Tobacco and Alcohol, written in 1869 by John Fiske, is a rebuttal to a book called Smoking and Drinking by James Parton. Parton’s book was divided into two parts: “Does It Pay To Smoke?” and “Will The Coming Man Drink Wine?” Fiske’s book is divided into two parts as well: “It Does Pay To Smoke” and “The Coming Man Will Drink Wine”. If you’re looking for some old-fashioned arguments about tobacco and alcohol, you’ve come to the right place! You know it’s going to be good when there are statements like, “The paucity of his arguments is, however, compensated by the multitude and hardihood of his assertions.”

Parton quit smoking and felt better than ever. That led him to write his book, which does, indeed, make many assertions about tobacco:

  • It costs a lot of money that could be spent on other things
  • Men who smoke will not have the strength to do manual labor or soldiering
  • It’s bad for health
  • The practice is absurd
  • It takes away a person’s freedom
  • “Smoking is a barbarism”
  • Smoking keeps men away from women and in the company of other men in smoking rooms
  • Use of tobacco “takes off the edge of virility. If it does not make a man less masculine, it keeps his masculinity in a state of partial torpor, which causes him to look upon women, not indeed without a certain curiosity, but without enthusiasm, without romantic elevation of mind”
  • Smoking us unclean and makes people care less about cleanliness
  • Smokers have less of a sense of the rights of other people
  • The types of people who smoke are slaves to tradition

Fiske read these claims and decided to write a dismissive response. It contains counter-arguments and sarcastic comments about Parton’s claims. It also contains a theory that tobacco is not bad for health precisely because it’s poisonous if too much is taken. The theory goes that “narcotics, when taken in certain small quantities, do not behave as narcotics, but as stimulants; and that they will in such cases produce the exact reverse of the narcotic effect.” The dose makes the poison, and a small amount of this particular poison can be good for you, according to Fiske. He goes on to argue why, according to the science of the time, tobacco aids digestion.

Both books are entertaining and interesting, and are good examples of the types of battles that were fought over the use of tobacco throughout the 1800s. It’s a fascinating look into the medical and scientific beliefs of the time period, and tobacco just happens to be the battleground where they fought it out.

Tobacco and Alcohol is in the public domain and can be read for free on Project Gutenberg.