Arts of Intoxication - The Aim, and the Results (1870) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. TOBACCO: THE HABIT. Stinkingest of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth, and fog of the mind. Africa, that brags her foyson, Breeds no such prodigious poison. Henbane, nightshade, both together, Hemlock, aconite: Nay rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue, Blisters on the tongue would hurt you ! Charles Lamb's Farewell to Tobacco. A T the outset of this part of the discussion candor compels me to confess that I have been disappointed somewhat in the result of my investigations. Having no experience of my own to guide me, I have been of necessity dependent on others; and those to whom I have applied for information have manifested a strange inability to give it as fully and clearlyas the importance of the subject renders desirable. Why do men smoke or chew ? This is a very simple question. When a man takes up his pipe or lights his cigar he is aiming at something. He may never have put the thought into words; still there is a thought which words might express. What, then, does he really propose to himself? Is he seeking merely to escape the uneasiness caused by a few hours' abstinence ? Does he look for a subtile, sensuous enjoyment ? Or is the effect sought a new mental state ? To these plain questions it seems impossible to obtain an intelligible reply from those who certainly ought to know. Replies, such as they are, may not indeed be refused. Some say they smoke " because they like it," or " because it is a habit which they acquired long ago;" but these answers leave the darkness as dense as even What, then, is the nature of the effect which tobacco produces upon the mind and body, and from which arises its power to please and to enslave ? The experience of the novice is not hard to comprehend. In ordinary cases it amounts to about th...