Hopkinsville Kentuckian

RANK POISON IN TOBACCO.
Pure Carbon Monoxide Gas in the Smoke Is Deadly--A Medical Writer's Theory.

The medical fraternity almost without exception maintain that the use of tobacco is deleterious to health in a greater or less degree, says the Kansas City Journal. Palpitation of the heart, disturbance of the nervous system, decline of physical and mental vigor, and resultant death are frequent and indisputable evidences of its evil effects; while on the other hand many people addicted to an excessive use of tobacco all their lives have enjoyed uninterrupted and exuberant health to the end, and finally died of old age. No one can describe the pleasures of tobacco nor explain wherefore he uses it. Whether it is exhilarating or produces a restful tranquillity he does not know. All that any habitual slave to it can say is that when he is not absorbing the fascinating, insinuating and irresistible weed in some customary form he is in a state of irritation and uneasiness. The use of tobacco is persistent and universal among pagan and Christian, barbarian and civilized races. To place an injunction or oppressive tax on it would excite riot and rebellion. Its use, however, is the least offensive of all bad habits, and it will take more than a doctor's warning note or a reformer's plea to throw it into the limbo of things forgotten and forbidden.

Nicotine has commonly been supposed to be the poisonous element in tobacco. But a new theory has been advanced by a staff writer of the London Lancet. He declares that only a harmless, infinitesimal portion of the nicotine in tobacco ever reaches the smoker's lips, but to make matters worse he contends that ordinary tobacco contains many compounds which occur in far larger quantities than nicotine possibly can, and of which some are undoubtedly poisonous. One ounce of tobacco, smoked in the form of cigarettes, gives one-fifth of a pint of pure carbon monoxide gas, and probably more when smoked in pipes or cigars. This gas, if inhaled, would produce symptoms very similar to those of nicotine. "The trembling of the limbs and the hands, the dizziness and stupor, the disturbance of the nerve centers and of the circulation, palpitation on a slight effort and the feeble pulse may be the indications of either carbon monoxide or nicotine poisoning."

Anybody may test this theory for himself by shaking up a few mouthfuls of cigarette smoke with a few drops of blood diluted in water. Almost immediately the blood assumes the pink color of blood containing this gas, called carbon monoxide. With smoke from cigars and pipes the effect is still more marked.

The trouble, however, with the experiment is this: It applies only to smoking--not snuff or chewing tobacco. Moreover, if you should mix health-giving bean soup or mashed potatoes with your blood, in the manner above specified, it would cause as much change of color and as much change in normal conditions of the fluid as when carbon monoxide is used.