THE PHARMACOLOGY OF TOBACCO SMOKE

We have hadmuch less fact than fancy in our notions concerning the effects of smoking, for to every pharmacologist able accurately to determine the facts there are millions of zealous experimenters who are prepared to settle the whole matter at a moment's notice on the grounds of their own experience, and still other millions of opponents who are equally willing to advance opinions on the basis of their inexperience. For example, we have the ever-prominent opposition to the cigarette, which prejudices opinion and even legislation as actively as ever, in spite of the fact that the claims on which this prejudice is based, namely, that cigarettes are "doped" with opium and other expensive drugs by extravagant manufacturers, and that rice paper is very poisonous, have been disproved over and over again by chemists and by commissions. Prejudice crushed to earth will rise again, to paraphrase, and the anticigarette propagandist is