Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/694

676 to the case of a young officer who had given up tobacco three months before, and was attacked with a suffocation like angina pectoris after having passed several nights in his room where his friends came to smoke for some hours every evening. Dr. Gélineau tells of an epidemic of angina pectoris among some sailors who were crowded in the between-decks of a merchant vessel during a storm that made it necessary to close all the hatches, and who smoked to pass away the time. Those who did not join in the smoking suffered equally with the others, for they breathed the same toxic atmosphere.

Pipe-smokers are in danger of epithelioma, or cancer of the lips and of the tongue. The former occurs chiefly among persons who smoke a very short-stemmed clay pipe. Smokers' cancer appears usually at the point where the hot pipe-stem bears upon the lower lip, and on the side of the tongue at the point where the smoke touches at each aspiration. In some cases it begins with buccal psoriasis, a kind of thickening of the epithelium of the tongue, which becomes white, glossy, and horny. These two forms of a horrible malady are incontestably the most serious danger smokers incur; and the fear of it is the motive that has impelled the majority of conversions from the habit. The frequency of them should not, however, be exaggerated.

Tobacco has been accused of contributing to the depopulation of the country by enfeebling the reproductive powers of men and inducing miscarriages in women. The former part of the charge is founded on the very real fact that the smoking of tobacco, while its influence prevails, appeases all ardor; but its action is essentially temporary, and does not detract from the general powers of smokers. Their families are as numerous as those of other persons, and the peoples who smoke most are precisely those who have the most children. The Germans smoke twice as much as the French, and have five times as many children. The possibility of tobacco promoting abortions is more open to discussion, but it can not exert any noticeable influence on the movement of population, for it concerns only a very limited class of women those who work in tobacco-factories. These establishments have borne a bad reputation in the past, and the effect of life in them upon the operatives has been painted in very dark colors. All manufactories were until recently in a deplorable hygienic condition. Now the rooms are spacious and well ventilated, and all precautions are taken to preserve the health of the operatives.

But, whatever may be done, the vapors of nicotine can not be got rid of in the shops where large quantities of tobacco are dried and fermented, or where it is stored in bales and casks. When the leaves are cleaned and mixed, in rasping and grinding, dust as