Having premised these Things, we now come to decide a Question lately begun to be agitated, namely, Whether Snuffing or Smoaking is the more innocent and safe Custom? I affirm, then, that both are generally pernicious, and none of them to be recommended to any one without great Caution and Deliberation: Though I remember I was formerly a Smoaker of _Tobacco_, yet, I am of Opinion, that Snuffing is a less injurious and hurtful Practice. Some are of Opinion, that by the constant Use of Snuff, the Sight is rendered more clear and penetrating; but with how great Danger this Practice is accompanied, is sufficiently confirmed by _Adrianus Spigelius_, in _Corp. human. Fabr. Lib. 7. Cap. 2._ where he proposes a Problem, together with its Answer, in the following Words: "What is the Cause, why many Persons, by often repeated Sternutations, especially when industriously excited, suddenly become blind? This happens, either because the Ramifications of the caroted Arteries, which are so near the Optic Nerves as to touch them, are so filled, as to compress them; or, because a large Quantity of pituitous Humours is conveyed from the Brain to the Optic Nerves, which are thereby obstructed. When the Disorder arose from the former of these Causes, I have seen the Patients cured by a _Seton_; but, when it proceeded from the latter, I never remember to have seen it cured." _Joh. Chrysostomus Magnenus,_ in _Exercitat. 8. de Tabaco. §. 1._ affirms, "that by violent Sternutation, some Persons have died; since by it the Head has been so strongly agitated, as by the Effort to burst the _Meninges_, and relax the _Compages_ of the Brain." And this Opinion he confirms by the Example of a certain Baker, mentioned by _Famianus Strada_, "who, when he had twenty-four Sternutations immediately succeeding each other, died of the twenty-fifth, by the violent Shock, of which the Arteries of the Brain, and Membranes surrounding it, were broken." The same Author, in _Sect. 4._ of the last-cited Chapter, affirms, "That he saw a certain Man, who by the excessive Use of Snuff, had the chrystaline Humours of his Eyes corrugated, so that all Objects seemed to be in a Kind of fluctuating Motion before him."