Tobacco, insanity and nervousness / by L. Bremer.

  • Bremer, L. (Ludwig)
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tobacco, insanity and nervousness / by L. Bremer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    alcoholic insane when leaving the institution to enter active life again, generally knows and admits that alcohol has been the cause of his mental break-down, the nicotine-vic- tim does not admit anything. There has been a movement on foot in the medical press, and to some extent in the daily, papers, which latter chronicle the few cases that come to public knowledge under the head: Gone insane from cigarette-smoking,* etc., to counteract the spread of this fatal habit, fatal to the individual himself and pernicious to the coming genera- tion ; but so far, apparently without any appreciable result. French medical observers are of the opinion that one of This nervousness in other words means a weakness, an instability, a vulnerability of the nervous system. Add to this the unquestionably strong quality of the tobacco which the taste of the American public exacts from the manufacturer, and it becomes plain that there exist two cogent reasons why we should be on our guard vis-a-vis the indiscrimi- nate use of the article. * Whether there is a constituent in the cigarette endowed with special properties as a nerve and brain-poison, I have not been able to ascertain. My friend, Dr. J. C. Mulhal), of this city, in a paper read before the Medico-Chirurgical Society several years ago, claimed that it was the cheapness and easy acquisition of the article and consequently its un- bounded consumption, that rendered it so pernicious, especially to the young, and that its contents differed in no way from other tobacco. I have no doubt that pecuniary considerations and the temptation to fill the little scraps of time with smoking contribute largely to the lamentable effects of cigarette consumption: but the result of my inquiries among former victims of the cigarette habit leads me to believe that the action of cigarette smoke on the nervous system is totally different from that of the cigar. I hope for the sake of humanity that the charge so often made that opium is used in cigarette manufacturing cannot be substan- tiated. If true, it would constitute the lowest depth of commercial infamy. However this may be, one thing seems to be generally con- ceded, that is the well-nigh universal habit of cigarette smokers to inhale and thus to multiply the chances of nicotine-absorption Possibly it is oa this account that moral and intellectual blight befalls so often the juvenile habitue and that the adult victim in time becomes fidgety and cranky, sometimes barely able to move along the narrow strip of the borderland of insanity.