Is Tobacco Hurtful—Theory versus Experience

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Is Tobacco Hurtful—Theory versus Experience.

In reviewing the December number of the Scalpel,¹ we expressed a modest dissent from its editor’s wholesale denunciations of the use of lager bier and tobacco.² The Scalpel for January does us the honor to copy our article at length, and to reply to it in detail. We are constrained to profess ourselves still unconvinced. We grant, of course, all that the Scalpel so forcibly urges in regard to the properties of alcohol and nicotine—in fact we admitted as much last month; but there is a wide difference between imbibing these poisons into the system, pure and simple, and drinking lager bier or smoking tobacco. Oxygen gas, unmixed with other gases, cannot be inhaled without suffocation: but when received into the system in the atmosphere, so far from destroying it supports life.

In reply to our remark that "if lager bier or tobacco were half so pernicious in their effects as Dr. Dixon would have his readers believe, the American race would become extinct within a few years," the Scalpel says:

We do not know that this follows, for all do not drink lager-bier, and smoke and chew tobacco; nor do we know that "octogenarian smokers and chewers" disprove our assertion. Merely to live, is quite possible under the maddest use of both—say, De Quincy​ lived and wrote brilliantly under the influence of incredible doses of opium, but who would offer him as a proof of the innocence of opium?³ We may find our prejudices and our temperaments tolerate great evils, and our pride may step in to blind our judgment; some that we love, may bless us with their presence, and continue to make us thankful to God for their existence because we love them with all their vices, but what then? does tobacco, or ale, or opium improve the physical appearance and the intellect? Animals have no such requirements; would the voice of the lark, or his power of flight, the beauty of woman, or the fleetness of the racehorse, be improved by any substance added to their daily requirements of food, water, and sweet sleep?

"Merely to live" is not a fair description of the class of "octogenarian smokers and chewers" to whom we referred. The idea we desired to convey was that there are thousands upon thousands of men, of every age, and engaged in every kind of avocation, who habitually drink alcoholic liquors and inhale the fumes of tobacco: but who, notwithstanding, are as healthy, as robust, as cheerful, and in every respect, both intellectually, physically, and morally, are fully the equals of those of their fellow citizens who practise abstinence from the cup and the pipe. De Quincy​ 's case does not admit of being classed with these. We concede that the excessive abuse of stimulants or narcotics is hurtful, but we are not therefore convinced that their moderate use is other than beneficial.

The Scalpel itself admits that they are "medical in their influence," and in so admitting concedes the whole argument. For the most veteran smoker or drinker will not say that he regards lager bier or tobacco as "food": the utmost he claims for them is that they reinvigorate his body when fatigued, and sooth his mind when perturbed—thus producing remedial or "medical" effects upon his system.

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