Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/128

 for waste and the removal of waste matterare necessary to the health of the system. Tea and coffee are stimulants only and their influence upon the body is either inappreciable or hurtful. Strong decoctions of either stimulate the brain and nerves, produce over-action and, by combating fatigue for a time, allows us to over-task our powers until we bring on dyspepsia, neuralgia, softening of the brain, paralysis, apoplexy.

A distinguished Indian doctor of considerable experience, while talking about tea, said that he refused to treat patients who would not leave off tea under his treatment. However, if tea and coffee are to be taken, they would not mean so much more expense as so much less nutritive food. For they will be substituted for milk which is far better than tea or coffee. From a pecuniary point of view, a cup of tea or coffee made at home would cost less than a glass of milk. If tea is to be taken, it would be better to use condensed milk as it would be difficult to buy milk sufficient only for one or two cups of tea, unless only milk is used for making tea. As to tobacco, it is positively injurious to the system and an expensive luxury which does no good and a great deal of harm. Tobacco, it must be known, is very dear in England. If it is indulged in, six pence would be ordinarily required daily. It cost an Indian gentleman 30 during his three years' stay. A good cigar costs 4 to 6d and a cigarette 1d each. One can get 5 cigarettes for a penny, but this is the dirtiest stuff possible. It contains either ashes of tobacco or cabbage leaves. So in order to be able to live well on 1 a week, it is absolutely necessary to [abstain from] 1 tobacco which "whether chewed or smoked or snuffed has no nutritive property but is an acrid poison, absorbed into the blood and resting upon the brain and nerves, first exciting and then dulling their sensibility and finally stupefying and paralysing." Thus hatefully does Count Tolstoy, than whom "few men have been more given to wine and cigarettes", speak of both:

People drink and smoke not merely for want of something better to do to while away the time or to raise their spirits, not because of the pleasure they receive, but simply and solely in order to drown the warning voice of conscience.

To illustrate the proposition he says :

No one would take the liberty to flood with water a room in which people were sitting to scream and yell in it or to perform any