Compliments of the Author, 
PAPER READ BEFORE THE MEDICAL SOCIETY 
OF WEST VIRGINIA. 
HE A /. 'I'll—IIoio Acquired and Hmo Preserved. TOBACCO. 
The Odious Weed That Ranks Chief 
Among the Vegetable Tribe. 
this time will be directed to the calami- 
ties arising from the infringement of the 
organic laws, though the physical and 
moral laws will beferred to. The ways 
by which the organic laws are infringed 
are numerous,and many of them withal 
very strange. I regard 
Alcohol 
as the greatest agent of destruction both 
to body and mind that ever was 
introduced into society since the crea- 
tion of man. There is no vice that pro- 
duces half so much bodily and mental 
suffering, half so much crime and im- 
morality as the use of alcohol. As 
this is now employed, it ranks first 
among the agents the use of which vio- 
lates organic and moral laws and results 
in the destruction of health. The 
primary effect of the use of alcohol is 
the transgression of the organic laws, 
that of the moral laws being secondary. 
While I assign this pre-eminence to 
alcohol, there are numerous articles in 
common use in society that produce in 
greater or less degree, injurious effects 
on the human constitution: and to one 
of the most remarkable of these lam 
about to refer. In this country, and in- 
deed all over the world, it is one 
of the great articles ot luxury nor 
do we have to cross the ocean for it 
as we do for our fine wines, our teas and 
our spices, but like rum, whisky and 
cider brandy it is one of the blessed— 
I might perhaps better say, cursed— 
productions of our own beloved coun- 
try. The article, gentlemen is 
Tobacco, 
A full account of its production, its in- 
troduction, and its spread throughout 
the world, would constitute one of the 
most curious chapters in the history of 
human nature. Certainly there is 
hardly any production of the vegetable 
world whose aspect and properties have 
less to recommend them to the favor of 
our senses and appetites, in their 
VILE, VENOMOUS AND POISONOUS. 
It Inflicts More Harm Upon the Human Race 
Than any Other Agent in the 
Universe Except 
Rum. 
ITS ORIGIN, DISCOVERY AND USE, 
Old Time Penalties and Prohibitions—Its 
Baneful Effects—A Thing to be 
Avoided by all Desirous 
of Health, 
Paper read by Dr. Frissell, of Wheeling, be- 
fore the Went Virginia 8 ate Medical Society. 
The subject I have selected for some 
remarks at this time is health, l.ow it 
is possessed or acquired, and how pre- 
served. Health in its comprehensive 
meaning implies more than the per- 
formance of the natural functions of 
the body without pain. It implies ener- 
gy, capacity for endurance, and the 
courage and character that come from 
those powers. In this sense, the sense 
given it by the old Greeks and Romans, 
health is the capital of a people and 
furnishes them with the means of pres- 
ent prosperity and future greatness It 
lengthens the period of life and adds a 
thousand enjoyments which we could 
not otherwise possess. If the constitu- 
tion is perfectly sound, if there is no 
hereditary or acquired taint of disease 
in the system, the answer to the above 
questions is, obey the physical and or 
ganic laws which govern us as physical 
and organized beings. My remarks at healthy and unmipared condition than i 
this plant. Its external aspect has the 
lugubrious physiognomy of the family 
to which it belongs, suspicious, veno- 
mous and poisonous. Its taste and 
odour are disagreeable in the extreme, 
(no known animals but man and the 
tobacco worm can be made to eat it or 
touch it) and its effects when eaten are 
in perfect keeping with its external ap- 
pearance. Rut notwithstanding that, 
and the odious character of the plant, 
it has of all the vegetable tribes, become 
the chosen and chiefest of our race. If 
at this moment those products of the 
vegetate kingdom which minister 
merely to the delight and gratification 
of our senses, should present themselves 
for our suffrage, the ballot boxes would 
Tell tlieHame Nlory 
throughout the civilized and heathen 
world. In the saloon of opulence and 
fashion, in the halls of science; in the 
chambers of legislation; in the assem- 
hleys of the bishops and clergy in the 
national and state hoards of heaPh ; in 
the workshops of labor, and among the 
wild and varied hordes of savage life, 
the whole innumerable host of fruits 
and flowers would he rejected; the for- 
mer with their delicious flavors, the lat- 
ter with their multiform beauty and 
shades of color, with their verdant an J 
spicy ordors, all would passed by as 
scarcely worthy to form a garland 
wherewith to crown the nauseous and 
somber-looking tobacco. At the time 
of the discovery of America, the tobac- 
co plant was cultivated and used by the 
nations of the West I dies, and in dif- 
ferent parts of the continent bordering 
on the (iulf of Mexico. In 1598 tobacco 
was sent by Hernades de Toledo into 
Spain and Portugal from Tahaco (from 
which it derives its name tobacco), a 
province of Yucatan, where it was first 
found by the Spaniards; from thence 
it was carried in 1560 
As a CnrioNlly 
into France, by Jean Nicot or Xieotius, 
embassador at the court of Lisbon, 
whose name is now immortalized b.v its 
application to this genus of plants i the 
botanical name being Xicotiana taha- 
cum). From this period the use of to- 
bacco spread rapidly throughout the 
continent, and in half a century it was 
known in most countries in Europe. 
