Juvenile smoking.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Juvenile smoking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    temptation, and may be seen with the pipe in their mouth before they are ten years of age. The formation of such a habit in early life cannot easily be got rid of. Like all other bad habits learned in youth, it proves more powerful in the man. For want of knowing the subtle nature of such a narcotic poison, and how it surely affects their health and strength, boys often in ignorance are drawn into this evil snare.” In North America, a country whose inhabitants ought to be well qualified to form an opinion on this subject, the Methodist Conference, 1868, amongst other resolutions, passed the following :—“ That we request the Presi¬ dents and Professors of our colleges, and the instructors of youth in the schools connected with our Church, and all Sunday-school superinten¬ dents and teachers, to guard the youth under their care from being entangled in this vice.” Many observers on the Continent have noticed the inferior attainments of students who smoke, e.g., M. Bertillon, in 1855, found, of the pupils then at the Polytechnic School, Paris, that 102 smoked, and 58 did not smoke. He arranged the 160 in eight divisions, according to the merit which they evinced at examinations, twenty in each rank, with the following result:— Smokers. Non-Smokers. Of the 20 who stood highest there were • • • 6 • • * 14 9 9 99 9 9 next 10 . . . IO 9 9 99 >> 99 11 ... 9 99 99 99 99 ... 14 . . . 6 9 9 99 99 99 ... 15 . . . 7 99 9 9 99 9 9 ... 15 5 9 9 99 9 9 99 16 • • . 4 99 99 99 99 ... i7 102 CO w M. Bertillon also discovered that the mean rank of smokers, as compared with non-smokers, deteriorated from their entering to leaving the school. We need scarcely feel surprised at this, for when a tobacco- loving student becomes tired of reading (whether his brain be jaded or not is a different question), he has recourse to his pipe for rest and change. If he be a man of thirty or forty years, he probably could not do better (!) but when a stripling from the country finds his memory unequal to retain more, he would be much better for a walk instead, or for using a pair of dumb-bells ■ or if he went to bed for the night, he would thereby invigorate his body, experience less nervous exhaustion, and be more capable in his future studies. An author in the Medical Gazette of Lyons, in treating of smoking by the young, says : “ Tobacco smoking lowers the intellectual faculties in a direct manner, by its action on the brain, and in an indirect way, by predisposing to idleness, and in transforming the natural desire to activity into a desire to remain in a state of inertia. In a moral point of view, it lessens the worth of the individual, and relaxes the family ties. The habit becomes associated with evil tendencies, and strengthens them.” The British and Foreign Medico - Chirurgical Review for January, 1861, in a very fair article, reviewing thirteen publications upon tobacco,