Chapter 10 - Page 2

week, another four, many use one a day, and a few from one and a half to three a day, besides smoking. Occasionally, but very rarely, we find a man who limits himself to one cigar a day, a number allow themselves but three, but of later years even these are moderate compared with those who use eight, ten or more.

There are many men who, for years, preserve a robust, hale appearance under both tobacco and whisky, who are, notwithstanding their apparent health, steadily laying the foundation of diseased heart, or

DERANGEMENT OF THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS

or nervous system from the former, or an organic fatal disease of the liver or kidneys from the latter.

Healthy-looking men are often rejected by examiners of life insurance companies because of irregular and intermittent action of the heart from tobacco; and equally robust subjects are forced to abandon the habit because of tremors, vertigo or a peculiar form of dyspepsia. We have known men who died from the use of tobacco, and others who met a like fate from whisky, who were never fully in the state denominated drunk. Men may earn a hobnail liver and dropsy by the constant, steady use of alcoholic drink taken systematically, so as always to keep within the limits of intoxication; or they may, in the same way, get a diabetes or Bright's disease.

Abundant testimony in regard to the effects of tobacco in creating an appetite for strong drink has been given by the inmates of the Franklin Home. In a few exceptional cases the use of tobacco does not appear to create any sense of thirst; and this is specially the case with the smokers who do not spit when smoking. Some men seem to be free from any alcoholic craving when using tobacco, and say that when they commence to drink they give up the drug for the time being. These are exceptional cases, for excess in drinking generally leads to an excess in the use of tobacco, often to double the amount ordinarily employed. We have often been told by moderate drinkers, that they frequently

FELT A DESIRE FOR A LITTLE WHISKY AFTER A SMOKE,

and they have confessed that they were only saved from a habit of drinking to excess by the fact that they had no innate fondness for alcoholic stimulation. Unfortunately, there is a large and increasing class of men who, finding that water does not, but that alcohol does, relieve the dryness of throat and diseased thirst resulting from tobacco, are led, little by little, into the habit of using whisky to excess. Such men, after, it may be, a long abstinence, are not unfrequently led back into their old habits by an attack of nervousness, resulting from a temporary excessive use of tobacco, and a feeling that all that is wanting to relieve this is a glass of whisky, which being taken, at once determines a debauch of long or short duration, according to the habits and character of the party. Many a so-called periodical drinker fixes the return of his period