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

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 $7,058 72, a respectable estate for a negro, or even for a white man.
The Rev. O. Fowler, from considerable attention to the statistics of tobacco consumption in the United States, estimates the annual cost at $10,000,000 The time lost by the use of it, at 12,000,000 The pauper tax which it occasions, at 3,000,000 __________ $25,000,000
This estimate I must believe to be considerably below the truth. It has been estimated, that the consumption of tobacco in this country is eight times as great