shall put it in shape for recognition and appreciation as the improved adjunct to an improved practice of medicine.

It will be a work requiring time, patience, and labor. It would be unreasonable to expect it to be a perfect work. Its value when finished can only be determined by experiment and observation; but errors can thereby be eliminated and corrections made. We cannot, in our school, erect an authoritative standard from which there is no appeal, for we concede the right of private judgment. The appeal with all is to experience. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO.

THEIR RELATIONS TO PHYSICAL LIFE.

By V. A. BAKER, M. D., ADRIAN, MICH.

Although I am sanguine that the matter which I am about to treat deserves the careful consideration of every individual member of this association, I am far less so in regard to my power to effect such a result. I allude to the duty of each one of us to do society the good we are capable of doing, collectively and individually.

My theme is Alcohol and Tobacco. Those that know me best, know that I have long advocated that as Eclectics we should do more missionary work; that we should inculcate the distinctive difference between us as a body and those of another faith. Our Old-School friends are opening their eyes to a reform of this kind, and are issuing Health Primers to spread a knowledge of hygiene. So far as I know they have not broached the subject of tobacco, alcohol, patent medicine almanacs or opium.

When Eclectic physicians take the advance, then will they be compelled to deal with these degenerators of the race, and then will they be genuine conservators of the people's health, cultivators and promoters of that physical condition favorable to longevity and happiness.

Now, I assert that with the actual knowledge in possession of well-informed medical men, the fact is patent and indisputable that tobacco-smoking by the youth of the nation tends to

injure and does injure the youth and must do great evil to the coming man. It is a national evil and a national disgrace. Yet, my belief is that the medical profession can make such a hue and cry about the matter that the habit can be effectually wiped out. It is bad enough on men matured; filthy, look at it in what light you will; inconvenient at the best: polluting the breath, soiling the lips, spittoons, floors of assembly rooms, whether smoking or chewing. But the aged, you may remark, enjoy it as a luxury; the laboring man is refreshed after his noon-day meal-it rests him and it is an innovation on his liberty and comfort to interfere. Very well; let the aged, with habits formed, and the laborer, if you please, so continue. Neither can really afford it; they are simply making the end of a bad beginning.

It is urged that it brings content to the poor, but is it not an unsatisfactory content? Does it not obliterate the finer feelings and tendencies?

Whether medical men consider their example as going far or not, it is self-evident they are taken for examples. I, for one, am willing to admit they are taken for all they are worth. We desire that medical men come to the front, take their true place in the ranks and put away indifference.

We just affirmed that the poor cannot afford to smoke. We certainly think they are more entitled to the pipe and cigar than the wealthy and refined. Nor do we assert that all men who smoke are seemingly injured. Medical men will well understand why this is so. It is because constitutional vigor, large physical capital, will "stay up," so to speak, under pressure that will crush many another.

But to return to the influence of this habit upon the young, and why the passion rules with them:

First-They see others smoke and they desire to imitate in order to become manly as speedily as possible.

Second-They have no idea of its injury.

I know a young lad of sixteen years who has consumption; and from my knowledge of his case I believe tobacco is the cause of it. He has smoked since nine years old; his parents, not dreaming it would harm him, permitted it.

Medical men know that smoking robs us of a certain amount

of vigor. Persons in training for trials of strength, where good trainers and good sense rule, do not smoke; whether it be the Yale or Harvard crew. The remarkable cricket-players from a foreign shore who visited us last season and were described as such models of physique and endurance, did not smoke, nor did they drink alcoholic beverages. No person who has been in training for feats of endurance, and tried his strength comparatively with and without smoking, but will certify as to the exhausting tendency of tobacco, even though he only smoke a cigar a day. The Russian army discipline excludes tobacco from minors.

The third reason why youngsters smoke is because they have no idea that it tends to keep them back in the race of life; but it does. Those who choose the cigar, pipe and tobacco, are less apt to rise above a common level than those who do not. The time spent in following cigars "down town" where loafers congregate, or in smoking, more quietly at home, dispels the idea that anything better, or tending to cultivation in other directions, should be foremost to make the man what he may be; whereas, the time spent by allowing the fascination of the habit to control them lowers ambition. This assertion will be borne out by reflection.

