ANTI-TOBACCONISTS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3907, 28 January 1884, Page 4

ANTI-TOBACCONISTS.

"What has become of the Anti-tobacco Association ? asks the London Stiindnrd. A few years ago it was very busy ; meetings wero hold declaring that oigars led to crime and pipes to perdition ; tracks came by post showing , how happy homes wore destroyed by the introduction of an ounce of bird's oyo ; but now, although cigarette smoking has spread enormously of lute years, the association is silent. It might, by a little twisting , , have made a good deal out of some researches upon which a German chemist, Dγ Kissling, Ims boon lately engaged. He has been analysing cigars and cigar smoke, and his experiments show several active poisonous constituents in the tobacco. Thero is nicotine, of course ; and besides this thero are carbonic oxide, sulphydric add and priismc acid. Here would have been a splendid text for the association, and in dwelling on it the jn'eaeher would perhaps have forgotton to say that these poisons! iiro present in too small quantities, and are too volatile to deserve any consideration in judging of the effect of tobacco on on the system. The man who, .struck by the mention of prussio acid, was about to throw away his cigai , , may therefore draw it comfortably alight again. A blow for Sir Wilfrid Lawson is contained in the conclusion of the article on Dr Kissling. Perhaps the most interesting result of the experiments is, that they show as nicotino i.i solublo in alcohol, it is more than probable that the use of alcoholic beverages prevents the local accumulation of-nicotina and hastens its removal from the body. In other words, ii glass of beer or wine"—if tho ■\vino be ehoico the tobacco will spoil it, however —"is the proper concomitant with the pipe or cigar."