And an old pipe, saturated with nicotinous oil, may become
far stronger than any ordinary cigar.
We have spoken of persons who are incapable of deriving stimulus from
the use of tobacco, but are always narcotized by it. We doubt if
perfectly healthy persons are ever affected in this way. In a
considerable number of cases we have observed that this incapacity
occurs in people who are troubled with some chronic abnormal action or
inaction of the liver; but we have as yet been unable to make any
generalization which might serve to connect the two phænomena. In the
great majority of cases, however, the incapacity has been probably
induced by chronic narcosis resulting from the long-continued abuse of
tobacco. Recent researches have shown that confirmed drunkards have
after a while modified the molecular structure of their nervous
systems to such an extent that they can never for the rest of their
lives touch an alcoholic drink with safety. For such poor creatures,
teetotalism is the only hygienic rule. It is fair to suppose that
under the continuous influence of tobacco-narcosis the nervous system
becomes metamorphosed in some analogous manner, so that after a while
tobacco ceases to be of any use and becomes simply noxious. This is
likely to be the case with those who begin to chew or smoke when they
are half-grown boys, and keep on taking enormous doses of the narcotic
until they have arrived at middle age. As Mr. Parton seems to find a
difficulty in realizing that any one who smokes at all can smoke less
than from ten to twenty large cigars daily, (for he always uses these
figures when he has occasion to allude to the subject), we presume
this to be about the ration which he used to allow himself. If so, no
wonder that he found it did not pay to smoke. He probably did the
wisest thing he could do when he gave up the habit; and his mistake
has been in endeavouring to erect the limitations of his own
experience into objective laws of the universe.
To sum up the physiological argument: we have endeavoured, as
precisely as possible in the present state of knowledge, to answer the
question, Does it pay to smoke? From the outset we have found it
necessary to a clear understanding of the problem to keep steadily in
mind the generic difference between the effects of tobacco when taken
in narcotic quantities and its effects when taken in stimulant
quantities. The first class of effects we have seen to be always and
necessarily bad; though not so extremely and variously bad as hygienic
reformers appear to believe.[30] With regard to the second class of
effects, we have seen reason to believe that they are almost always
good. We have seen reason to believe that, in the first place, the
stimulant dose of tobacco retards waste; and, in the second place,
that it facilitates repair:--
I. By its action on the sympathetic ganglia, aiding digestion,--
II. By its action on the medulla oblongata, aiding the circulation,--
III. By its action on the interstitial nerve-fibres, aiding the
general assimilation of prepared material.
[30] Tobacco, as we have said, may, in an adequate dose,
produce well-developed paralysis. Whether the ordinary
excessive use of it ever does cause paralysis, is, to say
the least, extremely doubtful. Dr. D. W. Cheever says, "The
minor, rarely the graver, affections of the nervous system
do follow the use of tobacco in excess.... Numerous cases of
paralysis among tobacco-takers in France were traced to the
lead in which the preparation was enveloped." _Atlantic
Monthly_, Aug. 1860. Another instance of the great care
needful in correctly tracing the causes of any disease or
ailment. Lead-poisoning, when chronic, brings about
structural degeneration of the nerve-centres.
And lastly, we have witnessed the evidence of its effect upon the
increased nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, in its alleviation
of abnormal wakefulness and tremour. These are legitimate scientific
inferences; and if they are to be overturned, it must be by scientific
argument. They are not to be shaken by all of Mr. Parton's clamour
about the Coming Man, and people who keep themselves "well-groomed,"
and ladies who write for the press. So far as our present knowledge of
physiology goes for anything, it thus goes to exhibit tobacco, rightly
used, as the great economizer of vital force, the aider of nervous
co-ordination, and one of the ablest co-workers in normal and vigorous
nutrition. And, as we have said before, it is the difference in the
rate of nutrition which is probably the most fundamental difference
between strength and feebleness, vigour and sluggishness, health and
disease. It was because of rapid nutrition that Napoleon and Humboldt
performed their prodigious tasks, and yet needed almost incredibly
little sleep. It is the difference between fast and slow nutrition
which makes one soldier's wound heal, while another's gangrenes; which
enables one young girl to throw off a chest-cold with ease, while
another is dragged into the grave by it. Waste and repair--these are
the essential correlatives; and the agent which checks the former
while hastening the latter can hardly be other than a friend to
health, long life, and vigour.
