therefore, that nicotianin, from its feebler action and small
amount, is not a very efficient principle in producing the narcotic
effects of tobacco, and that the empyreumatic oil consists only of fatty
matters holding the alkali in solution, we are forced to believe that
the only constituent worthy of much attention, as the very soul and
essence of the plant, is the organic base, nicotin, or nicotia.

It is probable that the tobacco-chewer, by putting fifty grains of the
"Solace," "Honey-Dew," or "Cavendish" into his mouth for the purpose
of mastication, introduces at the same time from one to four grains of
nicotin with it, according to the quality of the tobacco he uses. It
is _not_ probable that anything like this amount is absorbed into the
system. Nature protects itself by salivation. It is possible, that, in
smoking one hundred grains of tobacco, there _may_ be drawn into
the mouth two grains or more of the same poison; "for, as nicotin
volatilizes at a temperature below that of burning tobacco, it is
constantly present in the smoke." It is not probable that here, again,
so much is absorbed.

But we will return to this question of the relative effects of chewing,
cigar- and pipe-smoking, and snuff-taking, presently. For we suppose
that the anxious mother, if she has followed us so far, is by this time
in considerable alarm at this wholesale poisoning.

Poisons are to be judged by their effects; for this is the only means we
have of knowing them to be such. And if a poison is in common use, we
must embrace all the results of such use in a perfect generalization
before we can decide impartially. We do not hesitate to eat peaches,
though we know they owe much of their peculiar flavor to prussic acid.
It is but fair to apply an equally large generalization to tobacco.
Chemistry can concentrate the sapid and odorous elements of the peach
and the bitter almond into a transparent fluid, of which the smell
shall be vertiginous and the taste death. But chemistry is often
misunderstood, in two ways: in the one case, by the incredulity of total
ignorance; in the other, by the overcredulity of imperfect knowledge.
That poor woman who murdered her husband by arsenic not long since
was an instance of the first. She laughed to scorn the idea that the
chemists could discover anything in the ejected contents of the stomach
of her victim, which she voluntarily left in their way. She could not
conceive that the scattered crystals of the fatal powder might be
gathered into a metallic mirror, the first glance at which would reflect
her guilt.

They who gape, horror-struck, at the endless revelations of chemistry,
without giving reason time to act, err in the second manner. Led away by
the brilliant hues and wonderful transformations of the laboratory,
they forget the size of the world outside, in which these changes are
enacted, and the quiet way in which Nature works. The breath of chlorine
is deadly, but we daily eat it in safety, wrapped in its poison-proof
envelope of sodium, as common salt. Carbonic acid is among the gases
most hostile to man, but he drinks it in soda-water or Champagne with
impunity. So we cannot explain how a poison will act, if introduced
into the body in the diluted form in which Nature offers it, and there
subjected to the complicated chemico-vital processes which constitute
life.

In the alembic of the chemist we may learn analysis, and from it infer,
but not imitate, save in a few instances, the synthesis of Nature.
Changes in the arrangement of atoms, without one particle altered that
we can discover, may make all the difference between starch and sugar.
By an obscure change, which we call fermentation, these may become
alcohol, the great stimulant of the world. By subtracting one atom of
water from its elements we change this to ether, the new-found _lethe_
of pain. As from the inexhaustible bottle of the magician, the chemist
can furnish us from the same two elements air or aquafortis. We may be
pardoned these familiar examples to prove that we must not judge of
things by their palpable qualities, when concentrated or in the gross.
That fiery demon, nitric acid, is hid, harmless in its imperceptible
subdivision, in the dew on every flower.

From all this we conclude that the evil effects of tobacco are to be
determined by their proved _physiological_ effects; and also that we
must aid our decision by a survey of its general asserted effects. In
treating of these effects, we shall speak, first, of what is known;
second, of what its opponents assert; and, third, of what we claim as
the results of its use.

What is absolutely known is very little. We see occasional instances of
declining health; we learn that the sufferers smoke or chew, and we are
very apt to ascribe all their maladies to tobacco. So far as we are
aware, the most notorious organic lesion which has been supposed due to
this practice is a peculiar form of cancer of the lip, where the pipe,
and particularly the clay pipe, has pressed upon the part. But more
ample statistics have disproved this theory.

