Tobacco and Alcohol : Part 2

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

(Page 11 of 19)

Felt a Desire for a Little whiskey after a Smoke,

and they have confessed that they were only saved from a habit of drinking to excess by the fact that they had no innate fondness for alcoholic stimulation. Unfortunately, there is a large and increasing class of men who, finding that water does not, but that alcohol does, relieve the dryness of throat and diseased thirst resulting from tobacco, are led, little by little, into the habit of using whiskey to excess. Such men, after, it may be, a long abstinence, are not infrequently led back into their old habits by an attack of nervousness, resulting from a temporary excessive use of tobacco, and a feeling that all that is wanting to relieve this is a glass of whiskey, which being taken, at once determines a debauch of long or short duration, according to the habits and character of the party.

Many a so-called periodical drinker fixes the return of his period by an act of this kind, and with such cases it is all-important to their permanent reformation, that they should cease entirely and forever from the use of tobacco. We have, in a few instances, prevailed upon men to do this, but in a large majority of cases, where they have admitted the connection between the two habits, in their own person, or volunteered to tell how much tobacco had acted in forming and keeping up their appetite for whiskey, they have failed in being able to sum up sufficient resolution to abandon the use of the drug, saying that they felt the importance of the step, and would be glad to be able to give it up, but that the habit was

Ten Times as Difficult to Conquer as that of whiskey-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, whiskey-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. Marshould 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 that twenty-seven of them had also a fondness for alcoholic stimulants.

A large proportion of the Franklin Home inmates attribute their habit of drinking to the effects of company; many commenced in the army, and many were induced to drink at first by invitation. If smoking was a solitary habit, it would be less likely to lead to drinking; but the same companionship, and habits of treating prevail, as in the saloon, and the step from the estaminet to the bar-room under invitation, is an easy one, where the diseased thirst, so often induced by tobacco, favors the movement to treat.

We have no prejudice against tobacco, other than what would naturally arise in the mind from a careful examination of the effects of the poison in hundreds of cases. We have seen large, hale-looking men forced in time to abandon, although very reluctantly, the use of tobacco in every form; and the most bitter enemy we have ever met to the vile weed as he termed it, was a physician, who had been forced to give up chewing on account of the state of his heart, after years of indulgence. We have seen many such instances, and, in one case, the abandonment of the habit entirely cured a dyspepsia of twenty-eight years' standing.

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.