Its use became so general that it at- 
tracted the attention of the dignitaries 
of church and state, ami they 
deemed it necessary to interpose and 
stop the extravagant use and indul- 
2 
gence ir it, by the severest prohibi- 
tions and penalities. James tlie First, 
of England, gave orders that no planter 
of Virginia should cultivate more than 
100 pounds. Pope Urban the Eighth, 
published a decree excommunicating 
all who should take stint!'at church. 
NmoKtiitc Was i'orbMilieu 
in Prussia under the penalty of having 
the nose cut off'. A Turk who was 
found smoking in Constantinople was 
conducted through the streets ol that 
city with a pipe transfixed through his 
nose. In 1602, James the First published 
his famous counterblast against tobac- 
co, in which he warns his subjects in 
the most earnest manner, not to sin 
against (fod and harm I heir own per- 
sons and goods, and render themselves 
scorned by strangers who should come 
among them, by persevering in a cus- 
tom, loathsome to the eye, hateful to 
the nose, harmful to the brain, danger- 
ous to tiie lungs, ami in the black stick- 
ing fumes thereof, nearest resembling 
the horrible tygian smoke of the pit 
that is bottomless. Raphael Tbarius 
writes a Latin poem expressly in its 
praise, in which he styles the plant 
“the gift of heaven and ornament of 
earth.” The poet you see has a brilliant 
imagination, is highly civilized and was 
probably very fond of tobacco. Cam- 
den in his life of Queen Elizabeth, says 
that men used tobacco everywhere, 
“some for wantonness, and some for 
health’s and that with insatiable 
desire and greediness they 
Mnekeil flic Stliikfnic I'times 
thereof, thromrh an earthern pipe, 
I which they presently blew out again at 
their nostrils, so that Englishmen’s 
i bodies were so delighted with the plant 
that they seemed as it were degenerate 
: ed into barbarians.” Even in this 
country where the use of tobacco 
originated, we find our puritanic an- 
cestors guarding against its abuse by 
salutary statutes. In the old Massachu- 
setts’ colony laws, is an act laying a 
penalty upon any one, “who shell smoke 
tobacco within twenty poles of any 
house, or who shall take tobacco in 
any inn or common victualing 
house except in a private room, so 
that neither the master of said house 
nor any of the guest shall take offence 
there at.” 
In the earliest records of the Harvard 
University soon after its foundation is 
the following regulation “No scholar 
shall take tobacco unless permitted by 
the President with the consent of his par- 3 
Herb-Ruling' Triarchy. 
For one must be accounted the periodi- 
cal sternutitory, or the continued pul- 
verized idol, strenuous nostril commun- 
ion, and as partner of the salutiferous 
exertion must be reckoned the herbus 
sputative mastication; to complete the 
trifarious herb desp >tie government, 
must be added its efficaious combus- 
tion, or the sportive holocaust sacrifice 
of the nutigerous fumigation. By this 
undeniable specimen of the plant fumi- 
gating production, one is advised that 
it is not enough to have the precaution 
to abstain from the fumigaling recrea- 
tion; those anxious to recover and de- 
sirous of health must also 
have the caution to avoid as 
they would the plague and con- 
tagion, the pernicious company of 
those mouth inflamed torch bearers, 
effectual promoters of destruction only 
comparable to Vesuvius, which of their 
fulminous bowels void, nothing hut 
calamitous ignition, bituminous princi- 
ple, calx, and baneful infection.” 
Thus, gentleman, has tobacco, the use 
of which 
Originated Among tile Savage**, 
where many, very many of our genteel 
and fashionable customs had their ori- 
gin, spread throughout the civilized 
world. 
It has made its way as you see 
against declamations of the learned, 
the prohibitions of civil and religious 
authority, and it now gives rise to an 
extensive branch of agriculture and of 
commerce in every part of the globe. 