We have as yet become acquainted with no satisfactory series of
experiments upon tobacco analogous to those which have been made of some
articles of food.

The opponents of tobacco, upon whom we consider the burden of proof to
rest, in the absence of any marked ill effects palpable in so large a
consumption of the herb, are thus reduced to generalities.

Tobacco is said to produce derangement of the digestion, and of the
regular, steady action of the nervous system. These effects must be in a
measure connected; but one distinct effect of tobacco is claimed, upon
the secretions of the mouth, with which it comes into direct contact.
It is said to cause a waste and a deterioration of the saliva. Let us
examine this first.

The waste of saliva in young smokers and in immoderate chewers we admit.
The amount secreted by a healthy man has been variously estimated at
from one and a half to three pounds _per diem_. And it certainly seems
as if the whole of this was to be found upon the vile floors of
cars, hotels, and steamboats. The quantity secreted varies much with
circumstances; but experiments prove the _quality_ to be not affected by
the amount.

To show how the deterioration of this fluid may affect digestion, we
must inquire into its normal physiological constitution and uses. Its
uses are of two kinds: to moisten the food, and to convert starch into
sugar. The larger glands fulfil the former; the smaller, mostly, the
latter office. Almost any substance held in the mouth provokes the flow
of saliva by mechanical irritation. Mental causes influence it; for the
thought of food will "make the mouth water," as well as its presence
within the lips. No one who has tried to eat unmoistened food, when
thirsty, will dispute its uses as a solvent. Tobacco seems to be a
direct stimulant to the salivary apparatus. Habit blunts this effect
only to a limited extent. The old smoker has usually some increase of
this secretion, although he does not expectorate. But if he does not
waste this product, he swallows it, it is said, in a state unfit to
promote digestion. The saliva owes its peculiarity to one of its
components, called _ptyalin_. And this element possesses the remarkable
power of converting starch into sugar, which is the first step in its
digestion. Though many azotized substances in a state of decomposition
exert a similar agency, yet it is possessed by _ptyalin_ in a much
greater degree. The gastric juice has probably no action on farinaceous
substances. And it has been proved by experiments, that food moistened
with water digests more slowly than when mixed with the saliva.

More than this, the conversion of starch into sugar has been shown to
be positively retarded in the stomach by the acidity of the gastric
secretions. Only after the azotized food has been somewhat disintegrated
by the action of the gastric juice, and the fluids again rendered
alkaline by the presence of saliva, swallowed in small quantities for
a considerable time after eating, does the saccharifying process go on
with normal rapidity and vigor.

Now starch is the great element, in all farinaceous articles, which
is adapted to supply us with calorifacient food. "In its original
condition, either raw or when broken up by boiling, it does not appear
that starch is capable of being absorbed by the alimentary canal. By its
conversion into sugar it can alone become a useful aliment." This is
effected almost instantaneously by the saliva in the mouth, and at a
slower rate in the stomach.

Obviously, then, if the use of tobacco interferes with the normal action
of the saliva, and if the digestion of starch ends in the stomach, here
is the strong point in the argument of the opponents of tobacco. We
should wonder at the discrepancy between physiology and facts, theory
and the evidence of our senses and daily experience among the world
of smokers, and be ready to renounce either science or "the weed."
Fortunately for our peace of mind and for our respect for physiology,
the first point of the proposition is not satisfactorily proved, and the
second is untrue. We are not certain that nicotin ruins ptyalin; we are
certain that the functions of other organs are vicarious of those of the
salivary glands.

We say that it is not satisfactorily proved that tobacco impairs the
sugar-making function of the saliva. At least, we have never seen the
proof from recorded experiments. Such may exist, but we have met only
with loose assertions to this effect, of a similar nature to
those hygienic _dicta_ which we find bandied about in the
would-be-physiological popular journals, which are so plentiful in
this country, and which may be styled the "yellow-cover" literature of
science.

