Tobaocco as a Germ Destroyer.

Manawatu Herald, 23 August 1904, Page 3

Tobaocco as a Germ Destroyer.

The popular idea that tobacco smoking ig a safeguard against infection finds support in an interesting article, “ Of the Use and Abuse of Tobacco,” contributed by Mr B. Vincent Howard to the July number of Macmillan’s Magazine; He refers to the investigations of Dt Tassinhrij who fotind that the atfioke of tobdecb in Bddih Oases entirely destroyed, in other retarded the development of, micro-organisms. For example, the bacilli of Asiatic cholera and pneumonia were in every instance destroyed by the stnoke of tobacco irrespective of the kind or quality of tobacco used; Anthrax bacilli and the bacilli of typhoid offered greater resistance, the latter, indeed, were but ill affected by the smoke. Similar investigations have been made in Spain and Germany. Werke saturated a cigar with a liquid fully impregnated with cholera bacilli, and found that in twenty-four hours every germ was destroyed. He next placed bacilli upon dry tobacco leaves ; in this case they were rendered harmless in about half an hour. In other trials a contact with the leaf of three hours was required for their destruction. Strange to say, damp tobacco was the least effective ; the germs struggled hard for existence, and held out for three days before yielding up their lives to the superior genius of the weed. A fifty per cent solution of tobacco overmastered them in twenty-four hours. But it is by burning tobacco, when its elements are liberated from their confinement, that the battle is most decisively won, Werke says that when he tested them with the smoke of tobacco every germ was rendered incapable of propagating disease in less than five minutes.