We conclude with an inductive argument which an eminent physician has
recently in conversation urged upon our attention. Throughout the
whole world, probably nine men out of every ten use tobacco.[31]
Throughout the civilized world, women, as a general rule, abstain from
the use of tobacco. Here we have an experiment, on an immense scale,
ready-made for us. These three hundred million civilized men and women
are subjected to the same varieties of climatic, dietetic, and social
influences; their environments are the same; their inherited organic
proclivities will average about the same; but the men smoke and the
women do not. Now, if all that our hygienic reformers say about
tobacco were true, the men in civilized countries should be afflicted
with numerous constitutional diseases which do not afflict the women;
or should be more liable to the diseases common to the two sexes; or,
finally, should be shorter lived than the women. But statistics show
that men are, on the whole, just as healthy and long-lived as women.
In point of the average number of diseases[32] to which they are
subject; in point of liability to disease; and in point of longevity;
the two sexes are in all civilized countries, exactly on a par with
each other. During the two hundred years in which tobacco has been in
common use, it has made no appreciable difference in the health or
longevity of those who have used it. This is a rough experiment, in
which no account is taken of dosage, and in which the results are only
general averages. But to our mind, it is very significant. Taken
alone, it shows conclusively that since tobacco first began to be
used, its bad effects must have been at least fully balanced by its
good effects. Taken in connection with our physiological argument, it
shows quite conclusively that the current notion about the banefulness
of tobacco is, as we remarked above, simply a popular delusion.
[31] Paraguay tea is used by 10,000,000 of people; coca by
10,000,000; chicory by 40,000,000; cocoa by 50,000,000;
coffee by 100,000,000; betel by 100,000,000; haschisch by
300,000,000; opium by 400,000,000; Chinese tea by
500,000,000; tobacco by 800,000,000; the population of the
world being probably not much over one thousand million. See
Von Bibra, _Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch_,
Preface.
[32] Omitting, of course, from the comparison, the class of
diseases to which woman is peculiarly subject, as a
child-bearer.
To prove that tobacco, rightly used, is harmless, is to prove that it
does pay to smoke. Every smoker, who has not vitiated his nervous
system by raw excess, knows that there is no physical pleasure in the
long run comparable with that which is afforded by tobacco. If such
pleasure is to be obtained without detriment to the organism, who but
the grimmest ascetic can say that here is not a gain? But, if, as we
have every reason to believe, the stimulant action of tobacco upon the
human system is not only harmless but very decidedly beneficial, then
it is doubly proved that _it does pay to smoke_.
II.
THE COMING MAN WILL DRINK WINE.
Mr. Parton treats alcohol much more respectfully than he treats
tobacco. Though equally hostile to it, he apparently considers it a
more formidable enemy. Instead of taking for granted from the outset
that which it is his business to prove, he now condescends to employ
something which to the unpractised eye may look like scientific
argument. He has taken pains to collect such evidence as may be made
to support his view of the case. And he frequently endeavours to
assume an attitude of apparent impartiality by alluding to himself as
a drinker of "these seductive liquids,"--although, in point of fact,
his whole essay is conceived in the narrowest spirit of radical
teetotalism. As for tobacco, it does not seem to occur to him that any
one can be found, so obstinate or so deluded as seriously to maintain
that there is any good in it; and he therefore writes upon that
subject with all the exaggeration of unterrified confidence. But in
dealing with alcohol, his violence of statement is evidently due to an
uneasy consciousness that there is a vast body of current opinion and
of scientific doctrine which may be arrayed in the lists against him.
