TOBACCO AND HEALTH

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

TOBACCO AND HEALTH.

An English physician of high repute made, last autumn, an examination into the effects of the use of tobacco upon boys. He took thirty-eight lads of average strength and health, between the ages of nine and fifteen, who were in the habit of smoking moderately. In twenty-two there were severe disorders of the digestion and circulation, and palpitation of the heart; twelve were troubled with bleeding at the nose; ten had disturbed sleep; twelve had ulceration of the mucous membrane of the mouth; and, worst of all, in twenty-seven a taste for liquor had been developed. The doctor treated many of them for the individual ailments, but to no purpose; then he induced his patients to give up tobacco, and after the lapse of a month or two the symptoms all disappeared.

We give the statement on the authority of the British Medical Monthly, and it adds to its force to know that it is not offered there with any moral or dissuasive purpose, but simply as a pathological fact, of interest to physicians.

Instances are not rare in this country in which the excessive use of tobacco has caused mania a potu, precisely as liquor would have done. Our climate adds to the injurious effect of both liquor and nicotine.

Many a middle-aged, overworked man who uses tobacco as a sedative, but is old and wise enough to understand the injury it is working to his brain, heart, and digestive organs, struggles manfully against it, but finds it well-nigh impossible to escape from its merciless hold. But a fresh healthy boy does not need it as a sedative; he is not overworked; the use of it is, if he would tell the truth, positively disagreeable to him. He smokes and chews simply from the snobbish wish to be thought manly in the eyes of lads as ignorant as himself. Arguments based on its injurious effects, cost, etc., are not likely to move him, because he has not yet learned the value of health and money. Much would be gained if parents would obtain from intelligent and truthful boys a simple promise not to touch liquor or tobacco until they were of age. Their own good sense and reason would then probably keep them out of danger for the rest of their lives.—Youth’s Companion.