TOBACCO-USING TEETOTALERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XII, 21 March 1896, Page 326

TOBACCO-USING TEETOTALERS.

I Have had under my care says Mr Kerr in his new book on ‘ Inebriety ’i a large number of abstainers who were smokers, snuffers, or chewers. Some of these had used tobacco to great excess, and had been excessive smoke-consumers for long periods of years. Though I ’nave no doubt whatever that tobacco is a poison, that its use is necessary to no one, and perilous to many, that it is the occasion of not a few enfeebled hearts, not a little loss of vision, not a small amount of nervous excitement, melancholia, and dyspepsia, not a limited number of premature deaths, and though I have as little doubt that everyone would be healthier bv abstaining from tobacco, with the exception of a few cases, I have not been able to come to the conclusion that the use of tobacco as a general rule implies much liabilitv to inebriety. At one time, before my opportunities of observing cases of inebriety were so extended, I entertained an opposite opinion, believing that tobacco was one of the chief predisposing causes of the inebriate habit; but loyalty to truth compels me to add that not only have I changed my mind as to this, but I have actually seen a few cases of inebriety in which the sedative influence of tobacco has subdued the craving for the moment, as it sometimes lulls for a time the sensation of hunger, and has thereby prevented an inebriate outbreak. Tobacco, however, operates as a contributory factor in the development of that neurotic diathesis, which, in some constitutions, sets up the diseased condition of inebriety, either in the offspring or in the succeeding generation.