He brushes away, with a contemptuous sneer, (p. 56) the opinions of
the medical profession; but he is, nevertheless, unable wholly to
ignore them. Propositions of the sort which he formerly alluded to as
if no one could think of doubting them, he now thinks it necessary to
state at length. The poisonous nature of tobacco could be taken for
granted in a subordinate clause; but the poisonous nature of alcohol
needs to be asserted in an independent sentence. "Pure alcohol, though
a product of highly nutritive substances, is a mere poison,--an
absolute poison,--the mortal foe of life in every one of its forms,
animal and vegetable." (p. 64.)
This is the way in which the advocates of total abstinence like to
begin. A good round assertion about "poison" is calculated to
demoralize the inexperienced reader, and to scare him into half giving
up the case at once. But it is not all barking dogs that bite. Morphia
is a deadly poison; but opium, which contains it, is not "the mortal
foe of life in all its forms,"--it is sometimes the only thing which
will keep soul and body together.[1] Theine is no doubt a deadly
poison, but we manage to drink it with tolerable safety in our tea
and coffee. Lactucin is probably a poison, yet people may eat a
lettuce-salad and live. Chlorine is eminently a poison, yet we are all
the time taking it into our systems, combined with sodium, in the
shape of table-salt. Therefore over the verbal question whether a
teaspoonful of pure alcohol is a poison, we do not care to wrangle.
People do not drink pure alcohol, as a general thing. And as for the
beverages into the composition of which alcohol enters, the reader
will have no difficulty in understanding that they are poisons in just
the same sense in which common salt and oxygen are poisons; _i.e._, if
you take enough of them, they will kill you. This point was
sufficiently cleared up in our first chapter.
[1] Opium, as used in moderation by Orientals, has not been
proved to exercise any deleterious effects. Very likely it
is a healthful stimulant; but it does not appear to agree
with the constitutions of the Western races. See
Pharmaceutical Journal, vol. xi. p. 364. Probably tea,
tobacco and alcohol are the only stimulants adapted alike to
all races, and to nearly all kinds of people.
Mr. Parton's hostility to this "mortal foe of life in all its forms"
has taken shape in six definite propositions. Concerning alcoholic
liquor of any kind and in any quantity, he asserts, and attempts to
prove, that it does not nourish, that it does not aid digestion, that
it does not warm, that it does not strengthen, that it undergoes no
chemical change in the system, and that it always injuriously affects
the brain. Beginning with the last of these propositions, let us first
see what Mr. Parton has to say for it.
"If I, at this ten A.M., full of interest in this subject, and eager
to get my view of it upon paper, were to drink a glass of the best
port, Madeira, or sherry, or even a glass of lager-bier, I should
lose the power to continue in three minutes; or, if I persisted in
going on, I should be pretty sure to utter paradox and spurts of
extravagance, which would not bear the cold review of to-morrow
morning. Any one can try this experiment. Take two glasses of wine,
and then immediately apply yourself to the hardest task your mind ever
has to perform, and you will find you cannot do it. Let any student,
just before he sits down to his mathematics, drink a pint of the
purest beer, and he will be painfully conscious of loss of power." Did
it ever dimly occur to Mr. Parton that all men may not be constructed
on exactly the same plan with himself?
We wonder how many drops of "seductive fluid," unwisely taken at the
wrong time of day, are to be held responsible for the following
"spurt" of extravagance: "The time, I hope, is at hand, when an
audience in a theatre, who catch a manager cheating them out of their
fair allowance of fresh air, will not sit and gasp, and inhale
destruction till eleven P.M., and then rush wildly to the street for
relief. They will stop the play; they will tear up the benches, if
necessary; they will throw things on the stage; they will knock a hole
in the wall; they will _have_ the means of breathing, or perish in the
struggle." Is this the way in which "well-groomed" people are expected
to behave? Fancy an audience following this precious bit of advice.
When Mlle. Janauschek, for instance, is finishing the third act of
"Medea" or the second act of "Deborah," amid the tragic solemnity of
the scene, fancy the audience, because of bad air in the theatre,
getting up and flinging their canes and opera-glasses on the stage, in
the heroic struggle for oxygen or death! Fancy four or five hundred
grown-up, educated people behaving in this way! If these are to be the
manners of the Coming Man, we trust it will be long before he comes.
