p. 262 | Tobacco Smoke and Cancer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, April 28, 1885

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 62, No. 17

Tobacco Smoke and Cancer.

Joseph Cook created a sensation during a lecture in Boston yesterday by his allusion to the illness of Gen. Grant as the result of the excessive use of tobacco. After referring to him, whom “we revere,” as “the instrument of Providence in the overthrow of slavery,” as a man of God to save the Union, he declared the greatest of the historic characters is likely to be cut off twenty years before his time because of a habit which, before it becomes a habit, is loathsome and is not at all fascinating. “We tolerate in men a habit we would not in dogs.” It is significant that simultaneously with his affirmation, according to the best physicians, not more than five persons in a hundred can use tobacco with impunity, one of Gen. Grant’s physicians went to a newspaper reporter: “There are thousands of cases of cancers of the tongue, brought on generally by smoking, and these will be found in nearly every hospital.” The case of Gen. Grant is a conspicuous warning against the excessive use of tobacco, and whoever knows anything of his real condition is aware that he himself would not hesitate to do so. The fact that he wholly abandoned the tobacco several months ago, when his physicians only requested him to be moderate in his smoking, shows what his judgment is as to the weed of which his use has been so notorious. An unprejudiced person, who likes rather than detests the fumes of tobacco smoke when it comes from the one who smokes daintily, cannot fail to see in Grant’s case an impressive exhibition of the fact that it would be better for mankind if tobacco were wholly abolished from use.—N. Y. Mail and Express.