from Cuba,
namely, that, in 1828, it was then the common estimate, that, in Havana,
there was an average consumption of _ten thousand dollars' worth of
cigars in a day_.

Dr. Moore, who resides in the province of Yucatan, in Mexico, assures
me that the city of Campeachy, containing a population of _twenty
thousand_, lost, by cholera, in about thirty days, commencing early in
July, _four thousand three hundred and a fraction_, of its inhabitants.
This is a little short of one-fourth of the population; although Dr.
Moore says that the people of Campeachy make it as a common remark, "we
have lost one in four of our number." With reference to the habits of
the people in that part of Mexico, Dr. Moore says, "every body smokes
cigars. I never saw an exception among the natives. It is a common thing
to see a child of two years old learning to smoke."

The opinion, that the use of tobacco preserves the teeth, is supported
neither by physiology nor observation. Constantly applied to the
interior of the mouth, whether in the form of cud or of smoke, this
narcotic must tend to enfeeble the gums, and the membrane covering the
necks and roots of the teeth, and, in this way, must rather accelerate
than retard their decay. We accordingly find, that tobacco consumers are
not favored with better teeth than others; and, on the average, they
exhibit these organs in a less perfect state of preservation. Sailors
make a free use of tobacco and they have bad teeth.

The grinding surfaces of the teeth are, on the average, more rapidly
worn down or absorbed, from the chewing or smoking of tobacco for a
series of years; being observed in some instances to project but a
little way beyond the gums. This fact I have observed, in the mouths
of some scores of individuals in our own communities, and I have also
observed the same thing in the teeth of several men, belonging to the
Seneca and St. Francois tribes of Indians, who, like most of the other
North American tribes, are much addicted to the use of this narcotic.
In several instances, when the front teeth of the two jaws have been
shut close, the surfaces of the grinders, in the upper and lower jaw,
especially where the cud had been kept, did not touch each other, but
exhibited a space between them of one-tenth to one-sixth of an inch,
showing distinctly the effects of the tobacco, more particularly
striking upon those parts, to which it had been applied in its most
concentrated state.

The