Such is one of the "spurts of extravagance" which Mr. Parton
apparently thinks _will_ "bear the cold review of to-morrow morning."
Having survived this, we may philosophically resign ourselves to the
infliction of another, more nearly akin to our subject. "How we all
wondered that England should _think_ so erroneously, and adhere to
its errors so obstinately, during our late war! Mr. Gladstone has in
part explained the mystery. The adults of England, he said, in his
famous wine-speech, drink, on an average, three hundred quarts of beer
each per annum!" Another choice bit of radical philosophy: if your
neighbour happens not to agree with your most cherished opinions,
he must be idiotic, immoral, or _drugged_! The English failed to
sympathize with us, because they are such beer-drinkers! What a rare
faculty of disentangling causal relations! We believe that the working
people, who drink the most beer, were just those who, as a class, were
most ready to sympathize with us in the time of need. But Mr. Parton
has "grounds" for his opinion. "It is physically impossible for a
human brain, muddled every day with a quart of beer, to correctly hold
correct opinions, or appropriate pure knowledge." "The receptive, the
curious, the candid, the trustworthy brains,--those that do not take
things for granted, and yet are ever open to conviction,--such heads
are to be found on the shoulders of men who drink little or none of
these seductive fluids." Mr. Parton has doubtless forgotten that the
head of "the nearest approach to the complete human being that has yet
appeared," the head of the "highly-groomed" Goethe--rested upon the
shoulders of a man who drank his two or three bottles of wine
daily.[2] But we are now rapidly getting into the æthereal region of
certainties. "Taking together all that science and observation teach
and indicate, we have one certainty: that, to a person in good health
and of good life, alcoholic liquors are not necessary, but are always
in some degree hurtful." So it is not an open question, after all!
Certainty has been arrived at,--by Mr. Parton, at least. And it is so
difficult to suppose that any sane mind, after due investigation, can
come to a different opinion, that all persons who mean to keep on
using alcohol are advised in pathetic language never to look into the
facts:
"If ignorance is bliss, 't is folly to be wise."
[2] Lewes, _Life of Goethe_, vol. II. p. 267.
The candid reader must admit that Mr. Parton has not, so far, made out
a very overwhelming case in support of his opinion that alcohol always
injures the brain. A personal experience, a "spurt of extravagance," a
"physical impossibility," and a "certainty," are, on the whole, not
very rocky foundations upon which to build a scientific conclusion.
But this is all Mr. Parton has to offer.
In attempting to describe the influence of alcohol upon the brain and
nervous system, it will be well for us to keep steadily in mind the
fundamental difference between stimulant and narcotic doses, which was
described at some length in our chapter on Tobacco. It is hardly
necessary to state that Mr. Parton neither recognizes, nor appears
dimly to suspect, the existence of any such distinction. His is one of
those minds in which there are no half-way stations. With him, to rise
above zero is inevitably to fly to the boiling-water point. But
without keeping in mind this all-important distinction, any inquiry
into the physiological effects of alcohol must end in confusion and
paradox. Remembering this, let us examine first the narcotic, and then
the stimulant effects of alcohol upon the nervous system.
The narcotic effects of alcohol upon the entire human organism are so
bad that even the teetotaler does not need to exaggerate them. The
stomach is not only damaged, and the cerebrum ruined, but a slow
molecular change takes place throughout the nervous system, which ends
by destroying the power of self-control and utterly demoralizing the
character. Far be it from us, therefore, to palliate the consequences
which sooner or later are sure to follow the wretched habit of
drinking narcotic quantities of alcohol; or to look without genuine
sympathy upon the philanthropic, though usually misguided attempts
which radical aquarians are continually making to diminish the evil.
