s are chiefly valuable as showing the tendency of the thing. Where
the evils of excess are so glaring, the advantages of even moderate use
are questionable. Where weak persons are made insane, there is room for
suspicion that the strong may suffer unconsciously. You may say that
the victims must have been constitutionally nervous; but where is the
native-born American who is not?

In France and England the recent inquiries into the effects of tobacco
seem to have been a little more systematic than our own. In the former
country, the newspapers state, the attention of the Emperor was called
to the fact that those pupils of the Polytechnic School who used this
indulgence were decidedly inferior in average attainments to the rest.
This is stated to have led to its prohibition in the school, and to the
forming of an anti-tobacco organization, which is said to be making
great progress in France. I cannot, however, obtain from any of our
medical libraries any satisfactory information as to the French
agitation, and am led by private advices to believe that even these
general statements are hardly trustworthy. The recent English
discussions are, however, more easy of access.

"The Great Tobacco Question," as the controversy in England was called,
originated in a Clinical Lecture on Paralysis, by Mr. Solly, Surgeon of
St. Thomas's Hospital, which was published in the "Lancet," December 13,
1856. He incidentally spoke of tobacco as an important source of this
disease, and went on to say,--"I know of no single vice which does so
much harm as smoking. It is a snare and a delusion. It soothes the
excited nervous system at the time, to render it more irritable and
feeble ultimately. It is like opium in this respect; and if you want to
know all the wretchedness which this drug can produce, you should
read the 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.'" This statement was
presently echoed by J. Ranald Martin, an eminent surgeon, "whose Eastern
experience rendered his opinion of immense value," and who used language
almost identical with that of Mr. Solly:--"I can state of my own
observation, that the miseries, mental and bodily, which I have
witnessed from the abuse of cigar-smoking, far exceed anything detailed
in the 'Confessions of an Opium-Eater.'"

This led off a controversy which continued for several months in the
columns of the "Lancet,"--a controversy conducted in a wonderfully
good-natured spirit, considering that more than