SMOKING AND DRINKING.

Waikato Times, Volume XX, Issue 1702, 2 June 1883, Page 4

SMOKING AND DRI N KING.

What is the real influence of wine and cigars, gin and tobacco, stimulants and nurcotics, upon the brain ? Do they give increased strength, great lucidity of mind, and more continuous power ? Dotheyweaken and cloud the intellect? Is a man's intellecual strength hindered or helped by their use ? These are the questions to which a practical inquirer has been endeavouring to find BOtne satisfactory answer. And he has evidently taken much trouble about his work. He has addressed his inquiries to men of letters, novelists, essayist", journalists, men of science, statesmen, in England, France, Germany and America. Their replies he hsid embodied in a volumo of 20 pages. (''Study and Stimulant*." By A. A. Reside ; published by A. Heywood and Sons ) Altogether, some one hundred and twenty four answers have been received to his appeal, and in many cases the writers h-ivo not only replied to the direct questions, "Do you smokes.'" "Do you dunk ■-" but, have given many details (f their cveiy day hr.bits, which add much to the interest of the collection. Twenty-five use wine at dinner only ; thirty are abstainers irom all alcoholic liquors ; twenty-four use tobacco, Of these twenty-four, only twelve smoke while at work. Mr Edison chews, and Darwin took snuff. One or two find alcohol " useful at a pinch." Not one resorts to alcohol for inspiration. Mr. Gladstone detests smoking though he finds wine is necessary to him at the time of greatest intellectual exertion. lie diinks one or two glasses of claret at luncheon, the same at dinner, with the addition of a glass of light port. M. Jules Simon objects to smoking on the ground that it tends to separate men from the society of women. M. St. Hilaire thinks thatin France no stimulants are needed. Tho Duke of Argyll has lie \ or touched tobacco, and only takes alcohol under medical .ulvicc. Sir John Lubbock eonsiilcis the uso of tobacco in most cases prejudicial. Louis Bknc neither smoked nor diank, and so could not give an opinion. Of the scientific opinions, those of M. Paul Beit, given ;it some length, are, an usual with him, outspoken, trenchant and to tho point. " I never smoke,"' he says, •' because I am not fond of tobacco. J take wine to all my meals. because I like it." As with all other plea&uics, it is a question of demcc. Piofessor Tyndall thinks the man happiest who is able to dispense with the use ot both. Sir Henry Thompson, in a speech at Exeter Hall, declared that brain-workers could not stand alcohol. Professor Huxley did not commence to smoke until he was forty years of age. J)r W. P. Carpenter has never used tobacco, and has never felt the need of alcoholic stimulants. Darwin used to diink a glass of wine daily. "I have," he adds, " taken snuff all my life, and regret that I ever acquit ed the habit. I feel sure that it is a great stimulus and aid in my work." He was accustomed to smoke two paper cigaicttes of Tuikish tobacco. " Thh rusts me after I ha\c been compelled to talk, with tued memoiy, more than anything elic.'" Out of twenty men of science, only two smoke. Piofes&or ]3ojd Dawkins finds quinine the best stimulant. Edison invariably chews tobacco when at work, smoking he thinks too violent in its action. Night, he fancies, is the best time for intellectual work. To turn from men of science to men of letteis, Mr Matthew Arnold tells us that he has never smoked, and has always drunk wine — chiefly clnret. Asageneial rule he drinks water in the middle of the day. At a late dmnci " a glass or two of sherry, and some light claret mixed with water, seem to suit me very well." He comes to the very acceptable conclusion that, in general, " wine— used in moderation— adds to the ayvecablencss of life— for adults, at any rate, and whatever adds to the agrceableness of life adds to its resources and poweis." Mr Freeman is candid enough in his reply. He tried once or tw ice when yomig to smoke, but " finding it nasty, did not try again." Why people smoke he has no notion. As to alcohol, he has no theories. He dunks wine like othei people, and also finds biandy an excellent medicine." "I have drunk beer and wine as I have eaten beef and mutton, without theories one way or the other. Mr Lecky is not a smoker. Mr Ruskin is very emphatic. He abhois smoking for two reasons: a cigar or pipe often makes a man content to be idle ; thp excessiv c use of tobacco abroad, and the consequent spitting everywhere and upon everything. Mr Charles Reade sums up the matter in three curt but pithy sentences : " I have seen many people the w orse for tobacco. I have seen many people apparently none the worse for it. I never saw anybody perceptibly the better tor it." On the other hand, to Mr Wilkie Collins tobacco is his best friend. "When I read," he says, "attacks on smokeis l feel indebted to the writer. He adds largely to the relish of my cigar." Mr Anthony Trollopc, too, gives his testimony in favour of the weed, having been a smoker all his life. Mr Thomas Ilaidy never smoked a pipeful in his life, and never found alcohol helpful in novel writing. Mr James Payn is a constant smoker, and the guiltiest of his mcthicn. He smokes the whole time he is writing — three hours a day — and after meals. Those who object to it he thinks have never tiied it or find it disagrees with them. King&ley ■was a great smoker. He used a long and clean clay pipe ; w hen they accumulated they were sent back to be re-baked. Fourg<sniefF, the Russian novelist, neither smokes nor diinks. Mark Twain began, according to his account, to smoke immoderately when eight years old, allowing himself 100 cigars a month, when twenty he smoked 200 a month, and by the time he was thiity his monthly allowance was 300. For four months he works five hours a day, and five clays in the week, and smokes the whole time he is at work. Wine he finds a clog to the pen, but two glasses of champagne are an admirable stimulant to the tongue. Mr Frederic Harrison has never touched tobacco in his life. The Rev. Maik Pattison has been a smoker all his life. Of all people in tho world one might fairly expect to find the tiaveller an'l the newspaper correspondent in the ranks oi the smokers. \)v. W. H. Russell, for instance, ii is smoked and taken wine for years. Mr O'Donnovau gives some vciy strong evidence in favour of stimulants, and draws a picture of his anival in some we'chul ii. ml built town, whore he has lain down in some miser.) Ile hovel worn ojit withf-iti^u'e and anxiety. But 'the fowsraf cv letUr had to bo written, It

was then that he found stimulants gave him energy to ''unpack his writing materials, lie oil his face, and propped on. both elbows to write for hours by the light of a smoky lamp." Mr Honty finds it difficult to write without smoking. Mr Sala lias been a constant smoker fur nearly forty years, but "as to smoking stupefying a man's faculties or blunting his energy, that allegation I tako to be mainly nonsense." He declares, however, that if he had to live his life over again ho would never touch tobacco. According to M. Tainc, a cigarette is useful between two ideas— when he has the first but not the second. Three-fourths of the men of letters of his acquaintance smoke, but none of them has recourse to alcohol. M. Tainc declares that English journalists write their articles with the aid of a bottle of champagne. " With us," he adds, "the articles are written in the daytime. Wo have, therefore, no need to resort to this stimulant." There arc many more opinions which we luivc no space to quote. It is sufficient to add that Mr Keadc's conclusion is that alcohol and tobacco are of no value to ,i healthy student ; the most vigorous thinkers and hardest workcis abstain from stimulants. The " student" will piobably think out the problem for himself, but he might do worse than consult Mr Reade's curious collection, and think over the words of Wendell Holmes : "I do not advise you, young man, to consecrate the flower of your youth to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stum of a reverie-breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown before its time under such nicotian regimen, and thought the brown-ambercd meerschaum was dearly bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.— Pull Mall O'asctee"