Page:The Virile Powers of Superb Manhood.djvu/66

58 as the author claimed. He remembered that the patient whom he was then treating was a great smoker, and that he had told him on one or two occasions that his improvement might be more rapid if he would be more moderate in this habit.

The author's theories appealed to him and he determined to enjoin entire abstinence from smoking upon his patient and to watch the result. In less than a month the patient's long-lost powers returned and the physician allowed him to resume his cigars. The result was that in a short time his old trouble appeared, and ultimately he found that cigars must be avoided or else a chronic condition of impotence would continue.

The use of tobacco, either smoking or chewing, has an enormous influence on the nervous system. Nothing proves this so emphatically as the intense, almost overpowering, craving which is induced after the use of the weed becomes a habit It