Yes,gentleman, though the learned have 
declaimed, the moralist preached and 
legislators passed their enactments 
against the use of tobacco, it has all 
been to no purpose. In every corner of 
the earth among the civilized and the 
savage, the high and the low, the great 
and the small, the rich and the poor, 
are found its thousands, yes, I may 
say its millions indulging in the de- 
lights of the pipe, the snuff box and the 
quid. 
Now I am not going to inflict upon 
you a long lecture on morality, neither 
am 1 going to tell you that the use of 
tobacco is the most sinful and injurious 
practice on earth, but I am going to 
tell you it is' 
A Great Evil 
and one of sufficient magnitude to de- 
serve the most serious attention. 
The tobacco which is raised in the 
warm climates is mild in its flavor 
while that in the colder latitudes is 
ents or guardians, and on good reasons 
first given by the physician, and then 
in a sober and private manner.” 
Dr. Vernier in a work entitled “Via 
Recta ad Vitam Longam,” published 
at London in 1638, gives a brief sum- 
mary of the 
Injuries Done hy Tobacco 
He writes thus: “Itd;ieth the brain, 
dimmeth the sight, vitiateth the smell 
hurteth the stomach, disturbeth the 
humors and spirits, corrupteth the 
breath, induceth a trembling of 
the limbs, exseccateth the wind- 
windpipe, lungs and iiver, annoyeth 
the melt scorcheth the heart and 
causeth the blood to be adusted, in a 
word it overthroweth the spirits, per- 
verteth the understanding, confouudeth 
the senses with sudden astonishment 
and stupidity of the whole body.” 
The public regulation of the Canton 
of Berne placed the prohibition ofsmok- 
ing in the list of the ten command- 
ments and immedately under that of 
adultery. There was also a court es- 
tablished called the chamber of tobacco 
for the express purpose of trying and 
punishing all violations of their pro- 
hibitions. In addition to the above, we 
cannot let the subject pass without giv- 
ing the opinion of an old perigrinant of 
New Hngland known by the title of 
* Rain Water Doctor.” 
He was said to travel always before the 
storms, prescribe and leave so as to be 
in advance of the rain. It is somewhat 
difficult to trace his ideas through his 
extravagant and almost unintelligible 
writing, but when they are traced they 
are at least in accordance with the for- 
goiug. He says, “Then in this junc- 
ture, notwithstanding the magnitude of 
the task and the little time to perform 
it, one must yield to necessity; there- 
fore in the list of prescriptions, tobacco 
being computed the most offensive and 
notorious, we have to proceed to the 
detection of tile tendency of the cele- 
brated fashionable herb. Upon that 
head it is obvious to the beholders of its 
use,that incomparable in its prevalency, 
they must admit the ingenious industry 
or pious fervency of its constant wor- 
shippers, having found out to denote 
their commendable reverence or multi- 
ply their recreative enjoyment, and re- 
ceive the bliss of their idolized portion, 
a mode and rite of triplicating perma- 
nent libation, mentioning die illus- 
trious members of the 4 
allowing any very bad effects aH at 
first would cause almost immediate 
death. A Chinese opium eater would 
take for his evening quid what would 
quiet into an eternal sleep any half 
doxen unpracticed individuals in this 
room. The two quarts of whisky which 
the regular toper will make way with 
in a day, without feeling it much, 
would make sad work with a fresh 
subject, and a wmall portion of a gen- 
tleman’s tobacco quid taken by an in- 
dividual who has never used the arti- 
cle, excites nausea ami violent vomit- 
ing, produces great prostration of the 
system, and many other alarming 
symptoms, which those who tiave been 
in the habit of witnessing the effects of 
tobacco on new beginners, are very 
well aware of. 
Smoking, chewing and snuffing are 
the three principal ways of using tobac- 
co. Of these three ways I imagine smok- 
ing is 
I'heMoHl Injurious 
and the most capable of abuse, since in 
this process the active principles of the 
tobacco are volatilized with the smoke 
and extensively applied to mouth, 
nose and fauces, as well as the wind 
pipe and lungs. 
In no country, perhaps, is smoking 
so much indulged in as in Germany, 
where it has become a mighty evil, 
and the United States is fast verging to 
the same condition. One German au- 
thor, in speaking of the injuries done 
by the extravagant use of tobacco, 
writes thus: 
“This plague, like the Egyptian 
plague of frogs, is felt everywhere and 
in everything. It poisons the streets, 
the club and coffee houses; furniture, 
clothes and equipage are redolent of 
the abomination. It makes even the 
dullness of the newspaper doubly nar- 
cotic. Every eatable and drinkable, 
all that can be seen, felt, heard or un- 
derstood, is saturated with tobacco. 
