Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/96

86 ; and, after abstaining for a few days, with a rapid recovery from the symptoms, commenced to smoke a specific allowance per day of Connecticut, four pipes in fact, which I continued until the first of June, with less vital depression than was produced by perique and cavendish, but with a distinct tendency in that direction, and with a more marked cloudiness of recollection than had followed either.

June 1st.—Withdrew the allowance of leaf and commenced to smoke irregularly an occasional cigar, scarcely one per day on the average, and to note the effect. The vital depression consequent upon a single cigar was often so great as to compel resort to quinine in two-grain doses. Finally, discarded the habit altogether, with sufficient benefit to the arms to assure me that the symptoms were contingent on the use of tobacco. The numbness had almost disappeared in three weeks of abstinence; I began to wake up refreshed in the morning, not in a vital swoon. My weight, July 10th, was 125 lbs. 3 oz., and I regarded myself as thoroughly convalescent of the habit,though still a Laocoon struggling with his serpents. A violent agitation of the mucous membrane lining the nose has, I should have stated in its proper place, attended every withdrawal of the narcotic, supervening on the second day. The throat has also been considerably affected at these crises, and all the phenomena, of a violent cold have been brought on in a few hours; but whether these effects have been mainly due to the withdrawal of the heat evolved in smoking, or to recovery of the membrane from local narcotism, or whether in part to both, I cannot venture to say.

Omitting all details of analysis of different tobaccos as too familiar for repetition, my experiments have led me to conclude:

1. That nicotine is the special agent concerned in vital paralysis and in disturbances of muscular coördination, and that its action upon the medullary centres is propagated by way of the pneumo-gastric nerve; that the cerebellar centres (coördinating the muscles concerned in locomotion), and the corpora striata (or great motor ganglia of the cerebrum), are next affected; in other words, that the motor tracts follow the vital in yielding to the influence of the poison.

2. That the cortex of the brain is the last to be affected by nicotine, but is more specifically affected by the pyrieline, picoline, and collidine bases. Hence the difference in physiological action between Honradez, with its minimum of nicotine, and perique and cavendish, with their excess; also the analogous difference between Havana cigars and cigars manufactured from Connecticut leaf.

3. That smoking is often the exciting cause of the various neuroses, and always a fruitful source of local aneurism, by impairing the nervous circulation and laying the foundation for defective nutrition in various directions. Cessation from tobacco should be made a condition precedent to medical treatment in writer's cramp and nervous affections of that type (the paralytic).