Juvenile smoking.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Juvenile smoking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    it is confined to them, or even most reprehensible in them, but because it is there that the injury is greatest, and most easily seen. Many a boy has acquired the taste for tobacco through breathing the atmosphere polluted by the fumes from his father’s pipe. And this brings us again to the one point on which all are agreed. There is no controversy as to the evil results of juvenile smoking. Since friends and foes of tobacco are unanimous in their belief that smoking injures the young constitution, preventing the proper oxydation of the blood, and changing our bold, handsome, fearless, English lads into sallow, dyspeptic, timid, nervous creatures, with all the weakness of girlhood and none of its graces, with all the vices of youth, and none of its redeeming qualities,—since this is confessedly the case, let us ask “ Are their pipes to be put out ? ” And if even lovers of the weed acknowledge the evil effects of early smoking, shall we be far wrong in saying that that which is poisoning the children cannot be very whole¬ some for the parents ? With what force, with what honesty, can a father warn his son just budding into manhood against the danger of tobacco, whilst he holds the pipe in his own hand ? What efficacy will the appeal have, if that breath which delivers it, reeks with the pollution of the weed ? Vainly will the young be warned whilst their elders, fathers and brothers, with shaking hands and palpitating hearts, daily stupefy with nicotine the brains which Heaven gave them for nobler purposes. Are we to suppose that these youths, knowing the consequences of their vicious indulgence, have resolved to incur them for the sake of the paltry gratification it affords? Is it not the fact, that in the majority of cases they are absolutely ignorant upon the subject, and are influenced simply by the desire to appear manly—are seduced, in fact, by the evil example of their seniors ? Physically, as well as spiritually, the people are destroyed for lack of knowledge Let every employer of labour, every parent and teacher, ponder the danger which threatens the youth committed to their care. Increased knowledge is the only remedy for this growing evil. Our boys are not wilfully bent on self-destruction, they have no love for feeble health, for trembling nerves and failing strength. They are led into the use of tobacco blindfold. They see their seniors indulge in it, they suppose it to be the seal and symbol of manhood, they burn to pass the mystic boundary which hedges in their youth and inexperience, and so, all ignorant of its poisonous and deleterious results, they commence a habit which quickly enslaves them. And as the years roll on, the man finds himself bound by the chains which the boy so thoughtlessly linked around himself. In the Peel Park, at Salford, there stands a statue of one who, in the course of a long public life, “ fought the good fight and kept the faith,” and underneath on the pedestal are these words :—“ My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.” This golden sentence was the life-thought of the man who