An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health

Mussey, R. D. (Reuben Dimond), 1780-1866Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1

Word count: 64K words
Chapters: 7

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health by R. D. MusseyAuthor: Mussey, R. D. (Reuben Dimond), 1780-1866,Language: English, Class: RC: Medicine: Internal medicine, Release Date: Oct 30, 2006

Editor's review

This pamphlet on tobacco by a nineteenth-century American physician takes the influence of tobacco on life and health as its central topic, and it bears the distinctive medical discourse and admonitory tone of its era. Its value lies not in offering today's clinical conclusions but in letting readers see how modern public health discussion took shape: how doctors observed, argued, and sought to persuade the public. The text is expository in style, clearly structured in its reasoning, and short, making it suitable as a primary text for reading in the history of medicine, the history of public health, and the social history of addictive substances. It should be read in its historical context, noting the mixture of empirical observation and moral exhortation, and it need not be checked line by line against contemporary research standards. For readers studying nineteenth-century English expository prose, it is also a suitable sample for observing argumentative structure and rhetorical strategy.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students of medical history and public health history needing nineteenth-century primary texts as material
Readers interested in the social and cultural history of tobacco and addictive substances
Language learners studying modern English expository and admonitory prose
Popular-science readers wishing to understand premodern modes of medical argumentation

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking contemporary medical guidelines and clinical data on quitting smoking
Casual readers expecting literary narrative or light essays
Beginners unaccustomed to historical English expression and unwilling to verify references

Reading tips

Read the beginning and end first to grasp the author's core claims and argumentative framework, then return to the supporting evidence in the middle.
While reading, mark passages that constitute empirical observation, analogical reasoning, and moral exhortation, distinguishing the different levels of argument.
Read alongside a modern review of tobacco health research to appreciate the historical evolution of medical discourse.
The English original can be read closely in sections; when encountering archaic expressions, first infer from context, then verify them in a focused way.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable to read as a guide to quitting smoking?

No. It is a nineteenth-century expository text reflecting the medical ideas and admonitory methods of its time, not a modern guide to quitting smoking. For smoking-cessation advice, contemporary materials issued by medical institutions should be relied upon; this book is better read as historical background and material for the history of ideas.

How difficult is the English, and what background is needed?

It is nineteenth-century English expository prose, with rather long sentences and older vocabulary, but the overall structure is clear. Readers with university-level English reading ability who are willing to look up old words and period background can read it through; alternatively, one may first read the opening and closing sentences of paragraphs to grasp the main idea, then work through the details.

The text is short—how can I read it without it becoming superficial?

Read with questions in mind: what does the author consider the basis for tobacco's effects on health, which parts come from observation and which from inference, and to whom is the admonition addressed. After finishing, restate the chain of argument in your own words; this leaves more than a quick read-through.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Mussey, R. D. (Reuben Dimond), 1780-1866 Author · American · 1780–1866

Reuben Dimond Mussey (1780–1866) was an American physician and professor of surgery who taught at institutions including Dartmouth College. Public information about his life is limited, and the library holds only one of his works, An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health. This work shows Mussey's concern with the relationship between everyday habits and human health, particularly the harm that tobacco consumption may do to the body. Written from a medical practitioner's perspective, it carries an advisory tone and is representative of nineteenth-century American medical popular writing, offering insight into how the medical community of his time viewed tobacco.