ections of the nervous system, do follow
the use of tobacco in excess. We admit this willingly; but we deny these
effects to its moderate use by persons of ordinary health and of no
peculiar idiosyncrasy. Numerous cases of paralysis among tobacco-takers
in France were traced to the lead in which the preparation was
enveloped.

We pass next to what we claim as the effects of _moderate_
tobacco-using, and will take first the evidence of the toxicologists.
Both Pereira and Christison agree that "no well-ascertained ill effects
have been shown to result from the habitual practice of smoking." Beck,
a modern authority, says, "Common observation settles the question, that
the moderate and daily use of tobacco _does not_ prove injurious. This
is a general rule": and he adds, that exceptions necessarily exist, etc.

The repugnance and nausea which greet the smoker, in his first attempts
to use tobacco, are not a stronger argument against it than the fact
that the system so soon becomes habituated to these effects is a proof
of its essential innocuousness.

Certainly the love of tobacco is not an instinctive appetite, like that
for nitrogen and carbon in the form of food. Man was not born with a
cigar in his mouth, and it is not certain that the _Nicotiana tabacum_
flourished in the Garden of Eden. But history proves the existence of
an instinct among all races--call it depraved, if you will, the fact
remains--leading them to employ narcotics. And narcotics all nations
have sought and found. We venture to affirm that tobacco is harmless as
any. The betel and the hop can alone compare with it in this respect;
and the hop is not a narcotic which satisfies alone; others are used
with it. Opium and Indian hemp are not to be mentioned in comparison;
while coca, in excess, is much more hurtful.

Tobacco may more properly be called a sedative than a narcotic. Opium,
the type of the latter class, is in its primary action excitant, but
secondarily narcotic. The opium-eaters are familiar with this, and
learn by experience to regulate the dose so as to prolong the first and
shorten the second effects, as much as possible.

Tobacco, on the other hand, is primarily sedative and relaxing. A high
authority says of its physiological action:--

"First, That its greater and first effect is to assuage and allay and
soothe the system in general.

"Second, That its lesser and second, or after effect, is to excite and
invigorate, and at the s