The very air which we breathe is but 
the conveyance of the poison into the 
lungs, and every man, woman and 
child rapidly acquires the complexion 
of a boiled chicken. From the hour of 
their waking (if nine-tenths of the pop- 
ulation can lie said to awake at all) to 
the hour of their lying down, the pipe 
is never out of their mouths. One 
mighty fumigation reigns, and human 
nature is smoked dry by the tens of 
thousands of square miles.” 
The German physiologists compute 
that ot twenty deaths between eighteen 
more strong and pungent. The Bengal 
tobacco is perhaps the most mild and 
pleasant in its properties. After this 
the West India variety, from which is 
made the Havanna or Hpanish cigars. 
Next is that of the southern 
States, and lastly that tobacco 
which is raised in the northern parts 
of the Union, which is the most acri- 
monious and pungent ot all. The prin- 
ciple which gives to tobacco its peculiar 
character is an empyreumaticoil, which 
is found in no other species of plant, 
and this oil is one of the most deadly 
poisons known. By the experiments 
of Brodie, two drops of the oil of tobac- 
co applied to the tongue of a cat, pro- 
duces 
l>en<h in Fifteen Minuie«. 
Tobacco given in moderate quantities 
to those unaccustomed to its use, gives 
rise to confusion in the head, vertigo, 
stupor, faintness, nausea, vomiting, and 
general debility of the nervous and cir- 
culatory functions, which if increased, 
results in alarming and even fatal pros- 
tration. 
The symptoms of its excessive action 
are severe retching w ith most distress- 
ing and continuous nausea, great fee- 
bleness of pulse, coldness of the skin, 
and sometives coma and convulsions. 
It prooably operates both through the 
medium of the nervous system, and by 
entering the circulation. It is an ac- 
tive vegetable poison, and it has been 
employed in a variety of ways, much 
less now than formerly, for the allevia- 
tion and cure of disease, which I shall 
not stop to notice. Its great and uni- 
versal use, as we all know, is as a lux- 
ury, and were it not for the interven- 
tion of a certain law of the animal econ- 
omy, this substance, used to the extent 
that it now is, would destroy more than 
the sword, pestilence and famine. This 
remarkable law is, that the power of use 
and habit is capable of reconciling the 
system to bear with apparent impunity 
what in an unaccustomed state, would 
prove at once highly deleterious, or 
Evru Fntnl. 
This law is strikingly exemplified in 
the use of opium, chloral, alcohol, to- 
bacco, and many other poisons highly 
injurious in their influence upon health 
but so changed in their effects by ha- 
bitual use as to become in the imagina- 
tion of those who employ them almost 
indispensable comforts and first class 
luxuries in life. 
By use the system may be made to 
bear such quantities of poisons without 5 
ed injurious effects. Some cannot form 
the habit of using it. It will make 
them sick, nervous, weak, faint, and 
the whole system will be in a complete 
tremor. This is a common effect on 
persons of a nervous temperament. 
But if used at all, whether moderately 
or excessively, by the nervous or lymph- 
atic, it is 
In all Cases Injurious, 
gradually poisoning the system and 
shortening life. I shall not stop now to 
dwell upon the points usually enumer- 
ated as the great objections to the use 
of tobacco. These you all understand 
and appreciate. 
I have another and more important 
view to take of the subject, gentlemen, 
and it is this: “By using tobacco, 
alcohol, opium, chloral, and many 
other articles of the 6ame general na- 
ture, we violate th i organic laws which 
bear sway over our bodies, we make in- 
roads upon our constitutions, and pre- 
pare ourselves to be miserable and 
short-lived. As I have used the term, 
“organic law,” it may be necessary for 
me to explain to be understood. We 
find controlling mind and matter, 
Three Ketx of I.aww, 
which together are termed the natural 
laws, but subdivided into physical, or- 
ganic and moral or intellectual laws. 
The physical laws embrace all the 
phenomena of mere matter; a stone for 
instance, when unsupported, falls to 
| the ground with a certain accelerated 
force, and this motion is said to take 
place according to the laws of gravita- 
tion. An acid when applied to a vege- 
table blue color converts it into a red, 
and this is said to take place according 
! to a chemical law, or the law of affin- 
ity. 
Organized substances have another 
set of laws governing them termed or- 
ganic, differing from the merely physi- 
cal. A stone does not spring from a 
parent stone; it does not take food from 
j its parent, from the earth, or the air. 
