SATURATED WITH NICOTINE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 95, 25 April 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

SATURATED WITH NICOTINE.

William Bird Dying at Eighteen Fkom Excessive Use of Cigarettes.

In' an iron cot in the overcrowded Gouverneur Hospital lately, an eighteen-year lad lay dying of that simple yet hideous complaint, tobacco poisoning. The tiny cigarette was hastening him to tho grave and the doctors had given him up, Tboy did not expect him to live more than a couple of days.

William R. Bird was his name. He looked like an opium-fiend, and his face, hollow and wrinkled, looked like that of a man of sixty rather than that of a youth in his teens. With suffused cheeks and open mouth he lay on his back, staring into vacancy—a dreadful spectacle, a sermon to parents who criminally permit their children to use the tiny doses of poison. The night before he had been violent in his but when I saw him ho had grown too weak fot violence. Tho most powerful stimulants were vainly used upon him, and the probabilities were that he would dis without ever regaining consciousness. Outside of his violent and dreadful end there was nothing remarkable or uncommon about young Bird's case. He learned to smoke cigarettes before he was a dozen years of ago, and the habit so grew upon him that he could scarcely live without a cigarette in his mouth. Hβ was in the habit of consuming sevoral packages a day, went to sleep with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,and smoked half a dozen before getting up in the morning.