he nostrils of one unaccustomed to it; and a violent
sneezing, with a copious secretion of mucus will follow. Put tobacco
into the mouth and it immediately produces a profuse discharge of
saliva; and if this proves unsuccessful in expelling the unwelcome
intruder, severe nausea and vomiting ensue. Smoking also produces
similar effects. Apply the moistened leaves of tobacco to any part of
the surface of the body, and its deadly effects are soon perceived in an
entire prostration of strength, accompanied with ghastly paleness and
vomiting.

If it were not in a high degree poisonous, no such results would follow
its first application to the living fibre; for they do not follow the
first application of those substances which were, by our wise and
bountiful Creator, designed for the _use_ of man.

Though the effects above described are less violent, when the nerves
(the media through which it operates) become accustomed to the stimulus
of the noxious substance; yet it by no means proves, even in these
circumstances, that it does no injury to the system, any more than the
fact that some men drink a quart of proof spirit daily without
producing death, proves that that amount does them no harm, when half
the quantity taken by a beginner would prove fatal.

In the course of twelve years' observation on the effects of narcotics
upon the human system, I became acquainted with a delicate female, who,
for thirty years, had taken a sufficient quantity of opium daily to kill
the hardiest son of New-England, provided he had been unaccustomed to
its pernicious influence. She, nevertheless, lived to an advanced age,
and was eighty-four years old when I last saw her, though she, at that
time, took every day two scruples of solid opium.

I had the unpleasant task to attend this lady in a fit of sickness. And
with the exception of a few cases, in which similar results have
followed the excessive use of alcohol, it was, without exaggeration, the
most troublesome case that has ever fallen under my care.

All the frightful symptoms of _delirium tremens_ waited around and
haunted her imagination through the day; while shrieks, and groans, and
all the signs of woe attended her nightly couch, to add a gloomy horror
to her unrefreshing and broken slumbers. And so far as my observations
extend, the most inveterate derangements of the nervous system are
either produced or aggravated by the habitual use of narcotics.

The inherent power of the