f this
people, and their trying "text," are considered of no account,)--cancer
of the stomach,--disease of the liver,--dyspepsia,--enfeebled
nutrition, and consequent emaciation,--dryness of the mouth,--"the
clergyman's sore-throat" and loss of voice,--irritability of the nervous
system,--tremulousness,--palpitation and paralysis,--and, among the
moral ills, loss of energy, idleness, drunkenness. A fearful catalogue,
which would dedicate the _tabatiere_ to Pandora, were it true.

Hygienic reformers are usually unequalled in imaginary horrors, except
by the charlatans who vend panaceas.

We have no reasons for believing that tobacco causes softening of the
brain equal in plausibility to those which ascribe it to prolonged and
excessive mental effort. The statistics of disease prove cancers of
other organs to be twice as frequent, among females, as cancer of the
stomach is among males; and an eminent etiologist places narcotics
among the least proved causes of this disease. A hot climate, abuse
of alcohol, a sedentary life, and sluggish digestion happen, rather
curiously, to be very frequent concomitants, if not causes, of disease
of the liver. Dyspepsia haunts both sexes, and, we venture to assert,
though we cannot bring figures to prove it, is as frequent among those
who do not use tobacco as among those who do. We are ready to concede
that excessive chewing and smoking, particularly if accompanied by large
expectoration, may impair nutrition and cause emaciation: that the mass
of mankind eat and digest and live, as well as use "the weed," is proof
that its moderate employment is not ordinarily followed by this result.
Dryness of the mouth follows expectoration as a matter of course; but
the salivation excited in an old smoker by tobacco is very moderate, and
not succeeded by thirst, unless the smoke be inhaled too rapidly and at
too high a temperature.

We come next to a very tender point with reformers, the laryngeal cough
and failing voice of the reverend clergy. The later generations of
ministers of this vicinity, as a body, have abandoned tobacco, and yet
the evil has not diminished. An eminent divine of our acquaintance,
who does not smoke daily, always finds a cigar relieve a trifling
bronchitis, to which he is occasionally subject The curious will find in
the "Medical Journal" of this city, for 1839, that quite as much can be
said on one side as on the other of this subject.

The minor, rarely the graver aff