We conclude with an inductive argument which an eminent physician has recently in conversation urged upon our attention. Throughout the whole world, probably nine men out of every ten use tobacco.[31] Throughout the civilized world, women, as a general rule, abstain from the use of tobacco. Here we have an experiment, on an immense scale, ready-made for us. These three hundred million civilized men and women are subjected to the same varieties of climatic, dietetic, and social influences; their environments are the same; their inherited organic proclivities will average about the same; but the men smoke and the women do not. Now, if all that our hygienic reformers say about tobacco were true, the men in civilized countries should be afflicted with numerous constitutional diseases which do not afflict the women; or should be more liable to the diseases common to the two sexes; or, finally, should be shorter lived than the women. But statistics show that men are, on the whole, just as healthy and long-lived as women. In point of the average number of diseases[32] to which they are subject; in point of liability to disease; and in point of longevity; the two sexes are in all civilized countries, exactly on a par with each other. During the two hundred years in which tobacco has been in common use, it has made no appreciable difference in the health or longevity of those who have used it. This is a rough experiment, in which no account is taken of dosage, and in which the results are only general averages. But to our mind, it is very significant. Taken alone, it shows conclusively that since tobacco first began to be used, its bad effects must have been at least fully balanced by its good effects. Taken in connection with our physiological argument, it shows quite conclusively that the current notion about the banefulness of tobacco is, as we remarked above, simply a popular delusion. [31] Paraguay tea is used by 10,000,000 of people; coca by 10,000,000; chicory by 40,000,000; cocoa by 50,000,000; coffee by 100,000,000; betel by 100,000,000; haschisch by 300,000,000; opium by 400,000,000; Chinese tea by 500,000,000; tobacco by 800,000,000; the population of the world being probably not much over one thousand million. See Von Bibra, _Die Narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch_, Preface. [32] Omitting, of course, from the comparison, the class of diseases to which woman is peculiarly subject, as a child-bearer.