Tobacco and Alcohol : Part 1

The Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
by T. S. Arthur

(Page 10 of 19)

Tobacco as an Incitant to the Use of Alcoholic Stimulants, and an Obstacle In the Way of a Permanent Reformation.

By Dr. R.P. Harris, Physician of the "Franklin Reformatory Home."

When we consider the almost universal use of tobacco, especially in the form of smoking, among our male population, it is not to be wondered at that this powerful poison has come to be regarded as an innocent and almost necessary vegetable production, not to be used as food exactly, but greatly allied to it as an article of daily consumption. Few stop to reason about its properties or effects; they remember, perhaps, how sick they were made by the first chew or smoke, but this having long passed, believe that as their systems have become accustomed, apparently, to the poison, it cannot be doing them any real injury. When we reflect that tobacco contains from one to nearly seven percent, of nicotine - one of the most powerful vegetable poisons known - a few drops of which are sufficient to destroy life, it is not difficult to perceive that this faith in the innocence begotten of use must be fallacious. We have met with instances where the poisonous effects of tobacco were manifest after every smoke, even where the attempt to accustom the system to its use had been persevered in for many years; and yet the men never realized what was the matter with them, until they had, under medical advice, ceased to use the drug.

Before the discovery of anesthetics, tobacco was used as a remedy to produce relaxation in cases of strangulated hernia; and although very cautiously administered in the form of tea, or smoke per rectum, proved fatal in many instances. As little as twelve grains in six ounces of water having therefore acted; and from half a drachma to two drachms in a number of instances. When men chew as high as a pound and a quarter of strong navy tobacco a week, or three packages of fine-cut in a day, it must certainly tell upon them sooner or later; or even in much less quantity.

If men used tobacco in moderation, there would be much less objection to it, if it was not so intimately

Associated with the Habit of Drinking

This is recognized by the trade, in the fact that we see many tobacco stores as the entrance to drinking saloons. Ninety-three percent. of the men who have been admitted to the Franklin Reformatory Home used tobacco, and eighty percent. of them chewed it. There may be possibly as high as ninety-three percent. of male adults who smoke, but eighty percent. of chewers is undoubtedly a large proportion as compared with those in the same ranks of society who do not drink.

Although the poisonous symptoms of tobacco are, in a great degree, the same in different people at the inception of the habit, the effects vary materially in after years according to the quantity and variety used, the form employed and the habits and temperament of the user. One man will chew a paper a week, another four, many use one a day, and a few from one and a half to three a day, besides smoking. Occasionally, but very rarely, we find a man who limits himself to one cigar a day, a number allow themselves but three, but of later years even these are moderate compared with those who use eight, ten or more.

There are many men who, for years, preserve a robust, hale appearance under both tobacco and whiskey, who are, notwithstanding their apparent health, steadily laying the foundation of diseased heart, or

Derangement of the Digestive Organs

or nervous system from the former, or an organic fatal disease of the liver or kidneys from the latter.

Healthy-looking men are often rejected by examiners of life insurance companies because of irregular and intermittent action of the heart from tobacco; and equally robust subjects are forced to abandon the habit because of tremors, vertigo or a peculiar form of dyspepsia. We have known men who died from the use of tobacco, and others who met a like fate from whiskey, who were never fully in the state denominated drunk. Men may earn a hobnail liver and dropsy by the constant, steady use of alcoholic drink taken systematically, so as always to keep within the limits of intoxication; or they may, in the same way, get a diabetes or Bright's disease.

Abundant testimony in regard to the effects of tobacco in creating an appetite for strong drink has been given by the inmates of the Franklin Home. In a few exceptional cases the use of tobacco does not appear to create any sense of thirst; and this is specially the case with the smokers who do not spit when smoking. Some men seem to be free from any alcoholic craving when using tobacco, and say that when they commence to drink they give up the drug for the time being. These are exceptional cases, for excess in drinking generally leads to an excess in the use of tobacco, often to double the amount ordinarily employed. We have often been told by moderate drinkers, that they frequently

About the Author

Timothy Shay Arthur (1809 - 1885) was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There, which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. Virtually forgotten now, Arthur did much to articulate and disseminate the values, beliefs, and habits that defined respectable, decorous middle-class life in antebellum America.