stem began to feel its dreadful
effects. My voice, appetite, and strength soon failed; and I become
affected with sickness at the stomach, indigestion, emaciation, and
melancholy, with a prostration of the whole nervous system. For years my
health has been so much impaired as to render me almost useless in the
ministry, and all this I attribute to the pernicious habit of smoking
and chewing tobacco. And had I continued the practice, I doubt not but
that it would have brought me to an untimely grave. I was often advised
to leave it off, and made several unsuccessful attempts. At length I
became fully convinced that I must quit tobacco or die. I summoned all
my resolution for the fearful exigency, and after a long and desperate
struggle I obtained the victory. I soon began to experience the
beneficial results of my conquest. My appetite has returned; my voice
grows stronger, and I am in a measure freed from that mental dejection
to which I once was subject. My general health is much improved, and I
feel that I am gradually recovering; though it is not to be expected I
shall ever regain what I have lost by this needless and vicious
indulgence. I am satisfied that the common use of tobacco is injurious
to most people, especially those of sedentary habits. On them it
operates with ten-fold energy. I am acquainted with many in the
ministry, who are travelling this road to the grave. I uniformly say to
them: "Lay aside your pipes and tobacco, or you are undone--your labors
in the ministry will soon be at an end.""[F]

[Footnote F: Another Clergyman writes as follows. "I thank
God, and I thank you for your advice to abandon smoking. My
strength has _doubled_ since I quitted this abominable
practice."]

A mere hint at these evils would seem to be sufficient to awaken
inquiry, among the votaries of the plant in question. I shall therefore
leave it to their candid decision, after a full and free investigation
enables them to arrive at a just conclusion.

The great increase of _dyspepsia_ within the last twenty years, with the
dark and lengthened catalogue of nervous complaints that follow in its
train, is, I have no doubt, in part owing to the universal prevalence of
practices, the propriety of which we are calling in question.

The misery to which the consumers of this drug are subject, when from
any cause they are temporarily deprived or it, would go far to deter a
reflecting man from voluntarily binding himself