Chapter 20 Nicotine and Addiction

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Nicotine and Addiction: Historical

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"The puffing of cigarettes...is a form of slight excitement; it feeds rather than satisfies

the appetite; it is more like, in its effects and practice, the smoking of opium than of

tobacco; the cigarette is a variety of the craving from absinthe and morphia."

Late Nineteenth century description of smoking (Cigarette Confidential, p. 86)

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It seems almost incredible that tobacco, the dried product of a common herb,

possessing the properties of a narcotic stimulant, and in no way necessary for man's

sustenance, should have from its first introduction progressively increased in

consumption wherever used throughout the habitable globe; that, despite the

opposition of the combined powers of the church, the state, and the moralist to its use,

its consumers being the subject of ridicule, persecution, and even mutilation, and

itself an object of universal taxation, it furnishes at the present time not only one of the

largest staples of commerce, but provides as well one of the leading manufacturing

industries of mankind.

1895 quote from P. Lorillard, Jr., president of Lorillard Tobacco (The Tobacco

Epidemic, p. 3)

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A quote from 1896 on nicotine: Nicotine is a powerful poison, the physiological action

of which seems dependent upon the dose. Small doses stimulate the pneumogastric;

large doses paralyse it. Thus we find, in poisonous doses, an increased rapidity of the

heart's action, followed by slowing of the pulse and a decrease in arterial pressure;

whilst respiration, at first hurried, becomes slower than normal and finally ceases, the

heart's action continuing for some time longer...Experience, as well as experimental

research, shows us that a toleration to the toxic effects of the tobacco alkaloids may

be acquired.

Practitioner 3:150-160, 1896

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Thursday, July 06, 2000

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