The discharge from the bowels continued unabated,
and was often attended with severe pain and great prostration of
strength. The salivation was accompanied with a burning or scalding
sensation in the mouth and stomach, which proved excessively irritating
to the patient, as well as perplexing to me. On examining her case, I
found the nervous system entirely deranged and much broken by the habit
of smoking, which she had practiced to great excess from the age of
eleven years. I learned, to my surprise and regret, that she commenced
this habit, which afterwards cost her so much suffering, by the advice
of some wise member of the Faculty, who had prescribed it for some
slight derangement of the stomach.

My first efforts were directed to repair the injuries inflicted by the
tobacco-pipe; and though the difficulties to be overcome were many and
obstinate, by patience and perseverance they were all surmounted, and
the woman was at length restored.

The conflict which this poor woman endured, in overcoming a habit that
not only injured her health, but nearly destroyed her life, was dreadful
beyond description. When her pain and distress were great, she would
complain more of this privation, than of all her other sufferings; and
so strong was the desire for smoking, that she, several times during her
recovery, contrary to my orders, indulged in it a few minutes, and each
time with manifest injury; so that she finally was induced to abandon it
altogether, and thus recovered her health. Indeed, she now enjoys better
health than she has done for years.

Any one acquainted with this ordinary effects of this foolish indulgence
in the free use of narcotics, on the nervous system of its victims, will
be convinced by a few years close observation, that such persons
especially, if they are of sedentary habits, are more subject to fits of
despondency, and to a far greater degree, than persons of the same
general health and of the same employment, but who have escaped
contamination.

I shall here introduce the following extract of a letter, from a
respectable clergyman to the author, as illustrative of this point.

"When I say that the effects of the habitual use of tobacco on the human
system, are injurious; I speak from years of painful experience. I
commenced the use of tobacco when young, like many others, without any
definite object, but experienced no very injurious consequences from it
until I entered the ministry. Then my sy