Sano 1.07 O-Nic-O .72 Sackett .67 The smoking tobaccos tested ran-- Normal Blue Boar Pipe 1.45 Weldon Slice 1.84 Hudson Bay Imperial 1.95 Gilbert’s Mixture 2.09 “Denicotinized” Dormy Smoking 2.26 Sackett .98 O-Nic-O .97 In short, the average for all brands tested stood 1.77 percent nicotine straight and 1.28 percent still in the “denicotinized” products. Seventy-two percent of the nicotine remains behind. The process is, like the process of removing caffeine from coffees, very largely bunk but it is bunk that makes the American people spend their money, as Barnum very well knew. A person can with considerable ease select an ordinary tobacco which is so near the nicotine content of the “denicotinized” varieties that he scarcely seems justified in paying the higher prices for the treated product. Was ever a nation so neurotic over its health as ours? European observers are constantly amazed at the imbecile delight we show in all sorts of products especially treated to make them less toxic, more digestible, less harmful and more beneficial. Just tell an American that you have vacuum treated your coffee and have thereby removed some obscure organic compounds which normally tie his stomach in knots and he will faithfully believe you and buy it. Tell him you have taken the nicotine out of his cigarette and though 72 percent of it is still there he will buy. Tell him Grapenuts make his teeth sound and he will buy. Tell him that he can improve his health by standing on his head on a cake of ice in a blast furnace while somebody shoots a stream of liquid platinum in his left ear and you will find some fool to do it in America. Why are we such damned fools? I am not going to tell you. I don’t know. But we are. IS COFFEE DRINKING HARMFUL? It is recorded in the annals of history that a certain doctor once told a certain patient to drink no coffee. Were you, perchance, the patient? I know I was. But why did the doctor say that? Because if we stopped there would be more coffee left for him? It is also recorded that there once lived a certain Arab whose name comes down to us as Chadely. Chadely is reputed to have been the initial coffee drinker of the world and he drank an extract of the berry to combat a continual drowsiness which prevented him from attending punctually his religious devotions! In this others of the Mohammedan faithful rapidly followed him, and the habit might well be cultivated by certain church-going Christians with sedative pastors.