Physicians, as a class, do greater injustice to others by smoking than the major part of mankind do. They are supposed to know whether tobacco is baneful or not, and hence are solid examples in the perpetuation of wrong. The inconvenience is overlooked to patients who are compelled to take the odor of a polluted breath, especially those to whom it is annoying. Doctors are dismissed and others employed in their places because of such extreme sensitiveness to a tobacco-tainted breath, or the fumes of tobacco! Quiet nerves, too, should be enjoyed by the doctors, and certain it is that smoking diminishes power because of its effect on nervo-vital force.

With the habit upon us we all know what an uneasy feeling possesses us if we miss our accustomed cigar or pipe. No man can be clear-headed at such times.

I am aware that a condition bordering on imbecility possesses the smoker if he is thoroughly in the habit and deprived of his favorite indulgence. What physician at all conversant with

physiology will not admit this is a cogent reason of its baneful influence over nerve-force, ranking with the opium habit, alcoholism and other narcotics? It is the "drug effect" that does mischief! Behold the nauseating effect of the early attempts at smoking. Many excellent workers break down before they are thirty-five, says an article consulted, and to which I am indebted for many ideas embodied in this article; not from honest legitimate hard work, but from bad habits.

The same article says: "The gathering of male guests into smoking-rooms apart from ladies, the erection of club-rooms, etc., where ladies are excluded, suggests the reverse of our Turkish friends; they shut women in, we shut them out." The cigar is the enemy of ladies and consequently of society! Men go away from their presence to smoke, to gratify a foolish habit; for tobacco has no redeeming features, and it certainly is an unclean habit and tends to untidiness generally.

That tobacco-smoking is alarmingly on the increase with the young, even very young boys, is lamentable. It must make the race more puerile and less noble.

Besides the physical expense and inconvenience to which one is subject who smokes, there is an enormous financial outlay. The total cost of tobacco in 1866 according to careful estimates, was five hundred millions of dollars, for which we get not a farthing of value, but unmitigated injury. Many a man who smokes lavishly, and allows his boys to do so, withholds his aid frequently when importuned for a good cause and informs the solicitor he cannot afford it.

We must make an earnest effort to convince the young man of this evil, by publications, by provoking public inquiry, by newspaper articles, by private advice in our families, etc. Writers on tobacco-smoking are found who conjecture that as the habit has become so universal, there must be in the nature of things a reason which accounts for and justifies it, to which the article before alluded to replies: "Accounts for it? Yes; justifies it? No;" and continues: "So long as man lives the life of a pure savage he has good health without ever bestowing a thought upon the matter." None, or very few, of the luxuries of civilization are enjoyed by the savage. His primitive habits, plain food, and ventilation, makes him

what he is,

The

and especially is his animal nature well developed. natural working of his internal machinery generates all the vital force he wants. He can repel the inroads of tobacco habit, but in our civilized sedentary life we need spare ourselves all the encroachments tobacco or alcohol can make. The enforcing of sanitary laws has modified death by plague and epidemics; thus the table of death-rate has been lowered and the average duration of human life increased; but the average physical condition of the race has not been elevated. In fact, we are become ing more and more effeminate.

We breathe bad air in our churches and assembly-rooms, and in most of our dwellings. Very little regard is paid to the commonest laws governing digestion. Our children go crammed from morning to night, to say nothing of the mental cramming incident to our system of early schooling, an eager race for competitive examinations without a thought of physical culture. In fine, old and young are improperly nourished, improperly exercised, and yet the demand upon their energies is enormous.

This in part accounts for the propensity for artificial stimulation. Many a smoker has discovered, when he has broken the bond of servitude to smoke, trifling a matter as it seemed, that it was a power that kept down his whole nature and vulgarized his whole existence.

The nations most universally addicted to smoke are the Turks, Persians, Chinese and Spanish, all slaves of tradition, submissive to tyrants, unenterprising, averse to improvements, despisers of women. The whole blame it is not claimed is due to the abuse of the system by the tobacco-habit, but it lowers the standard of bodily health and deadens the senses to other physical evils, and we submit to them more readily.

Our German citizens originally possessed superior vigor, but they are blighting their constitutions by the immoderate use of tobacco. In places where they congregate for amusement, those of sedentary habits can be readily singled out by their unhealthy look; they are immoderate smokers. "If," says the article before alluded to, "our excellent German citizens were to throw away their pipes, they would speedily toss their castiron sausages after them and become more fastidious in the