Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Narcotics, Psychology, Disease, Societies, Scientific Practitioners, Experiment

    Responds to the claim made by Edward Smith at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, that tobacco can, like alcohol, act a stimulant (Smith 1863). Reports that Dr Punch asked Smith whether such side-effects might be 'obviated' by smoking a cigar while drinking alcohol, a question that Smith declared he had not addressed, but one into which he encouraged experimentation. Dr Punch, Smith, and 'the distinguished philosophers' were later reported to be pursuing such investigations 'until a late hour'.