Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 490, May 21, 1831», sayfa 6
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS
CIGAR-SMOKING
The Surgeon-General of the Forces has recently made public his belief, that never, till within the last twenty years, did he see so many young men with pale faces and emaciated figures, and he attributes the existence of the evil to the use of Cigars. The unreflecting servility with which men adopt new and foreign practices, is fully exemplified in the present case; for it is notorious that the practice of cigar-smoking, the modern foppery from Regent-street to Cheapside and Cornhill, was an importation of the Peninsular War; the imitation having been begun by the Spaniards, whose models are what are usually called the savages of America. The dietetic mischief, and consequent paleness of complexion and emaciation of muscle, which are attributable to the use of cigars, belong, no doubt, to an injury inflicted, perhaps, in more ways than one upon the aids and organs of digestion; nor is that hypothesis at all inconsistent with what we hear from so many cigar-smokers, namely, that their cigar is their dependence for digestion! That, after having impaired the organ, or weakened its tone, or dried up the salival menstruum, they should need a stimulant, even in the very form of the bane which injures them, is only of a piece with all that has been said of drinking, and especially of dram-drinking, with which latter debauch, the debauch of cigar-smoking has the closest possible alliance. We never pass one of those stifling rendezvous in the metropolis—a cigar-shop, open till the latest hours—without mentally classing it with the gin-shops, its only compeers!
Exclusive of the low habit of imitation, a dulness and feebleness of understanding, an absence of intellectual resources, a vacuity of thought is the great inducement to the use of this, as of all other drugs, whether from the cigar-shop, or the snuff-shop, or the gin-shop, or the wine-cellar; a truth by no means the less certain, because it happens that men of the highest powers of mind are drawn into the vice, and made to reduce themselves, by their adoption and dependence upon it, to the lowest level of the vulgar; but, at the same time, it is not to be denied, that a great support in defence of cigar-smoking is found in the medical opinions sometimes advanced as to its salutary influence. Now, if we admit, broadly and at once, that there may be times and circumstances in which the inhaling the hot smoke of a powerful narcotic drug is useful to the human body, must it follow that the habitual resort to such a practice, and this under all circumstances, is useful also, and even free from the most serious inconveniences?
It is the admitted maxim, that if smoking is accompanied by spitting, injury results to the smoker; and the reason assigned is, that the salival fluid, which should assist digestion, is in this manner dissipated, and taken from its office. But may not the habitual application of the narcotic influence to the nervous system have its evils also? May it not weaken or deaden the nervous and muscular action which is needful to digestion? And may not even the excessive quantity of the matter of heat, thus artificially conveyed into the body, tend to a desiccation of the system, as injurious under general circumstances, as it may be beneficial under particular ones?
Smoking invites thirst; and there is little risk in advancing, that whatever superinduces an unnatural indulgence in the use of liquids is itself, and without farther question, injurious, even if the liquids resorted to are of the most innocent description; but, in point of fact, the cigar-smoker will usually appease his thirst by means of liquors in themselves his enemies!
It is said, however, that the use of cigars is beneficial when we find ourselves in marshy situations, with a high temperature, and generally, whenever the atmosphere inclines to the introduction of putridity and fever into the system. We believe this; and perhaps a useful theory of the alternate benefit and mischief of cigar-smoking may be offered upon the basis of that proposition. When and wherever the body requires to be dried, cigar-smoking may be salutary; and when and wherever that drying, or desiccation, is injurious, then and there cigar-smoking may be to be shunned. We know that, while surrounded by an atmosphere overcharged, or even only saturated with moisture, moist bodies remain moist, or do not part with that excess of moisture from which a drier atmosphere would relieve them; and that living bodies, so circumstanced, are threatened with typhus and typhoid fever. It is highly probable, therefore, that narcotics, in such cases, may allay a morbid irritability of the nerves, or effect a salutary diminution of healthful sensibility; under such circumstances, the desiccating and sedative effects of tobacco-smoking may prove beneficial; while, in all ordinary states of the system and of the atmosphere, the same desiccative and sedative influences may produce immediate evil consequences, more or less readily perceptible, and undermine, however gradually, the strength of the constitution.—United Service Journal.
THE NEW COINAGE
Why does not some man of public research enlighten the public on the proceedings at the Mint? The whole system is as little comprehensible by the uninitiated as the philosopher's stone. The cost of the Mint is prodigious—the machinery is all that machinery can be; yet we have one of the ugliest coinages of any nation of Europe. A new issue of coin is about to be commenced.
"It appears, from the king's proclamation, that the new coinage will consist of double sovereigns, to be each of the value of 40s.; sovereigns, each of 20s.; and half-sovereigns, 10s. silver crowns, half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences. The double-sovereigns have for the obverse the king's effigy, with the inscription, 'Gulielmus IIII. D.G. Britanniarum Rex. F.D.;' and for the reverse, the ensigns armorial of the United Kingdom contained in a shield, encircled by the collar of the Order of the Garter, and upon the edge of the piece the words 'Decus et Tutamen.' The crowns and half-crowns will be similar. The shilling has on the reverse the words 'One Shilling,' placed in the centre of the piece, within a wreath, having an olive-branch on one side, and an oak-branch on the other; and the sixpences have the same, except the word 'Sixpence' instead of the words 'One Shilling.' The coppers will be nearly as at present."
Now we must observe, what the master of the Mint and the people about him ought to have observed before, that there is in the first instance a considerable expense incurred in the coinage of the double-sovereigns, without any possible object, except the expense itself may be an object, which is not impossible. We shall have in this coin one of the most clumsy and useless matters of circulation that could be devised. The present sovereign answers every purpose that this clumsy coin can be required for, and even the single sovereign would be a much more convenient coin for circulation if it were divided, as every one knows who knows the trouble of getting change. The half-sovereign is in fact a much more convenient coin. But on this clumsy coin we must have a Latin inscription, as if it were intended only for the society of antiquaries, or to be laid up in cabinets, which we acknowledge would be most likely its fate, except for the notorious bad taste of the British coinage. Of much use it is to an English public to have the classical phraseology of Gulielmus Britanniarum Rex, put in place of the national language. Then too we must have the collar of the Order of the Garter to encircle the national arms, of which this Order is nonsensically pronounced "Decus et Tutamen." The Glory and Protection. The Order of the Garter the glory and protection of England! We are content to let this absurdity stay in Latin or Sanscrit; English would be shamed by it. The Order of the Garter which goes round the knee of any man, who comes with the minister's fiat on the subject, and which has no more relation to British glory or British defence than the Order of the Blue Button or the Yellow frog of his majesty the Emperor of China; and this is to go forth on our national gold coin! and for fear that the folly would not be sufficiently spread, it is to be stamped on our crowns and half-crowns! The shillings and sixpences luckily escape: plain English will do for them. And all this goes on from year to year, while we have in the example of France a model of what a mint ought to be. Every foreigner makes purchases at the French mint; and the series of national medals executed there is a public honour and a public profit too. But whoever thinks of purchasing English mintage except for bullion?—With a history full of the most stirring events, we have not a single medallic series—we have scarcely a single medal. But we have in lieu of those vanities a master of the mint, who is tost new into the office on every change of party, who has probably in the whole course of his life never known the difference between gold and silver but by their value in sovereigns and shillings; but who, in the worst of times, shows his patriotism by receiving a salary of no less than five thousand pounds a year?
