An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health | Page 8

of the
population in both places; and if, as in most other cities, the number of
deaths, as published in the journals, falls short of the truth, and a
considerable deduction be made from the whole population on account
of the great numbers who fled on the appearance of the disease, the
mortality will be still greater. In Havana, after the announcement of the
foregoing mortality, and after a subsidence of the epidemic, for some
weeks, it returned, and destroyed such numbers as to bring back the
public alarm. The degree, in which the practice of smoking prevails,
may be judged of by a fact, stated by Dr. Abbot in his Letters from
Cuba, namely, that, in 1828, it was then the common estimate, that, in
Havana, there was an average consumption of ten thousand dollars'
worth of cigars in a day.
Dr. Moore, who resides in the province of Yucatan, in Mexico, assures
me that the city of Campeachy, containing a population of twenty
thousand, lost, by cholera, in about thirty days, commencing early in
July, four thousand three hundred and a fraction, of its inhabitants.
This is a little short of one-fourth of the population; although Dr.
Moore says that the people of Campeachy make it as a common remark,
"we have lost one in four of our number." With reference to the habits
of the people in that part of Mexico, Dr. Moore says, "every body
smokes cigars. I never saw an exception among the natives. It is a

common thing to see a child of two years old learning to smoke."
The opinion, that the use of tobacco preserves the teeth, is supported
neither by physiology nor observation. Constantly applied to the
interior of the mouth, whether in the form of cud or of smoke, this
narcotic must tend to enfeeble the gums, and the membrane covering
the necks and roots of the teeth, and, in this way, must rather accelerate
than retard their decay. We accordingly find, that tobacco consumers
are not favored with better teeth than others; and, on the average, they
exhibit these organs in a less perfect state of preservation. Sailors make
a free use of tobacco and they have bad teeth.
The grinding surfaces of the teeth are, on the average, more rapidly
worn down or absorbed, from the chewing or smoking of tobacco for a
series of years; being observed in some instances to project but a little
way beyond the gums. This fact I have observed, in the mouths of some
scores of individuals in our own communities, and I have also observed
the same thing in the teeth of several men, belonging to the Seneca and
St. Francois tribes of Indians, who, like most of the other North
American tribes, are much addicted to the use of this narcotic. In
several instances, when the front teeth of the two jaws have been shut
close, the surfaces of the grinders, in the upper and lower jaw,
especially where the cud had been kept, did not touch each other, but
exhibited a space between them of one-tenth to one-sixth of an inch,
showing distinctly the effects of the tobacco, more particularly striking
upon those parts, to which it had been applied in its most concentrated
state.
The expensiveness of the habit of using tobacco is no small objection to
it. Let the smoker estimate the expense of thirty years' use of cigars, on
the principle of annual interest, which is the proper method, and he
might be startled at the amount. Six cents a day, according to the Rev.
Mr. Fowler's calculation, would amount to $3,529 30 cents; a sum
which would be very useful to the family of many a tobacco consumer
when his faculties of providing for them have failed.
Eighty thousand dollars' worth of cigars, it was estimated, were
consumed in the city of New York in 1810; at that rate the present

annual consumption would amount to more than two hundred thousand
dollars. The statement of Rev. Dr. Abbot, in his Letters from Cuba, in
1828, already alluded to, is, that the consumption of tobacco, in that
Island, is immense. The Rev. Mr. Ingersoll, who passed the winter of
1832-3 in Havana, expresses his belief that this is not an overstatement,
he says, "call the population 120,000; say half are smokers; this, at a bit
a day (i.e. 12-1/2 cents) would make between seven and eight thousand
dollars. But this is too low an estimate, since not men only but women
and children smoke, and many at a large expense." He says, that "the
free negro of Cuba appropriates a bit (i.e. 12-1/2 cents) of his daily
wages, to increase the cloud of smoke that rises from the city and
country." This, in thirty years, would amount to