It does not increase in vigor for a time 
and then decay and suffer dissolution; 
but all these processes characterize us as 
| organized and living beings. The or- 
| ganic laws are superior to the merely 
physical. They enable organized bodies 
to a great extent to resist the action of 
surrounding agents. For instance a 
! living animal or man may be placed in 
an oven along with the carcase of a 
dead animal, and remain exposed to a 
beat that will completely bake the dead 
flesh, and yet come out alive and not 
and thirty-five years, ten originate in j 
the quiet and unnoticed 
Abnse ot Hie Constitution 
by smoking. 
Next to smoking stands chewing, 
which, though less indulged in than 
the former, is very extensively prac- 
tised. The principal argument we hear 
advanced in favor of this practice is its 
powerin preserving teeth. This argu- 
ment carries with it but little weight. 
Tobacco, like other narcotics and stim- 
ulants will sometimes blunt the sensi- j 
bility and relieve pain in diseased teeth, 
and keep them much of the time from 
coming in contact with acids and other 
articles that might impair their struc- 
ture. 
I shall only refer to the third form in 
which tobacco is used, namely, that of 
snuff, by saying that in addition to the 
general train of evils already men- 
tioned, tne use of snuff tends to dry the 
nasal membrane, injure speech, and in- 
duce catarrhal affections. 
Lord Chesterfield, after stigmatizing 
the tobacco habit in every formas vul- 
gar and filthy, adds: 
“Besides, snuff-takers are generally ! 
very dull and shallow people and have 
recourse to it merely as a fill-up. to the 
brain. By all means, therefore, avoid 
the filthy custom.” 
This may seem severe, but it is from 
the 
tirrnl Hodel of'<>eutility. 
Chesterfieid, and should not be disre- 
garded. 
I will not undertake to give estimates 
in regard to the amount of tobacco 
used. The general effects of tbe arti- 
cle are the same, whatever maj be the 
manner of using it. The greatest in- 
jury, however, is aone. by smoking. 
First, because smoking is much more 
extensively practiced than either of 
the other methods; second, because the 
active principle, the poison oil of the to- 
bacco, is volitilized in the smoke and 
brought in contact with the large ab- 
sorbing membranes of the mouth, nose, 
throat, pharynx, trachea and bronchial 
tubes, where it produces a direct and 
powerful effect upon the nerves. There 
ars certain constitutions which the 
moderate use of tobacco seems to affect 
but litile, but its excessive use will in 
all cases gradually undermine the con- 
stitution, impair health, engender dis- 
ease, and finally bring the victim to a 
premature grave. There are other con- 
stitutions which cannot bear even the 
moderate use of tobacco without mark- 6 
materially injured. The dead flesh'in 
this case is deprived of its vitality and 
is merely under the control of the phys- 
ical laws, gravity and chemical affin- 
ity, and decomposition by heat imme- 
diately commences, while the living 
animal by its organic qualities, is able 
to counteract and resist to a certain ex- 
tent that influence. The expression 
“organic laws,” in reference to our- 
selves, indicates a set of laws which 
govern us as 
OrKanizril an«l Livinic Belnjf*. 
Iu .accordance with these laws take 
place all the phenomena of production, 
health, growth and decay; and these 
phenomena take place with undeviat- 
ing regularity whenever the circum- 
stances are the same. 
The moral laws govern us as intellec- 
tual and moral beings. Now, in ob- 
serving the law’s of nature, whatever 
they may have reference to, we very 
early notice several important princi- 
ples, which hold true in reference to 
all the natural laws, in reference to all 
the law’s of the Creator. I do not pro- 
pose to meddle with miracles or special 
providences, but to deal only wfth nat- 
ural laws and their phenomena. 
First, then, the natural laws are uni- 
versal and invariable in their opera- 
tion. 
Second, obedience to each law is at- 
tended with its own reward, and dis- 
obedience with its own punishment. 
Third, They are in harmony with 
the constitution of man. 
According to the 
Principles of Philosophy 
a ship floats because a part of it being 
im mersed displaces a weight of water 
equal to the whole weight of the ship, 
leaving the remaining part above the 
fluid. Now the ship wdll float on the 
surface of the water as long as these 
physical conditions are maintained, 
and it will sink when they are violated. 
If you load the shipso that its weight 
is greater than the weight of its bulk in 
water, or if you start a plank and ler 
the water into the body of the ship, it 
will sink, and the character of the crew 
will make no difference. It will mat- 
ter not whether they good or bail 
men, whether they are pirates or mis- 
sionaries, nor what sea or ocean they 
sail upon; so long as the physical laws 
are observed which regulate tie- lf»at- 
ingof vessels,just so long will the ves- 
sels float, and no longer. 
