Response to the editor of "the Daily News" / by one of the so-called "fanatical anti-tobacconists," ; to which is added fifty-four objections to tobacco / prefaced by the late Dr. Hodgkin.

Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Response to the editor of "the Daily News" / by one of the so-called "fanatical anti-tobacconists," ; to which is added fifty-four objections to tobacco / prefaced by the late Dr. Hodgkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    WAl 272- i THB SO-CALLED FANATICAL ANTI-TOBACCONISTS ” AND / S’ 7^n- « THE DAILY NEWS ” R tj-3 - TO THE EdITOB OE a THE DAILY NEWS.” Sir,—As I belong to the band of men whom you have designated “ Fanatical Anti-tobacconists and Mucklewraiths of the Anti-Tobacco Mission,” I venture to make an eflortto convince you, that by whatever motives you are actuated, nothing is more uncalled for, and nothing more disingenuous, except indeed, that one of the three following considera¬ tions have been in operation in your mind. 1st. It may be that you are desirous of opening the columns of “ The Daily News ” for the discussion of this 'paramount question, or that you are actuated by motives of benevolence from the consideration that smoking is a contribution to human happiness, to do all you can for the encouragement of this habit, or that you are desirous of eliciting all the information you can for your personal guidance. These topics being merely conjectural, I shall deal with them in the order in which they stand. If the first be the admitted motive, I unhesitatingly affirm, that in the present state of society there is not a thing within your power, that you can do, which will lay your countrymen under greater obligation then a full and fair discussion of what tobacco is and does. Where¬ fore ? Because there is nothing which is daily employed by choice that so much interfers with the laws of nature as fumes of tobacco, and why, because the potency of the empyreumatic oil of tobacco, which is produced by heat, as its name signifies, infinitely exceeds that of any other commodity in daily use, fot excepting opium. This may be cnnfirmed by any one not accustomed to either tobacco or opium, if he will one day chew and swallow three or four grains of opium, with the saliva which is secreted in the process of chewing it, and the next day chew and swallow in like manner an equal quantity of “ Cavendish” or even “ Returns.” In fact, but for the ejection of saliva when chewing or smoking is commenced, there would be neither smokers nor chewers at all, except the last by goats, or perhaps a few other animals of that class. But this is not all. Smoking is a very indefinite term to employ. If. as was said in the Review, of the discussion of “ The Great Tobacco Question,” in the pages of the Lancet, “ All smoking before the bodily powers are fully developed is excess,” and if on juvenile smokers injuries are inflicted which are never overcome in after life, you, sir, will deserve to be enrolled among the noblest benefactors of your fraternity, if you will aid us in our Great Anti-“ Mucklewraith Mis¬ sion.” I now come to the second conjectural motive, that is; that you may be actuated from motives of benevolence by the consideration, that because wounded men, by missiles of war, are helped through blunting their sensibilities, better to bear their pains and privations, you may conclude that a like operation on the nerves of sensation^ may to