Juvenile smoking.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Juvenile smoking. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ We most earnestly desire to see the habit of smoking diminish, and we entreat the youth of this country to abandon it altogether. Let them give up a dubious pleasure for a certain good. Ten years hence we shall receive their thanks.” If we take these definitions of the Lancet, which are remarkably moderate considering the mass of evidence which was brought before it, and the eminence and evident good faith of the witnesses, we may well ask—are there any smokers who use tobacco moderately ? If everyone who experienced those warnings of nature, now so often dis¬ regarded, threw his pipe away—if no youth ever dreamt of smoking— then, indeed, there would be little reason for remonstrance. Let us now see what are the usual effects. The poisonous principle of tobacco, absorbed internally in smoking, acts upon the red corpuscles of the blood. The number and activity of these is a good test of health. Tobacco kills them. The serum, robbed of its life-sustaining constituents, bears with it to every tissue a flood of poison, weakening body and brain. “ On the blood,” says Dr. Richardson, “ the prolonged inhalation of tobacco produces changes which are very marked in character. The fluid is thinner than is natural, and in extreme cases pale. But the most important change is exerted on those little bodies which float in myriads in the blood, and are known as the red globules. These globules have naturally a double concave surface, and at their edges a perfectly smooth outline. They are very soluble in alkalies, and are subject to change of shape and character, when the quality of the fluid in which they float is modified in respect to density. The absorption therefore, of the fumes of tobacco necessarily leads to rapid changes in them ; they lose their round shape, they become oval and irregular at their edges ; and instead of having a mutual attraction for each other, and running together—a good sign of their physical health—they lie loosely scattered before the eye, and indicate to the learned observer, as clearly as though they spoke to him, that the man from whom they were taken is physically depressed and deplorably deficient both in muscular and mental power.” This is not the assertion of a partisan; it is a simple statement of a well-known scientific fact. In such a case as this, there can be no essential difference between an excessive and a moderate smoker. The one may injure himself more than the other; but that anyone can daily mix a deleterious drug with the protoplasm out of which nature builds flesh and bone and brain is a delusion which will only cling to the slave of appetite. The use of tobacco inevitably causes functional derange¬ ment. Nature is wiser than man, and when the deleterious drug is coursing through his system she strives with all her might to expel the unwelcome visitant. When she succeeds, the evil it has done is not immediately apparent. Is it the less real ? In the physical world it has been truly said there is no forgiveness of sins. If, then, we daily use a poisonous substance whose well-ascertained effects are to impoverish