These examples show with what well-meaning recklessness people find fault with anything which they are at all events bound to condemn. It is not to be denied, however, that many persons are continually hurting themselves by the flagrant abuse of tobacco. Many men are doubtless in a state of chronic tobacco-narcosis; just as many men and women keep themselves in a state of chronic narcosis from the abuse of tea and coffee. Probably three-fourths of the ill-health which afflicts the community is due to barbarous neglect of the plainest principles of dietetics. When a thing tickles the palate, or refreshes the nervous system, people do not seem to be as yet sufficiently civilized to let it go until they have made themselves miserable with it. Half the inhabitants of the United States, says Mr. Parton, violate the laws of nature every time they go to the dinner-table. He might safely have put the figure higher. Owing to the shortcomings of our present methods of education, we rarely get taught physiology at school or college, we never thoroughly learn the principles of hygiene, or if we acquire some of them by hearsay, we seldom realize them in such a way as to shape our behaviour accordingly. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that people eat imprudently and smoke imprudently. They smoke just before dinner, they smoke rank, badly-cured tobacco, they smoke much, and they smoke fast, thus narcotizing instead of stimulating their nervous systems. A plum-pudding is good and nourishing, but it would hardly be wise to eat it before meat, or to eat it to the verge of nausea. This lesson of _dosage_ is one which cannot be learned too thoroughly. The would-be reformer says, "Touch not the unclean thing;" but the reply is, "No hurt has ever yet come to me from smoking: I will therefore smoke all the more, to confute these idle crotchets." This is the very crudity of undisciplined inference. In physiology we cannot go by the rule of three. Doctors can tell us how they prescribe brandy for epilepsy: exulting in his signal relief, the patient persists in taking a second dose, and--brings on another fit! Stimulation gives way to narcosis. In delirium tremens the stimulus of opium is often found to be of great service. But sometimes the unscientific physician, wishing to increase the beneficial effect, keeps on until he has administered a narcotic dose; when lo! all is undone, the enfeebled nerves, needing nothing but stimulus, have received the final shock, the medulla is paralyzed, and the heart ceases to beat. Let no one imagine, then, that this distinction between large and small quantities is trivial or wire-drawn. In therapeutics it is often the one all-important distinction. In dealing with narcotics, it is the root of the whole matter.