Page:The Anatomy of Tobacco.pdf/187

 will kill a man, it may be, in a second of time, it may be in two or three days at the most. And among slow poisons there are those mysterious powders formerly in fashion by which, at most in a few months, a man's strength was undermined and he seemed to fade away as if by natural disease. Now since "smoking" is a "slow" poison it is in the latter way that we should expect it to act, and a year of smoking at the utmost would be sufficient to insure death. But who ever heard of a smoker fading away after this manner? and even if it has happened so, how many out of the millions of men who have smoked have been thus caused to perish? Furthermore, can we say of any man who has attained the age of seventy, eighty, or ninety years, and who throughout (say fifty years) of his life has persisted in a certain habit, that he has been poisoned by that habit? Yet many who have died at such ages have been constant smokers for the greater part of their lives, and glory in having thus done. I grant that if a boy of twelve, without previous preparation,