There is no example in any 
longitude or latitude, or in any 
age, of men who have enter- 
ed life with constitutions in harmony 
with the organic laws, and who con- 
tinue to obey those laws throughout, 
being in consequence of this obedience 
visited witli pain and disease. 
There are no instances of men who 
were born witn conditions at variance 
with the organic laws, and who lived 
in continual disobedience of them, en- 
joyingthat 
SoiiikI llealfli aii<l Viuur ol Itoily 
that are the rewards of obedience. 
No, gentlemen, the laws that regulate 
the ship on the ooean and our bodily 
health and vigor are universal, unbend- 
ing and in variable in their operation, 
and cannot be transgressed with im- 
punity. Second, obedience to each law 
is attended with its own reward and 
disobedience with itsown punishment. 
Thus, the seamen who preserve their 
ship in accordance with the physical 
laws have the reward of sailing in safe- 
ty, and, on the other hand, a disregard 
of those laws results in the loss of the 
vessel. 
Those who obey the moral laws, en- 
joy the intense internal delights that 
spring from active moral faculties. Be- 
sides they render themselves the 
objects of affection and esteem to 
moral and intellectual beings. They 
are, as it were, the salt of the earth. 
Those who disobey the moral laws, suf- 
fer the ebasteuings of a guilty consci- 
ence. They are tormented with insa- 
tiable desires, and they are the objects 
of dislike and malevolence to other 
beings in the same conditions 
as themselves, who inflict on them 
the evils dictated by their own pro- 
voked propensities. Those who obey 
the organic h*ws are re warned by health 
and vigor of hotly and buoyancy of 
mind. Those who break them are 
punished by sickness, feebleness, 
languor and death. 
Recurring to 
Tti«* I'm* ol' Tobacco. 
an evil only less in magnitude than 
that of alcohol, it is not an an article 
of nourishment, hut an active poison, 
and it is only by habit and use that we 
are able to tolerate it at all. it was 
never intended by the Creator to be 
used in a state of health any more than 
arsenic, mercury, prussic acid or any 
other poison. 
In national schools, as well a in 
many of the best, colleges and semin- 
aries of learning, the use of tohac o is 
interdicted. Napoleon ill. found that 7 
age, and if there were no hereditary 
taint or defect in the original constitu- 
tion, and if no organic law were ever 
broken, we should never be sick. We 
should come into the world, grow to 
maturity and then waste away with- 
out sickness and finally die of old age. 
Our Creator never changes an organic 
law to favor or to frown upon an in- 
dividual. Let the most wicked rebel on 
earth but obey the organic laws and he 
will enjoy health. 
If a good man is so intent on observ- 
ing the moral laws that he overlooks 
the organic, he will suffer. If he keeps 
the one at the expense of the other, he 
must pay the forfeit, and there is noth- 
ing mysterious about it. 
Often parents talk of the loss of a child 
as though it was the arbitrary act of 
God, when, perhaps, if the child was 
physically sound, they destroyed it 
with their own hands as effectually as 
though they had given it arsenic or 
prussic acid. Nor was death any the 
less sure because it was the consequence 
of their own ignorance. Organic law 
recognizes no distinction of person or 
condition. The 
Effect of Transgression 
is invariable. 
If two ships are together at sea, one 
containing pirates, the other mission- 
aries, the conditions that float the ves- 
sel of the one will be found to be the 
same for the other, without reference 
to the moral character of the crew. In 
the realm of the moral law, the mis- 
sionaries will attain the reward of their 
obedience, but this has no influence 
in effecting their escape in the storm, 
neither will the skill of the pirate crew 
avail them anything toward escaping 
the penalties of an outraged moral law. 
Again, there is a deacon or an elder 
of a church who has put his son into a 
I liquor store, and wonders how he be- 
j came a drunkard; or a man smokes 
cigars and keeps them also about his 
house, and yet fails to understand how 
his children come to follow in his foot- 
steps; but other people understand it 
well. Another, with misguided care 
and tenderness, accustoms his family 
to the use of wine, toddy, strong tea or 
I coffee, pies, cakes, sweet-meats, and all 
the attendants of a luxurious life, and 
thinks it strange that the children of 
the common laborer, a few doors away, 
should be strong and healthy, while his 
own are weak, puny, or die in infancy 
or early life. He may seek to console 
himself with a 
paralytics and lunatics increased | 
throughout France in about the same I 
ratio as the use of tobacco increased 
and extended among his people, and 
on careful examination he discovered 
that the young men in the government 
training schools, who smoked arid used 
tobacco, were, as a lule, greatly inferior 
physically, mentally and morally to 
those who did not use it. 
