Though I have no claim to be considered as one of the great thinkers and popular authors, I am a small thinker and a decidedly unpopular author, who has nevertheless done some work, I answer, that I have been a teetotaler since the summer of 1841, when I was 16, and I have never smoked except as a lark at school. I was a Vegetarian for about 25 years. I believe alcohol to be highly detrimental to head work. Tobacco has, I think, done good in only one case that has come under my notice during 40 years; it quieted an excitable man. My father, who was a medical man of wide practice, was very strong against much use of tobacco. He knew two cases of speedy death from the oil in the bowl of a tobacco-pipe being applied to aching teeth. He had several cases of much impaired digestion from smoking. F. J FURNIVALL. |