Tobacco, like alcohol, is a narcotic; that is, it soothes pain and produces
sleep. Alcohol acts first upon the nerves; tobacco upon the muscles, which
it weakens and causes to tremble. It often causes palpitation of the heart.
If the skin is scratched or punctured, and tobacco poison put into the
wound, it will do the same harm as if it were taken into the stomach.
Tobacco is so dangerous that physicians do not use it much as a medicine.
_HARM DONE IN THE STOMACH._--You remember that after alcohol has been
swallowed, the little mouths of the stomach take it up and carry it to the
liver, which sends it with the blood to different parts of the body.
Tobacco, as we have already told you, poisons more slowly. People do not
swallow it purposely, yet some of it goes down, accidentally, into the
stomach with the saliva, and makes trouble there, causing nausea and
vomiting when taken for the first time. By and by the stomach seems to take
the poison without being hurt, but it really suffers from dyspepsia or
other diseases, and often loses its appetite for wholesome food.
_HARM DONE IN THE MOUTH, THROAT, AND LUNGS._--The mouth takes in some of
the poison through the pores of the membrane, or skin, which lines it;
those who smoke, sometimes have what is called "smokers' sore throat";
besides this, the senses of taste and smell arc more or less injured by
nicotine and the other poisons in tobacco.
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