[30] Tobacco, as we have said, may, in an adequate dose, produce well-developed paralysis. Whether the ordinary excessive use of it ever does cause paralysis, is, to say the least, extremely doubtful. Dr. D. W. Cheever says, "The minor, rarely the graver, affections of the nervous system do follow the use of tobacco in excess.... Numerous cases of paralysis among tobacco-takers in France were traced to the lead in which the preparation was enveloped." _Atlantic Monthly_, Aug. 1860. Another instance of the great care needful in correctly tracing the causes of any disease or ailment. Lead-poisoning, when chronic, brings about structural degeneration of the nerve-centres. And lastly, we have witnessed the evidence of its effect upon the increased nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, in its alleviation of abnormal wakefulness and tremour. These are legitimate scientific inferences; and if they are to be overturned, it must be by scientific argument. They are not to be shaken by all of Mr. Parton's clamour about the Coming Man, and people who keep themselves "well-groomed," and ladies who write for the press. So far as our present knowledge of physiology goes for anything, it thus goes to exhibit tobacco, rightly used, as the great economizer of vital force, the aider of nervous co-ordination, and one of the ablest co-workers in normal and vigorous nutrition. And, as we have said before, it is the difference in the rate of nutrition which is probably the most fundamental difference between strength and feebleness, vigour and sluggishness, health and disease. It was because of rapid nutrition that Napoleon and Humboldt performed their prodigious tasks, and yet needed almost incredibly little sleep. It is the difference between fast and slow nutrition which makes one soldier's wound heal, while another's gangrenes; which enables one young girl to throw off a chest-cold with ease, while another is dragged into the grave by it. Waste and repair--these are the essential correlatives; and the agent which checks the former while hastening the latter can hardly be other than a friend to health, long life, and vigour.