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“the cigarette habit”, by jc mulhall, 1895 Excerpt 1 (cigarette smoking, inhalation, irritation, pleasure) As a member of this (the American Laryngological Association) and the Climatological Association, and as one who has smoked cigarettes for twenty-five years, I feel that I may speak with a certain amount of authority on this subject. “You, a throat doctor, and smoke cigarettes!” is a phrase that has finally wearied my ears; and, bubbling with mild wrath, “I rise to explain.” The pleasure and the penalty of this vice have never been rationally described, to my knowledge, other than by myself. This I did in a paper published in the St. Louis Courier of Medicine some eight years ago, and so little notice was given it that what I now say will be practically new. A word as to the tobacco habit in general. Mankind pursues various methods in using it: by chewing it, by dipping, by cigar or pipe, by snuffing, and by cigarettes. There is a reason why each one pursues a particular plan. Early associations have much to do with the selection of the plan; but, apart from this, each method has its own particular pleasure. The man who both chews and smokes derives a different kind of satisfaction from each method, and he would derive a still different kind did he take snuff. Cigarette smokers may be divided into those who inhale the smoke and those who do not. The latter class is a very small one and the pleasure is the same, in a milder degree, as that of the cigar and pipe smoker, wherein the smoke chamber is the mouth. But all real devotees of the cigarette inhale. . . . Inhalation explains the pleasure of cigarette smoking. If the cigarette smoker did not feel the smoke …