Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/662

646 after a brilliant oratorical display, "richer in arguments than in observed facts," the society wisely concluded that "it was not necessary to conclude anything." That is my position on this vexed question of cigarette-paper.

Larouse says that, although it is admitted as a principle that only the cigar is in good taste in the street, the pipe is, in the privacy of home, the relaxation of persons in the highest social classes as well as of the masses. The observation is just. All great smokers use the pipe. The poor smoke a modest clay pipe; the rich a meerschaum set with silver and amber, carved and engraved like a precious stone; poor and rich, consuming much tobacco, burn it in an incombustible bowl with a tube attached; whatever it may be, it is still a pipe, and, if it costs more, it is no better than the cheaper one, but rather the contrary. If all pipes were equally durable, they might be classed, according to their merit, as follows: 1. Soft earthen pipe; 2. Meerschaum; 3. Hard earthen pipe, white or colored; 4. Wooden pipe; 5. Porcelain pipe; 6. Metallic pipe.

The white earthen pipe, porous and permeable to liquids, is put first, because it is a good absorber of nicotine; the metallic pipe is put last, because it allows all the noxious products formed during the combustion of the tobacco to reach the mouth of the smoker. The meerschaum, which immediately follows the clay pipe, deserves its place only on condition that it is not too old. If it is seasoned, it is as bad as a wooden or porcelain pipe. The seasoning, of which poets have sung, may be full of charms for the amateur; to the hygienist, it simply indicates that the pipe has had its day, and is now saturated with tobacco-juice; and that it must be replaced by another one, or be passed through the fire to purify it, as is done in the coffee-houses of Holland. Every old pipe, browned with long use, leaves on the lips and tongue an acrid and strong-smelling liquid which irritates the tissues and corrodes the mucous secretions. When it has reached this condition, the finest meerschaum is no better than the meanest scorch-throat. Independently of the substance, the form of the pipe has an influence on the proportion of noxious ingredients which tobacco-smoke contains, Turkish and Indian pipes, in which tobacco is burned slowly, discharging its smoke through a liquid, arrest a large proportion of the poisonous ingredients. The bowl of the German pipe retains the greater part of the oily products; the Dutch and English clay pipes retain less. The metallic pipes of Thibet, becoming heated, carry to the mouth not only brown liquids saturated with nicotine, but also a smoke hot enough to burn the tongue. The pipe should, then, be long, and, in order that the smoker may become convinced of this, I submit to him these lines by Dr. Buisson, taken from his article on "The Lips," in the "Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales": "It is not without reason that the popular tongue has energetically described by the name brûle-gueule (scorch-throat) the pipe with a short stem.