The list of ill effects attributed to tobacco is already longer than Homer's catalogue of the ships. That pleasant poison is held accountable for intermittency of the pulse and palpitation of the heart; for dyspepsia, gastralgia, and loss of appetite; for angina pectoris, various disorders of vision, tendency to vertigo, loss of memory, blunting of sensibility and impairment of motor power. Tremor and obstinate cough are also reckoned for unrighteousness to the herb nicotian. The hardened smoker is even said to bear the mark of his vicious habit stamped upon him in the most intimate part of his anatomy, colouring his bones as he does his pipes. But he defies, all the vaticinations of medical oracles, and indeed as he generally feels no wound he can afford to jest at scars. A new Cassandra has, however, recently arisen, in the person of Dr. Le Juge de Segrais, of Luchon, who in the current number of the Archives Générales de Médecine foretells what many smokers will regard as a worse doom than any yet pronounced upon them. He holds that among the baleful effects of tobacco on the nervous system is one which makes it unlikely that the smoker will see children of his own about his knees. Carlyle tells a story of a squire of dames who was wounded in a duel in such a manner that although he lived many years afterwards and broke most of the commandments, one he observed with the strictest fidelity, for the good and sufficient reason that a breach of it was beyond his power. If we are to believe Dr. Le Juge de Segrais, a rigid obedience to the same commandment is sometimes imposed on the devotee of My Lady Nicotine. He cites two cases from published records, and several more from his own practice, in which impotence resulted from inordinate smoking.
(BMJ 1902;i:981)