There are many men who, for years, preserve a robust, hale appearance
under both tobacco and whisky, 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 whisky, 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
FELT A DESIRE FOR A LITTLE WHISKY 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 whisky to
excess. Such men, after, it may be, a long abstinence, are not
unfrequently 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 whisky, which being
taken, at once determ
|