not be a perversion of judgment to consider that their widespread
popular use is greatly due to the efforts of the race to gain
anaesthesia for, and distraction from, those pains and punishments that
are the inevitable sequence of departure from hygienic and social law
on the part of the individual, his ancestry, and society in general.

The taste for these things is acquired, not natural, though the
acquisition may be through hereditary influence. An idea is held by a
majority of even fairly intelligent individuals that there is a
justifiable, harmless, and even beneficial use of these substances by
the general public, though acknowledging that beyond a certain
indefinite line this use becomes an abuse.

I believe that there may occasionally be cases in which the physical
benefits derived from their use outweigh the injury they inflict, but
I think this use is very much less than is generally supposed, and if
we can judge from the preponderance of evil effected by such use,
these substances ought to be considered as the materialized curses of
God rather than as beneficent gifts. The prevalent idea as to the
beneficent nature of these substances I consider to be a delusion that
can only be explained upon the hypothesis that there is a widespread
lack of appreciation of the fact that, though they may have an
immediate pleasant and agreeable effect upon the body, their injurious
effects are cumulative, and are usually ultimate, and so distant as to
be difficult of direct connection with their cause to ordinary
observation. The more moderate the use of these substances, the more
remotely is the effect removed from the cause and more difficult of
detection. That the ordinary habitual, so-called moderate use of
stimulants and narcotics, such as tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol,
is, in the vast majority of cases, really an abuse, is a proposition
that I think should be admitted by all who have given the subject an
unbiased study.

The idea that the user of tobacco and other injurious substances will
be cognizant of the injury inflicted by habitual use in moderate or
even excessive amounts is an undoubted fallacy. The daily, weekly, or
monthly injurious effect may be entirely unobservable to even trained
physicians, and yet the ultimate cumulative effect may be fatal. I can
instance numerous cases of physicians directly fatally injured by the
use of alcohol, who have never had the slightest cognizance of the
fact; and I ca