This, and the almost invariable as- 
sociation of 
Smoking anil Drinking, 
so impressed the Emperor, that he 
prohibited the use of tobacco in all the 
i.: tional scho.ols of France. 
Similar was the discovery at the 
Annapolis Naval Academy, as also at 
ti e military academy at West Point, 
and consequently at both of these 
schools the use of tobacco was inter- 
dicted. 
From death reports, and the rapid 
increase of patients at Weston, we may 
find that West Virginia is increasing in 
paralytics and lunatics as rapidly as did 
France in the time of Napoleon III., 
and largely from the same the extrava- 
gant use of tobacco, a cause not often 
noticed by the examiners who give 
certificates of lunacy. 
Statistics show that in the United 
States, and several of the European 
countries including Germany, tobacco 
costs more than bread. 
It is not, however, the use of alchohol 
and tobacco in particular that I wish to 
inveigh against, so much as the crimi- 
nal ignorance that leads so many peo- 
ple to violate the fundamental laws of 
their natural lives, and to work injury 
both to themselves and to their best 
triends by the use of these articles. 
rlhe disastrous consequences they cad 
mysterious Providences, hi fine charging 
upon their Maker the results of their own 
ignorance and folly, and then, perhaps, 
implore Him to niakre them reconciled 
to the divine dispensation and to 
sanctify it to their well being. 
When a highly useful man is cut off 
in the vigor of his manhood, people say 
it is a mysterious Providence, but God 
is not arbitrary in the dispensation of 
health or sickness, life or death. He 
has settled laws from which He never 
deviates. He does not subject a man to 
the penalty of an organic law unless 
He has broken that law. 
Sickness and Death 
are apportioned according to uniform 
and fixed laws. My doctrine is, gentle- 
men, that we were born to die of old 8 
Mistaken Christian Fortitude 
or resignation, but lookers on find no 
difficulty in ideutfying that with the 
legitimate consequences of his own 
ignorance and folly, Now these are 
all matters of plain philosophy. 
The very means are used that are 
best calculated to bring about given re- 
sults, and the real mystery would he 
for anything else to occur than what 
actually happens. We are just as much 
bound to obey the physical and organic 
laws as the moral, for they are all laws 
of the same God, established for the 
same benevolent design. The man of 
dainty living, drinking his wine or 
beer, or carrying about with him his 
brandy bottle and tobacco box ; the wo- 
man bound up in her corset, or ex- 
posing herself in thin shoes, light dresses 
and bare shoulders arid neck, to cold or 
inclement weather; people who live an 
indolent, inactive life and feed upon 
the luxuries of the whole world ; those 
who intermarry with near relatives, 
and raise families of weak, blind, de- 
formed or demented children—these all 
are at variance with the organic law, 
and examples of those paying the 
penalty of such transgressions are con- 
stantly before our eyes. Delirium tre- 
mens, with all the horrors of that fright- 
ful disease, consumption, zymotic and 
low-grade fevers, dispepsia, rheuma- 
tism, paralysis, gout, ami the like are 
of daily occurrence. 
A Striking Example 
of the benefit derived from strictly ob- 
serving the laws of health, is to be 
found in an account given by Captain 
Murray. After his return from a two 
years’ cruise among the icebergs of 
Labrador and New Foundland, he 
petitioned to be sent to the West Indies 
in preference to a Northern station, 
a.’td thought that with due precaution 
on the part of himself and crew, the 
bad effects of the climate of these 
islands could be successfully avoided. 
He accordingly sailed from Plymouth 
on the 24th day of December, witli crew 
and officers to the amount of 150 men, 
and was employed on the cost of 
Curacoa, West Indies and the Gulf of 
Mexico. In the course of his service, 
he visited most of the islands of this 
part of the Atlantic ocean and of the 
Caribbean Sea. He arrived in England 
on the 23th day of June, without hav. 
ing buried a member of his crewq in- 
deed witLout a single case of sickness 
during the entire cruise. 
At another time he was sent in com- 
mand of a recruit of eighteen guns to 
Vera Cruz, where lie joined three 
frigates and two brigs. They all re- 
mained at anchor eight or ten weeks, 
and during that time the frigates lost 
from thirty to fifty men each, and the 
brigs from sixteen to eighteen; hut the 
recruit, although moored in the midst 
of the squadron and holding constant 
intercourse with the other ships, not 
only lost no men hut did not have 
One 4'use nl Nlrknem. 
Captain Murray ascribed this result 
to the four following reasons: 
First Keeping the ship perfectly 
clean and dry and free from all sources 
of had air. 
Second—Habituating the men to 
wearing flannel next to the skin. 
