Advice to Smokers.

Bruce Herald, Volume IX, Issue 801, 9 May 1876, Page 6

Advice to Smokers.

The following are Dr Berthand's precepts and advice to smokers — Never smoke more than three or four pipes or cigars a day, and, if it is possible, limit yourself to two. It is unwholesome to smoke on an empty stomach or immediately before or after a meal. Whatever be the mode of smoking, direct contact of the tobacco with the mucus hucalis (mucous lining of the cheeks) and the teeth must be avoided. Cigars should be smoied in an amber, ivory, or enameled porcelam mouthpiece. To smoke, by relighting them, portions of cigars that have been extinguished, together with the system of blackened and juicy pipes, constitutes the surest way of being affected by nicotine. Every smoker would do well, if he could, to rinse his mouth after smoking A fortiori is the same precaution applicable to chewers. For the same reason it would be well to subject pipes and bowls, in which tobacco has been burnt, to frequent washings either tvith ether or with water mixed with alcohol or vinegar. It is difficult to choose between the different ways of smoking. I give preference to the cigarette, by reason of its slight quantitative importance and the paper which interferes with the contact of its contents with the buccal mucous membrane. But to realise all the desiderata, it would be necessary to have the papetito made of flax thread and to abstain from the practice which has become the tie phis ultra method of its kind, retaining the aspiration at the back of the mouth, so as to pour it out of the nostrils afterward. The premature habit of smoking is certainly hurtful to childhood and during the adolescent period of organic evolution. The economy cannot but suffer, at this period, from the narcotic iufluence, be it never so slight, and from the salivation which is inseparable from this act' All persons cannot smoke with impunity. There are pathogical counter-indications or idiosyncrasies to this habit that it would be imprudent and culpable to infringe. Diseases of the lungs, of the heart, chronic affections of the mouth, nose, eyes, throat, and stomach, are the results of the principal incompatibilities. The airing of apartments where smoking has taken place should be well attended to. To sleep in rooms where tobacco smoke exists, slowly constitutes a grave infraction on the elementary of hygiene. 'Tribune Medicale.'