Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man who daily uses tobacco, enjoys equal health with one who uses none, and is no more liable to disease; let him once be attacked by disease, and then it will be far more difficult to remove it, than to do so in one free from such habit.
This will appear from the following considerations:
Remedial agents ordinarily act on the system, by exciting the living power through the medium of the nerves; hence when these have long been deadened by the habitual use of any narcotic, common sense, aside from the lights of science and philosophy, would teach us the difficulty of making an impression on a system whose nerves had thus been previously paralyzed.
Perhaps the man, who daily drinks ardent spirit, may, from the greater insensibility of his system, in some cases escape sickness as long as the most temperate, (though this is by no means a common fact); yet, let disease once commence, and then we learn, by painful experience, the disadvantage of having broken down the nervous system by needless and vicious excess.
Tobacco is acknowledged to be one of the most deadly of the vegetable narcotics: yet experience proves that the nerves, by habit, become so accustomed to its stimulus, that it in a great measure loses its power. How then can we hope with ordinary remedies to make an impression, when even this powerful agent has itself lost its proper and natural effect?
The unparalleled mortality of the great epidemic of 1812 and 1813, was in a good measure owing to the immense quantities of ardent spirit consumed by the victims of that fatal malady. In the town in which I then resided, about forty adults died in the course of the winter and spring; and most of those were in the habit of using ardent spirit freely. And though numbers of temperate persons were attacked, yet many of these recovered; while every instance within my knowledge, where an intemperate person was attacked with this formidable disease, it proved fatal.
The ravages of the _cholera_ in India and Persia, since 1816: and in the North of Europe, for the last eighteen months; settle the point in question beyond reasonable doubt. In one hundred cases where the cholera proved fatal, ninety of them had been in the liberal use of ardent spirit. And this fact should be carefully noted, when this formidable disease has reached Great Britain, and threatens us with its visitation.