Dr. Hossack classes _tobacco_ with opium, ether, mercury, and other articles of the materia medica. He calls tobacco a "_fashionable poison_," in the various forms in which that narcotic is employed.--He says, "The great increase of dyspepsia; the late alarming frequency of apoplexy, palsy, epilepsy, and other diseases of the nervous system; is attributable, in part, to the use of tobacco." Dr. Waterhouse says that Linnæus, in his natural arrangement, has placed tobacco in the class _Luridæ_--which signifies, pale, ghastly, livid, dismal and fatal. "To the same ominous class," he adds, "belong fox-glove, hen-bane, deadly night-shade, lobelia, and another poisonous plant, bearing the tremendous name Atropa, one of the furies." He says, "When tobacco is taken into the stomach for the first time, it creates nausea and extreme disgust. If swallowed, it excites violent convulsions of the stomach and of the bowels to eject the poison either upward or downward. If it be not very speedily and entirety ejected, it produces great anxiety, vertigo, faintness, and prostration of all the senses; and, in some instances, death has followed." The oil of this plant, he adds, is one of the strongest vegetable poisons, insomuch that we know of no animal that can resist its mortal effects. Moreover, says Dr. Waterhouse, after a long and honorable course of practice, "I never observed so many pallid faces, and so many marks of declining health; nor ever knew so many hectical habits, and consumptive affections, as of late years; and I trace this alarming inroad on young constitutions, _principally_ to the pernicious custom of smoking cigars." Professor Graham says "Tobacco is one of the most _powerful_ and _deadly poisons_ in the vegetable kingdom." "Its effects on the living tissues of the animal system," he adds, "are always to destroy life; as the experiments made on pigeons, cats, and other animals abundantly prove." The Editors of the Journal of Health say, "Tobacco is in fact an absolute poison. A very moderate quantity introduced into the system, even applying the moistened leaves to the stomach, has been known very suddenly to extinguish life. In whatever form it may be employed, a portion of the active principles of tobacco, mixed with the saliva, invariably finds its way to the stomach, and disturbs or impairs the functions of that organ. Hence most, if not all, who are accustomed to the use of tobacco, labor under dyspeptic symptoms. Our advice is to desist immediately and entirely from the use of tobacco in every form, and in any quantity, however small. A reform, to be efficacious, must be entire and complete."