Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1895 — Three Poisons in Tobacco. [ARTICLE]

Three Poisons in Tobacco.

Nicotine is not, as used to be supposed, the most dangerous principle (of tobacco), but pyridin and collodin. Nicotine is the product of the cigar and cigarette; pyridin, which is three or four times more poisonous, comes out of the pipe. It would be well, both for the devotees of tobacco and their neighbors, if they took care always to have the smoke filtered through cotton wool or other absorbent material before it is allowed to pass the “barrier of the teeth.” Smokers might also take a lesson from the unspeakable Turk, who never smokes a cigarette to the end, but usually throws it away when little more than half is finished. If these precautions were more generally observed, we should hear much less of the evil effects of smoking on the nerves and heart, and on the tongue itself.— # British Medical Journal.