Third—Never allowing them to go on 
shore in the morning on an empty 
stomach, or to work in the sun unless 
absolutely necessary. 
Fourth—Cheerfulness of the crew. 
This quality, he thought, did more to 
keep a ship’s company healthy than 
any other precaution. 
By closely observing these conditions 
Captain Murray said he should sail for 
the West Indies with as little anxiety 
as to any other portions of the globe. 
Now, among the brigs and frigates 
there was not sufficient care taken with 
respect to dryness, pure air cleanli- 
ness, dress, diet, exposure, and the like, 
while Captain Murray took all this 
care. He was on trial to see what 
c >uld be done. His prime motive was 
to see how near lie could make his 
crew live in accordance with the or- 
ganic laws or the laws of Hygiene, and 
both reason and tact justified him in 
the conclusion that strict observance of 
the proper cofiditions of health was a 
Complete- t»iiiirantee AkhIiisI I tanner 
in the warm latitudes. 
You see the result, and a splendid 
one it was. Suppose two gentlemen 
were to ascend a mountain on a hot 
summer day. Bathed in perspiration 
and exhausted with fatigue, they arrive 
at the top. fine of them, conversant 
with the law of health, and wearied 
as he is, buttons tip his coat closer atiout 
his body, wraps a handkerchief about 
his neck, and continues walking 
around the summit in the full blaze of 
the sun till cooled to a normal tempera- 
ture. The other, ignorant of these 
laws, runs eagerly to the base of a pro- 
jecting cliff, stretches himself at full 
length under its refreshing shade, opens 
bis vest to the grateful breeze—in short 9 
gives himself up to the luxury of cool- 
ness and repose. The former by ward- 
ing off the rapid chill of the cool moun- 
tain air, descends with health unim- 
paired, while the latter, from permit- 
ting perspiration to be suddenly check- 
ed, and tiie surface ot the body to be 
come cooled with injurious rapidity, 
carries with him to a certainty the 
seeds of pneumonia, rheumatism, fever 
or some other disease. 
Now cases of this kind frequently oc- 
cur. Every physician is familiar with 
them. I have myself seen many 
a useful man laid aside by precisely 
similar impiudeuces. You may call 
them providences of God if you please, 
but they are such providences as will 
alwaysoccur under like circumstancss. 
They come according to fixed ana in- 
variable laws, and it will be at.our own 
option whether we will have them or 
not. 
From recent tables compiled for the 
use of life insurance companies, we 
learn that the average of life is gradu- 
ally on the increase. That is to say, 
by 
Superior Morality, 
cleanliness, knowledge, and general 
conformity to the organic laws, fewer 
individuals now perish in infancy, 
youth and middle age than did fifty or 
one hundred years'ago. 
If this be correct, the average dura- 
tion of life may go on increasing, and 
generations yet unborn may average 
tne three score jears and ten the Scrip- 
ture age allotted to man. If that day 
ever comes we will know death only 
as a natural institution—as an essen- 
tial part of the very system of oui or- 
ganization. 
We will know that birth, growth, 
and maturity as completely imply de- 
cay and death in old age, as morning 
and noon imply evening and night, as 
spring and summer imply harvest, or 
as tin- source of a river implies its ter- 
mination. 
Death in old age is a natural and un- 
avoidable institution of the Creator, and 
will never be abolished as long as man 
continues an organized being. If man 
had been destined for a duration like 
that of the mountains, instead of cre- 
ating a primitive pair and endowing 
them with extensive powers of repro- 
duction, we may presume from anal- 
ogy that the Creatoi would have furn- 
ished the world with its definite com- 
plement of living beings, perfect at 
first in all their parts and functions, 
and that they would have remained 
like the rocks and hills 
Without; Diminution anil Without lu- 
crett^e. 
My remarks have had reference 
more to intemperance in general than 
to intemperance in any particular way. 
I have referred to some of the evils 
that come upon us from transgressing 
the laws of the Creator, which- govern 
us as organized beings. In doing so, I 
have barely glanced at a great and im- 
portant subject. If I have succeeded 
in directing your attention to it, and of 
convincing you of thegreat importance 
of attending to the laws which govern 
us, I am satisfied. They certainly de- 
mand our closest attention. If we 
wish to enjoy health and comfort, they 
cannot be ignored We may trans- 
gress them if we choose, but there is no 
choice in regard to the penalty. 
The laws of the Creator are universal 
and constant. If we transgress a phy- 
sical law, tiie penalty attached to the 
violation is inevitable. If we break an 
organic law the same is true, and the 
infraction of any of the moral laws of 
God is as surely followed by the ap- 
propriate punishment.