An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health | Page 5

willingly witness more than a single experiment of this kind, with no
prospect of benefit to result from it.
When applied to sensitive surfaces of considerable extent, even in a
form somewhat dilute, tobacco often produces the most serious effects.
The tea of tobacco has been known to destroy the life of a horse, when
forced into his stomach to relieve indisposition. When used as a wash,
to destroy vermin upon certain domestic animals, tobacco tea has been
known to kill the animals themselves. A farmer not long since assured
me, that he had destroyed a calf in this manner.
"A woman applied to the heads of three children, for a disease of the
scalp, an ointment prepared with the powder of tobacco and butter;
soon after, they experienced dizziness, violent vomitings and faintings,
accompanied with profuse sweats." [Orfila.]
The celebrated French poet, Santeuil, came to his death through
horrible pains and convulsions, from having taken a glass of wine, with
which some snuff had been mixed.
The tea of twenty or thirty grains of tobacco introduced into the human
body, for the purpose of relieving spasm, has been known repeatedly to
destroy life.
The same tea, applied to parts affected with itch, has been followed by
vomiting and convulsions. The same article, applied to the skin on the
pit of the stomach, occasions faintness, vomiting, and cold sweats.
I knew a young man, who, only from inhaling the vapor arising from
the leaves of tobacco immersed in boiling water, was made alarmingly
sick.
A medical friend assured me that he was once thrown into a state of
great prostration and nausea, from having a part of his hand moistened,
for a few minutes, in a strong infusion of tobacco.

Col. G. says, that during the late war, under hard service on the
Canadian frontier, the soldiers not unfrequently disabled themselves for
duty, by applying a moistened leaf of tobacco to the armpit. It caused
great prostration and vomiting. Many were suddenly and violently
seized soon after eating. On investigation, a tobacco leaf was found in
the armpit.
Dr. M. Long, of Warner, N. H., writes me, under date of April 26, 1834,
that, on the 6th of May, 1825, he was consulted by Mrs. F. on account
of her little daughter L. F., then five years old, who had a small
ring-worm, scarcely three-fourths of an inch in diameter, situated upon
the root of the nose. Her object was to ascertain the Doctor's opinion, as
to the propriety of making a local application of tobacco in the case. He
objected to it as an exceedingly hazardous measure; and, to impress his
opinion more fully, related a case, a record of which he had seen, in
which a father destroyed the life of his little son, by the use of tobacco
spittle upon an eruption or humor of the head.
Immediately after the Doctor left the house, the mother besmeared the
tip of her finger with a little of the "strong juice" from the
grandmother's tobacco pipe, and proceeded to apply it to the ring-worm,
remarking, that "if it should strike to the stomach it must go through the
nose." The instant the mother's finger touched the part affected, the
eyes of the little patient were rolled up in their sockets, she sallied back,
and in the act of falling, was caught by the alarmed mother. The part
was immediately washed with cold water, with a view to dislodge the
poison. But this was to no purpose, for the jaws were already firmly
locked together, and the patient was in a senseless and apparently dying
state. The Doctor, who had stopped three-fourths of a mile distant, to
see a patient, was presently called in. The symptoms were "coldness of
the extremities, no perceptible pulse at the wrists, the jaws set together,
deep insensibility, the countenance deathly." He succeeded in opening
the jaws, so as to admit of the administration of the spirits of ammonia
and lavender; frictions were employed, and every thing done, which, at
the time, was thought likely to promote resuscitation, but "it was an
hour, or an hour and an half, before the little patient was so far
recovered as to be able to speak."

"Till this time," says Dr. S., "the child had been robust and healthy,
never having had but one illness that required medical advice; but,
since the tobacco experiment, she has been continually feeble and
sickly. The first four or five years after this terrible operation, she was
subject to fainting fits every three or four weeks, sometimes lasting
from twelve to twenty-four hours; and many times, in those attacks, her
life appeared to be in imminent danger. Within the last three or four
years, those turns have been less severe."
The foregoing facts serve