s." It is not merely that a poison can by chemical
process be extracted from it, but it is a poison in its simplest form.
Its mere application to the skin has often produced uncontrollable
nausea and prostration. Children have in several cases been killed by
the mere application of tobacco ointment to the head. Soldiers have
simulated sickness by placing it beneath the armpits,--though in most
cases our regiments would probably consider this a mistaken application
of the treasure. Tobacco, then, is simply and absolutely a poison.

Now to say that a substance is a poison is not to say that it inevitably
kills; it may be apparently innocuous, if not incidentally beneficial.
King Mithridates, it is said, learned habitually to consume these
dangerous commodities; and the scarcely less mythical Du Chaillu, after
the fatigues of his gorilla warfare, found decided benefit from two
ounces of arsenic. But to say that a substance is a poison is to say
at least that it is a noxious drug,--that it is a medicine, not an
aliment,--that its effects are pathological, not physiological,--and
that its use should therefore be exceptional, not habitual. Not tending
to the preservation of a normal state, but at best to the correction of
some abnormal one, its whole value, if it have any, lies in the rarity
of its application. To apply a powerful drug at a certain hour every day
is like a schoolmaster's whipping his pupil at a certain hour every day:
the victim may become inured, but undoubtedly the specific value of the
remedy must vanish with the repetition.

Thus much would be true, were it proved that tobacco is in some cases
apparently beneficial. No drug is beneficial, when constantly employed.
But, furthermore, if not beneficial, it then is injurious. As Dr. Holmes
has so forcibly expounded, every medicine is in itself hurtful. All
noxious agents, according to him, cost a patient, on an average, five
per cent. of his vital power; that is, twenty times as much would kill
him. It is believed that they are sometimes indirectly useful; it is
known that they are always directly hurtful. That is, I have a neighbor
on one side who takes tobacco to cure his dyspepsia, and a neighbor on
the other side who takes blue pill for his infirmities generally. The
profit of the operation may be sure or doubtful; the outlay is certain,
and to be deducted in any event. I have no doubt, my dear Madam, that
your interesting son has learned to smoke, as he