Their feelings are often as right as their science is wrong. But
because we believe that for a book to be of any value whatever, it
must be _true_, and that false science can never, in the long run, be
of practical benefit, we are not therefore to be set down as lukewarm
in our abhorrence of alcoholic intemperance. Those who keep their
hearts in subjection to their heads are often supposed to have no
hearts at all. Those who do not forthwith get angry and utter "spurts
of extravagance" whenever any social evil is mentioned, are often
thought to be in secret sympathy with it. But how could we, by writing
reams of fervid declamation, more forcibly express our disapproval of
drunkenness than by recording the cold scientific statement that the
first narcotic symptom produced by alcohol is a symptom of incipient
paralysis?
We allude to the flushing of the face, which is caused by paralysis of
the cervical branch of the sympathetic. This symptom usually occurs
some time before the conspicuous manifestation of the ordinary signs
of intoxication, which result from paralysis of the cerebrum. Of these
signs the most prominent is the weakening of the ordinary power of
self-control. The ruling faculty of judgment is suspended, volition
becomes less steady, and imagination, no longer guided by the higher
faculties, runs riot in such a way as to appear to be stimulated. But
it is not stimulated; it is simply let loose. There is no stimulation
in drunkenness; there is only disorganization. One acquired or organic
power of the mind no longer holds the others in check. Hence the
uncalled-for friendliness, the fitful anger, the extravagant or
misplaced generosity, the ludicrous dignity, the disgusting
amorousness, or the garrulous vanity, of the drunken man. Wine is said
to exhibit a man as he really is, with the conventionalities of
society laid aside. This is only half true, but it suggests the true
statement. Wine exhibits a man as he is when the organized effects of
ancestral and contemporary civilization upon his character are
temporarily obliterated. We need no better illustration of the truth
that drunkenness is not stimulation but paralysis of the cerebrum,
than the order in which, under the influence of alcohol, the powers of
the mind become progressively suspended. As a general rule those are
first suspended which are the most recent products of civilization,
and which have consequently been developed by inheritance through the
least number of generations. These are of course the mind's highest
organic acquisitions. The sense of responsibility, for instance, is a
product of a highly complicated state of civilization, and, when fully
developed, is perhaps chief among the moral acquirements which
distinguish the civilized man from the savage. In progressing
intoxication, the feeling of responsibility is the first to be put in
abeyance. A man need be but slightly tipsy in order to become quite
careless as to the consequences of his actions.[3] On the other hand,
those qualities of the mind are the last to be overcome, which are the
earliest inheritance of savagery, and which the civilized man
possesses in common with savages and beasts. Then the animal nature of
the man, no longer restrained by his higher faculties, manifests
itself with a violence which causes it to seem abnormally stimulated
in vigour. And in the stage immediately preceding stupor, it sometimes
happens that the pupils are contracted,[4] and the whites of the eyes
enlarged, giving to the face a horrible brute-like expression.
[3] In illustration it may be noted that as soon as a man
has just transgressed the physiological limit which divides
stimulation from narcosis, he is liable to throw overboard
all prudential considerations and drink until he is
completely drunk. This is one of the chief dangers of
convivial after-dinner drinking.
[4] For the physiology of this pupil-change, not uncommon in
various kinds of acute narcosis, see the Appendix to Anstie.
One apparent exception to this generalization needs only to be
explained in order to confirm the rule. Memory, which usually figures
as a high intellectual faculty, is often, even in deep drunkenness,
capable of performing marvellous feats. While in college we once heard
a tipsy fellow-student repeat _verbatim_ the whole of that satire of
Horace which begins "Unde et quo, Catius?"--which he had read over the
same day before going to recitation, but which, as we felt sure, he
could never designedly have committed to memory. It appeared, however,
that, in the literal though not in the idiomatic sense of the phrase,
he had "committed it to memory" to some purpose, for as we, struck
with amazement, took down our Horace and followed him, we found that
he made not the slightest verbal error. This performance on his part
was almost immediately followed by heavy comatose slumber. On
afterward questioning him, it appeared that he remembered nothing
either of the Satire or of his remarkable feat. Several analogous
cases are cited by Dr. Anstie.[5]
[5] _Stimulants and Narcotics_, pp. 174-178.