Page:Treatise on poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic (IA treatiseonpoison00chriuoft).pdf/658

 as it was brought from America; and the belief that such properties could not fail to be attended, as in the case of spirits and opium, with evil consequences from its habitual use, led to much opposition on the part of various governments to its introduction. Soon after it was brought to England by Sir W. Raleigh, King James wrote a philippic against it, entitled "The Counter-blaste to Tobacco." Some countries even prohibited it by severe edicts. Amurath the 4th in particular made the smoking of tobacco capital; several of the Popes excommunicated those who smoked in the church of St. Peter's; in Russia it was punished with amputation of the nose; and in the Canton of Bern it ranked in the tables next to adultery, and even so lately as the middle of last century a particular court was held there for trying delinquents. Like every other persecuted novelty, however, smoking and snuff-taking passed from place to place with rapidity; and now there appear to be only two luxuries which yield to it in prevalence, spirituous liquors and tea.

The only accounts I have seen of the morbid appearances after poisoning with tobacco are contained in the cases of Dr. Grahl and Dr. Ogston. In the former there was great lividity of the back, paleness of the lips, flexibility of the joints (two days after death), diffuse redness of the omentum without gorging of vessels, similar redness with gorging of vessels both on the outer and inner coats of the intestines, in some parts of the mucous coat patches of extravasation, unusual emptiness of the vessels of the abdomen; while the stomach was natural, the lungs pale, the heart empty in all its cavities, and the brain natural. The appearances in Dr. Ogston's case have been already stated.

Writers on the diseases of artisans have made many vague statements on the supposed baneful effects of the manufacture of snuff on the workmen. It is said they are liable to bronchitis, dysentery, ophthalmia, carbuncles and furuncles. At a meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Paris, however, before which a memoir to this purport was read, the facts were contradicted by reference to the state of the workmen at the Royal Snuff Manufactory of Gros-Caillou, where 1000 people are constantly employed without detriment to their health. This subject was afterwards investigated with care by MM. Parent-Duchatelet and D'Arcet, who inquired minutely into the state of the workmen employed at all the great tobacco-manufactories of France, comprising a population of above 4000 persons; and the results at which they arrived are,—that the workmen very easily become habituated to the atmosphere of the manufactory,—that they are not particularly subject either to special diseases, or to disease generally,—and that they live on an average quite as long as other tradesmen. These facts are derived from accurate statis-*