Punch (51.1866)

October 27, 1866.]

169

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

CUB-HUNTING.

Lucy (to favourite hack). “Ah, it shan’t come out in the Dark again, poor 'ittle Pet, when nobody sees how Pretty it is ! ”
Master Frank. “Like you, it prefers the Park,—eh, Lucy?"

A PHYSICIAN ON FUMIGATION.

My dear Mr. Punch,

There is a controversy which has begun in smoke, and will
probably end in smoke. I mean the controversy about Smoking on i
Railways. _ The practice of smoking will doubtless go on as before. !
Railway Directors had better accept the situation, and provide smoking
carriages exclusively for smokers. I

I don’t at all _ disapprove of smoking in moderation. Indeed, I
always smoke a cigar the last thing before going to bed. Of course, if
I am called up in the night I put on a fresh dress. A medical education
accustoms the nose to worse things than tobacco-smoke. However,

I really like the smell of it. But many of my patients don’t. That’s
the worst of travelling in company with smokers. Smelling of smoke,
in vain I tell them I have been the fellow-traveller of smoking men.
They say, “ Oh, come Doctor, that won’t do,” and imagine that I have
been sotting with medical students. They are simply terrified by the
suggestion that tobacco-smoke is a good disinfectant for a physician
who may have just been visiting a case of small-pox.

Now it is a bore to lose patients by a graveolence derived from other
people’s tobacco, and therefore I want smoking carriages, or rather
some non-smoking carriages in which passengers really mustn’t smoke.
At the. same time I must say there seems something absurd in the
necessity of making arrangements to meet the fact, that the majority
of men are unable to remain, during their waking hours, an hour or
two together comfortably without a cigar or a pipe in their mouths.
They thus keep their nervous systems under the constant influence of
a narcotic. As a medical woman I cannot but consider this practice
injurious. Constant smoking must affect the brain, and, I believe,
exerts a peculiar influence on those parts of it whereby the human
brain exceeds that of brutes. The immediate effect of smoking is ease
of mind. A pipe or a cigar smothers anxieties, and stifles reflection.
Continual smoking fosters supreme satisfaction with the present. This
ends in a habitual state of selfish serenity. So men get indifferent to
injustice, tolerant of rascality, and acquiescent in cruelty and oppres-
sion. Hence the prevalent cynicism that sneers at all earnestness, and

calls the abhorence of wrong sentimental. I am confident that inor-
dinate smoking tends to stupefy the higher moral affections and intel-
lectual faculties. This, although I am a moderate smoker myself, and
an advocate of smoking carriages, is the firm opinion of

Yours truly, Amy Sydenham, M.D.

P.S. The smoking carriages should be for men only. No woman
can want to be always smoking. Many men would be glad to be able
to insure themselves against the possibility of a shameful extortion.

A MODEL LOCAL BOARD.

Mr. Punch hastens to call attention to the spirited and energetic
conduct of the Local Board of Oswestry in regard to a sanatory duty.
He reads in the Oswestry Advertiser that the Local Board resolved to
deal with a pestilent and hideous nuisance, known by and well de-
serving the name of the Clawdd-du, or Black Ditch. The active and
intelligent Council met, and unanimously agreed that such a place
ought not to exist in the pretty and thriving borough of King Oswald.
They wasted little time in discussion or experiment, and they did not
permit any jobbing considerations to stand in their way. With a
promptness and decision which command all respect, and which should
be imitated by all other local authorities, they instantly removed the
blot from the map of Oswestry, by re-christening the Black Ditch, and
calling it Market Street. The new name was to be put up immediately.
We hear that though it is not usual to reward a Board for merely
doing its duty, silver medals have been forwarded to all the Oswestry
Councillors from the Local Government Act Office in London. We
add (with regret that a generally well conducted contemporary should
forget itself) that the Oswestry Advertiser is exacting enough to express
a hope that some day the Black Ditch “ will disappear in substance as
it has done in name,” a piece of press impertinence to which we find
it difficult to affix the befitting condemnation.

Is it remarkable that Sheffield logicians try gunpowder arguments
when Mr. Bright is always blowing everybody up r

Yol. 61.

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