CHAPTER XV. THE NARCOTICS WE INDULGE IN. TOBACCO. Man's wants progressive.-How he ministers to them.-Narcotics now in use in different parts of the world.-Tobacco brought to Europe from America.-Its rapid spread over the globe.-Its extended use.-Opposition encourages it.-Is it indigenous in China as well as America ?-Present consumption in the United Kingdom. It is rapidly increasing.-Circumstances which affect the quality of tobacco-Where the best qualities grow.-Forms in which tobacco is used.Manufacture of snuff.-Effects produced by tobacco.-It soothes and excites.Influence of climate, constitution, and temperament, in modifying its effects.-— Interesting physiological facts.-Does it necessarily provoke to dissipation ?—Is the tobacco reverie a mere absence of thought ?-Chemical ingredients of the tobacco. The volatile oil.-The volatile alkali.-The empyreumatic oil.-Proportion of these poisonous substances is variable.-Chemical differences between smoking, chewing, and snuffing.-Cause of diversities in the quality of tobacco.Adulterations of tobacco.-The ash of the tobacco leaf.-The growing of tobacco an exhausting culture. AKIN to the intoxicating liquors we consume are the narcotic substances we indulge in; and if the history of the former, in their relations to the social state, be full of a melancholy interest, that of the latter is still more striking and extraordinary. I may say, indeed, that to the econom ical statist, not less than to the physiologist and psychologist, the connection of man with the narcotics in common use, in different countries, forms one of the most wonderful chapters in his entire history. In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes through three successive stages. First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is attained. And among the numerous forms of animal and vegetable food which different nations make use of in the place of these two staples of English life, a wonderful similarity in chemical composition prevails. Exactly the same gluten and starch and fat are supplied to the body in every country, and nearly in the same proportions-so that we are constrained to admire what may be called the universal instinct by which, under so many varied conditions of climate and of natural vegetation, the experience of man has led him everywhere to adjust in the nicest manner the chemical constitution of the staple forms of his diet to the chemical wants of his living body." Next, he seeks to assuage the cares of his mind and to banish uneasy reflections. Fermented liquors are the agents by which this is effected. And here also it is interesting to remark, not only that this lightening of care is widely and extensively attained, but that the chemical substance, by the use of which it is brought about, is everywhere one and the same. Savage and civilized tribes, near and remotethe houseless barbarian wanderer, the settled peasant, and the skilled citizen-all have found out, by some common and instinctive process, the art of preparing fermented drinks, and of procuring for themselves the enjoyments and miseries of intoxication. And thus, whatever material is employed for the purpose, whether the toddy of the palm tree, the sap of the aloe, the juice of the sugar cane, the *See THE BREAD WE EAT AND THE BEEF WE COOK. ALCOHOLIC DRINKS EVERYWHERE. syrup of honey, the must of the grape, the expressed liquor of the apple and pear, the wort of malted grain, or the milk of the Tartar mare--in every instance the substance called alcohol is produced by the fermentation, and forms the intoxicating ingredient of the liquor. And lastly, he desires to multiply his enjoyments, intellectual and animal, and for the time to exalt them. This ne attains by the aid of narcotics. And of these narcotics, again, it is remarkable that almost every country or tribe has its own, either aboriginal or imported; so that the universal instinct of the race has led, somehow or other, to the universal supply of this want or craving also. The aborigines of Central America rolled up the tobacco leaf, and dreamed away their lives in smoky reveries, ages before Columbus was born, or the colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh brought it within the precincts of the Elizabethan court. The coca leaf, now the comfort and strength of the Peruvian muletero, was chewed as he does it, in far remote times, and among the same mountains, by the Indian natives. whose blood he inherits. The use of opium, of hemp, and of the betel-nut among Eastern Asiatics, mounts up to the times of most fabulous antiquity. The same probably is true of the pepper plants among the South Sea Islands and the Indian Archipelago, and of the thorn-apples used among the natives of the Andes, and on the slopes of the Himalayas; while in Northern Europe the ledum and the hop, and in Siberia the narcotic fungus, have been in use from time immemorial. As from different plants, in different parts of the world, the favourite intoxicating liquor was obtained, so from dif ferent plants the favourite narcotic was extracted by different races of men. But this important difference prevails between the two classes of indulgences, that while in all the fermented liquors, as I have said, the same alcohol or in |