Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/190

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
170
ADVICE TO OFFICERS

secuted with applications for certificates recommending exemption from the rule on the score of their constitutions being too delicate to admit of smoking being practised with impunity. Strange infatuation! Great smokers blow away money enough during their career in India to purchase them a moderate annuity; they waste more good health than their pensions can redeem; and shorten the period of their lives several years by this filthy habit.

Hookah smoking, though to appearance less hurtful than cigar smoking, is in reality more so. By it the smoke of the tobacco is inhaled into the very lungs, and, generally, a large proportion of carbonic acid gas with it. Hookah smoking is now gone out of fashion. One seldom sees more than one or two hookahs in a large party, and these in the hands of regular veterans who have grown old in their devotion.

All praise is due to tobacco as a medicine, and I have derived a soothing, sedative, soporific effect from a temporary use of it when opiates failed.

17. EXERCISE.—If early rising were considered a proof of industry, certainly no people would be thought more industrious than Europeans in India. Few indeed (ladies excepted) are in bed so late as sunrise, and most are upon their legs at gun-fire or break of day, and ready for their