Certainly it is unlikely that we carry virulent germs about in teeth and tonsils for long years. For one thing they get acclimated to us and can change their murderous habits. For another we get used to them. This organism of ours is an hospitable sort of thing. The body tends to adjust in neighborly fashion to germs upon long acquaintance, or familiarity breeds contempt, just as it adjusts to morphine, to opium, to over-eating, to the corrosive harness oils now sold as bootleg whiskey and to tobacco, of course. Perhaps long acquaintance ripens into real friendship and mutual aid. Nicotine is the active agent in tobacco. Mendenhall tells us that tobacco sometimes stimulates and sometimes depresses the bodily sensory mechanism, depending largely upon the state of fatigue prevalent at the moment. When stimulation occurs the effect is precisely that of a certain portion of high potential rest, for in this case, says our authority, tobacco has rested us artificially. Certain work seems to prove quite clearly that tobacco slows down the gastric motility as well as pepsin and rennin secretion. At least it produced such results on certain individuals, although the majority of mankind may be immune for all we know. This would slow down digestion, but it takes considerable smoking to accomplish such a result even with the susceptible, and one cigarette after a meal, even a cigar, would scarcely be sufficient. It has also been stated in scientific journals that tobacco _may_ play an etiologic role in gastric neurosis, in gastritis, in ulcer and cancer of the stomach and, likewise, in mouth or throat carcinoma. But, putting your mind rigidly to the task, can you readily think of anything from hot soup to worry that has not at some time by some person been accused of causing these conditions? Why is this? Holding a clay pipe in the mouth may cause mouth cancer; holding an ordinary pipe might; continuously holding a roughened stick there might also, with tobacco never involved. How do these anti-tobacco ideas arise? Why are we told that so many things cause ulcer, cancer, kidney trouble, heart lesions or high blood pressure? Why are there so many theories of evolution or of creation, or of salvation for that matter? Why are there so many and such diverse theories of economic and political betterment? Why are there such varied schools of treatment often imposing diametrically opposed procedures to combat the very same maladies? Why do men differ so widely in their hypotheses about government, religion, tobacco, women? Simply because nobody as yet knows anything positively definite about these matters, and just so long as this condition of inspired ignorance persists, so long will infinitely varied opinions be inevitable.