Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/690

672 stream of the circulation. These facts are of considerable importance in view of practical consequences, and go far to explain the accidents that sometimes occur after one has passed several hours in a medium saturated with tobacco, even without smoking, and the phenomena of intoxication which are produced by eating food that has remained for a long time in a similar atmosphere.

Tobacco is a poison, as are most of the Solanaceæ and many plants which medicine daily utilizes. Its properties have been studied in our time with all the rigor of the experimental method, verified by clinical observation. We can no more than present the principal results of the investigation here. The decoction of tobacco destroys animal life in a time short in proportion to the strength of the dose. The phenomena preceding death are like those produced by other toxic alkaloids, and are identical with those exhibited by man in a similar condition, which doctors have had too frequent occasion to observe. Sometimes convicts or sailors swallow their quids, or fools drink on a wager a glass or two of the empyreumatic juice that flows from old pipes, or the poison is swallowed by mistake, as when snuff is taken for coffee or tobacco leaves are mixed with orange leaves. Cases of malicious poisoning are more rare; but the poet Sauteuil died, according to Merat, in horrible suffering after having drunk a glass of wine in which Spanish tobacco leaves had been put. Mortal poisoning is, however, rarely brought about when tobacco is taken by the mouth, for it is nearly always rejected by vomiting before it can produce its worst effects; but the results of intestinal administration are different. The intoxication is then most usually the result of a medical error. The decoction of tobacco is still given sometimes as an injection in cases of asphyxia by submersion or of strangled hernia, and, if the dose is too large, death may result. Orfila cites four cases that were fatal in doses ranging from eight to sixty-four grammes. One patient died in fifteen minutes, and the one who held out longest at the end of two hours. Eight grammes do not form a toxic dose, but the case cited by Orfila was one of an infant. From fifteen to thirty grammes are required to kill an adult. Tobacco may also poison through the lungs. Cases are mentioned of persons who died from sleeping in a room filled with fermenting leaves; others, worthy rivals of the bettors just now spoken of, died after executing wagers that they could smoke an improbable number of pipes without intermission. The skin itself may serve as a channel for the introduction of the toxic principle. Accidents of this kind were not rare when diseases of the skin were treated with pomades or liniments of which tobacco was the base. Murray reports an observation of three infants who were taken with vomitings and vertigos, and died in convulsions within twenty-four hours after