The Surgeon-General of the Forces has recently made public his
belief, that never, till within the last twenty years, did he see so
many young men with pale faces and emaciated figures, and he attributes
the existence of the evil to the use of Cigars. The unreflecting
servility with which men adopt new and foreign practices, is fully
exemplified in the present case; for it is notorious that the practice
of cigar-smoking, the modern foppery from Regent-street to Cheapside and
Cornhill, was an importation of the Peninsular War; the imitation having
been begun by the Spaniards, whose models are what are usually called
the _savages_ of America. The dietetic mischief, and consequent
paleness of complexion and emaciation of muscle, which are attributable
to the use of cigars, belong, no doubt, to an injury inflicted, perhaps,
in more ways than one upon the aids and organs of digestion; nor is
that hypothesis at all inconsistent with what we hear from so many
cigar-smokers, namely, that their cigar is their dependence for
digestion! That, after having impaired the organ, or weakened its tone,
or dried up the salival menstruum, they should need a stimulant, even in
the very form of the bane which injures them, is only of a piece with
all that has been said of drinking, and especially of dram-drinking,
with which latter debauch, the debauch of cigar-smoking has the closest
possible alliance. We never pass one of those stifling rendezvous in the
metropolis--a cigar-shop, open till the latest hours--without mentally
classing it with the gin-shops, its only compeers!
Exclusive of the low habit of imitation, a dulness and feebleness of
understanding, an absence of intellectual resources, a vacuity of
thought is the great inducement to the use of this, as of all other
drugs, whether from the cigar-shop, or the snuff-shop, or the gin-shop,
or the wine-cellar; a truth by no means the less certain, because it
happens that men of the highest powers of mind are drawn into the vice,
and made to reduce themselves, by their adoption and dependence upon it,
to the lowest level of the vulgar; but, at the same time, it is not to
be denied, that a great support in defence of cigar-smoking is found in
the medical opinions sometimes advanced as to its salutary influence.
Now, if we admit, broadly and at once, that there may be times and
circumstances in which the inhaling the hot smoke of a powerful narcotic
drug is useful to the human body, must it follow that the habitual
resort to such a practice, and this under all circumstances, is useful
also, and even free from the most serious inconveniences?
It is the admitted maxim, that if smoking is accompanied by spitting,
injury results to the smoker; and the reason assigned is, that the
salival fluid, which should assist digestion, is in this manner
dissipated, and taken from its office. But may not the habitual
application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its
evils also? May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action
which is needful to digestion? And may not even the excessive quantity
of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to
a desiccation of the system, as injurious under general circumstances,
as it may be beneficial under particular ones?
Smoking invites thirst; and there is little risk in advancing, that
whatever superinduces an unnatural indulgence in the use of liquids is
itself, and without farther question, injurious, even if the liquids
resorted to are of the most innocent description; but, in point of fact,
the cigar-smoker will usually appease his thirst by means of liquors in
themselves his enemies!
It is said, however, that the use of cigars is beneficial when we find
ourselves in marshy situations, with a high temperature, and generally,
whenever the atmosphere inclines to the introduction of putridity and
fever into the system. We believe this; and perhaps a useful theory of
the alternate benefit and mischief of cigar-smoking may be offered upon
the basis of that proposition. When and wherever the body requires to
be _dried_, cigar-smoking may be salutary; and when and wherever
that _drying_, or desiccation, is injurious, then and there
cigar-smoking may be to be shunned. We know that, while surrounded by
an atmosphere overcharged, or even only saturated with moisture, moist
bodies remain moist, or do not part with that excess of moisture from
which a drier atmosphere would relieve them; and that living bodies,
so circumstanced, are threatened with typhus and typhoid fever. It is
highly probable, therefore, that narcotics, in such cases, may allay
a morbid irritability of the nerves, or effect a salutary diminution
of healthful sensibility; under such circumstances, the desiccating
and sedative effects of tobacco-smoking may prove beneficial; while,
in all ordinary states of the system and of the atmosphere, the
same desiccative and sedative influences may produce immediate evil
consequences, more or less readily perceptible, and undermine, however
gradually, the strength of the constitution.--_United Service
Journal._
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