reas_, an organ so similar in
structure to the salivary glands, that even so minute an observer as
Koelliker does not think it requisite to give it a separate description.
Its secretion, which is poured into the second stomach, contains a
ferment analogous to that of the saliva, and amounts probably to about
seven ounces a day. The food, on leaving the stomach, is next subjected
to its influence, together with that of the bile. It helps digest fatty
matters by its emulsive powers; it has been more recently supposed to
form a sort of _peptone_ with nitrogenized articles also; but, what is
more to our purpose, it turns starch into sugar even more quickly than
the saliva itself. And even if the reformers were to beat us from this
stronghold, by proving that tobacco impaired the saccharifying power of
this organ also, we should still find the mixed fluids supplied by the
smaller, but very numerous glands of the intestines, sufficient to
accomplish the requisite modification of starch, though more slowly and
to a less degree.

We come now to the second count in the indictment,--that tobacco
injuriously affects the nervous system, and through it the digestion.
The accusation is here more vague and indefinite, and the answer also
is less susceptible of proof. Both sides must avail themselves of
circumstantial, rather than direct evidence.

That digestion is in direct dependence upon the nervous system, and that
even transitory or emotional states of the latter affect the former,
there can be no doubt. It is so familiar a fact, that instances need
hardly be cited to prove it. Hence we are told, that tobacco, by
deranging the one, disorders the other,--that nervousness, or morbid
irritability of the nerves, palpitations and tremulousness, are soon
followed by emaciation and dyspepsia, or more or less inability to
digest.

We conceive Prout, an eminent authority, to be near the truth, when he
says of tobacco, "The strong and healthy suffer comparatively little,
while the weak and predisposed to disease fall victims to its poisonous
operation." The hod-carrier traversing the walls of lofty buildings, and
the sailor swinging on the yard-arm, are not subject to nervousness,
though they smoke and chew; nor are they prone to dyspepsia, unless from
excesses of another kind.

It has not been shown that tobacco either hastens or delays the
metamorphosis of tissue,--that it drains the system by waste, or clogs
it by retarding the nat