We acknowledge this to be the weak point in our armor, and are open to
further light. Yet more, for the sake of hypothesis, we will assume it
proved. What follows? Are we to get no more sugar while we smoke? By no
means. Hard by the stomach lies the _pancreas_, an organ so similar in
structure to the salivary glands, that even so minute an observer as
Koelliker does not think it requisite to give it a separate description.
Its secretion, which is poured into the second stomach, contains a
ferment analogous to that of the saliva, and amounts probably to about
seven ounces a day. The food, on leaving the stomach, is next subjected
to its influence, together with that of the bile. It helps digest fatty
matters by its emulsive powers; it has been more recently supposed to
form a sort of _peptone_ with nitrogenized articles also; but, what is
more to our purpose, it turns starch into sugar even more quickly than
the saliva itself. And even if the reformers were to beat us from this
stronghold, by proving that tobacco impaired the saccharifying power of
this organ also, we should still find the mixed fluids supplied by the
smaller, but very numerous glands of the intestines, sufficient to
accomplish the requisite modification of starch, though more slowly and
to a less degree.

We come now to the second count in the indictment,--that tobacco
injuriously affects the nervous system, and through it the digestion.
The accusation is here more vague and indefinite, and the answer also
is less susceptible of proof. Both sides must avail themselves of
circumstantial, rather than direct evidence.

That digestion is in direct dependence upon the nervous system, and that
even transitory or emotional states of the latter affect the former,
there can be no doubt. It is so familiar a fact, that instances need
hardly be cited to prove it. Hence we are told, that tobacco, by
deranging the one, disorders the other,--that nervousness, or morbid
irritability of the nerves, palpitations and tremulousness, are soon
followed by emaciation and dyspepsia, or more or less inability to
digest.

We conceive Prout, an eminent authority, to be near the truth, when he
says of tobacco, "The strong and healthy suffer comparatively little,
while the weak and predisposed to disease fall victims to its poisonous
operation." The hod-carrier traversing the walls of lofty buildings, and
the sailor swinging on the yard-arm, are not subject to nervousness,
though they smoke and chew; nor are they prone to dyspepsia, unless from
excesses of another kind.

It has not been shown that tobacco either hastens or delays the
metamorphosis of tissue,--that it drains the system by waste, or clogs
it by retarding the natural excretions. We must turn, then, to its
direct influence upon the nervous system to convince ourselves of its
ill effects, if such exist.

Nor has it been proved that the nervous influence is affected in such
a way as directly to impair the innervation of the organic functions,
which derive their chief impulse to action from the scattered ganglia of
the sympathetic system. Opium, the most powerful narcotic, benumbs the
brain into sleep; produces a corresponding reaction, on awakening;
shuts up the secretions, except that of the skin, and thus deranges the
alimentary functions. The decriers of tobacco will, we conceive, be
unable to show that it produces such effects.

The reformers are reduced, then, to the vague generality, that smoking
and chewing "affect the nerves."

Students, men of sedentary, professional habits, persons of a very
nervous temperament, or those subject to much excitement in business
and politics, sometimes show debility and languor, or agitation and
nervousness, while they smoke and chew. Are there no other causes at
work, sufficient in themselves to produce these effects? Are want of
exercise, want of air, want of rest, and want of inherited vigor to be
eliminated from the estimate, while tobacco is made the scape-goat of
all their troubles?

Climate, and the various influences affecting any race which has
migrated after a stationary residence of generations to a new country
extending under different parallels of latitude, have been reasonably
accused of rendering us a nervous people. It is not so reasonable to
charge one habit with being the sole cause of this, although we should
be more prudent in not following it to excess. The larger consumption
of tobacco here is due both to the cheapness of the product and to
the wealth of the consumer. But it does not follow that we are more
subjected to its narcotic influences because we use the best varieties
of the weed. On the contrary, the poor and rank tobaccoes, grown under a
northern sky, are the richest in nicotin.

But it will be better to continue the argument about its effects upon
the nervous system in connection with the assertions of the reformers.
The following is a list, by no means complete, of these asserted ill
effects from its use.

Tobacco is said to cause softening of the brain,--dimness of
vision,--("the Germans smoke; the Germans are a _spectacled_ nation!"
_post hoc, ergo propter hoc?_ the laborious intellectual habits of this
people, and their trying "text," are considered of no account,)--cancer
of the stomach,--disease of the liver,--dyspepsia,--enfeebled
nutrition, and consequent emaciation,--dryness of the mouth,--"the
clergyman's sore-throat" and loss of voice,--irritability of the nervous
system,--tremulousness,--palpitation and paralysis,--and, among the
moral ills, loss of energy, idleness, drunkenness. A fearful catalogue,
which would dedicate the _tabatiere_ to Pandora, were it true.

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