Your boy and his training

by Edwin Seward Puller

“The effect of nicotine on the growth is very measurable, and the following figures are presented as a fairly satisfactory demonstration of the extent of the interference with growth that may be expected in boys from sixteen to twenty-five years of age, when they are believed to have reached full maturity. For purposes of comparison the men composing a class in Yale have been divided into three groups. The first is made up of those who do not use tobacco in any form; the second consists of those who have used tobacco for at least a year of the college course; the third group includes the irregular users. A compilation of the anthropometric data on this basis shows that during the period of undergraduate life, which is essentially three and a half years, the first group grows in weight 10.4 per cent. more than the second, and 6.6 per cent. more than the third; in girth of chest the first group grows 26.7 per cent. more than the second, and 23 per cent, more than the third; in capacity of lungs the first group gains 77.5 per cent. more than the second, and 49.5 per cent. more than the third.”

The figures quoted above furnish a powerful and convincing argument against the use of tobacco in any form by the person who has not attained maturity. The cigarette is generally considered the most pernicious form in which tobacco can be used and this is the form in which boys generally begin its use. Both before and after puberty the boy is imitative of his elders. “The boy apes the man” and the desire to appear “manly” in the eyes of his companions is one of the strongest incentives to acquire the habit. As smoking is common among men, he seeks to acquire this evidence of masculinity by adopting its semblance. It possesses an insidious attraction in its daintiness and apparent harmlessness. The phenomenon of combustion, the ascending ribbon of smoke which vanishes to nothingness, the cohesiveness of the ash, the experiment of blowing smoke rings in the air and the curiosity to learn the effect of smoking on the individual, all are powerful incitements to the inquisitive mind of a boy. The cigarette habit is usually contracted during the period of adolescence, or even earlier, when the organs, glands, tissues, and muscles of his body are in a formative stage of development. It requires no corroboration from medical experts to convince the man of average intelligence that such a powerful narcotic as nicotine cannot be beneficial to growth under these conditions. Common sense as well as expert opinion join in condemning the nicotine drug habit of children. You will find nicotine classified in pharmacopœias as a drug whose effects are somewhat similar to those of opium and morphine. From 3 to 8 per cent. of tobacco is composed of nicotine, of which 50 to 60 per cent. is inhaled in smoking, the remainder being consumed in combustion.

The use of tobacco in the cigar or the pipe is less objectionable than in the cigarette for many reasons. It is the almost universal custom of those addicted to the cigarette to inhale the smoke, which is the exception with the pipe and cigar smoker. But nicotine is not the only poison generated in the cigarette even where tobacco is not combined with opium or other drugs used to contribute to its flavor and aroma; the combustion of tobacco with the rice paper in which it is rolled makes a compound which is neither tobacco smoke nor paper smoke, but an alkaloid known as acrolein, “the name of which is known to all scientists and the smell of which is known to everyone.” Another injurious product of cigarette combustion is carbonic oxide. These two products of the cigarette are far more virulent than tobacco smoke. They enter the blood through the mucous membranes of the mouth, throat, bronchial tubes, and lungs and act as powerful depressives on the heart. Cigarette poisoning manifests itself in lung and throat irritation, restlessness, nervousness, petulance, inability to concentrate thought, and depression of the nervous system.

The effect is not only physical but moral. The keen sense of discrimination between right and wrong is blunted and the finer moral conceptions become obtused. The highest scholarship in our colleges and universities is attained by men who are non-smokers. The famous college athletes have a smaller proportion of smokers than those who have not achieved distinction in athletics. If these facts are true of college men approaching maturity, they will be still more apparent in younger boys. Unfortunately, there has been no scientific investigation along these lines among boys in our secondary schools. But the head of one of our leading preparatory schools is authority for the statement that tobacco is the bane of his school and that more boys break down in health and are sent home from its influence than from any other. A recognition of the evil results of cigarette smoking by minors is crystallized in the enactment of laws in more than a dozen states against selling cigarettes to minors, as well as making it an offense for adolescents under specified ages to smoke cigarettes on the streets.

The records of juvenile and criminal courts disclose the fact that the cigarette fiends furnish 90 per cent. of their young criminals. Dr. George F. Butler of Chicago gives this testimony as to the moral weakening of the boy from the cigarette habit: “In my work some years ago at the Chicago police stations and later as county physician in the detention hospital I found that almost without exception the young criminal, dement or delinquent, was a cigarette fiend. I am forced to believe that this habit has largely to do with these mental and moral infirmities.”

The boy at the rear end of a lighted cigarette has little chance of obtaining a position from a business man. Even the telltale yellowish discoloration of the fingers and the cigarette stench of his breath give sufficient warning for the employer to inform the applicant that he is not wanted. It takes a strong body and a clear mind to succeed in competitive business. The boy handicapped in the race of life by the cigarette habit is in the same condition as the sprinter who is hopelessly handicapped in a hundred-yard dash; neither has any chance of winning. John V. Farwell, the Chicago merchant, is quoted as saying: “I would as lief employ a boy who steals sheep as one who smokes cigarettes. One is no more to be trusted than the other.” To the same effect is this warning of a well-known English physician: “A boy who early smokes is rarely known to make a man of much energy and character and he generally lacks physical and mental as well as moral energy.”

This subject is big with importance for the boy’s future. It is one of the great boy-problems and it should be discussed frankly by father and son before puberty, soon after which period so many boys acquire the habit. It may be difficult for the father, with a cigar in his mouth, to persuade his son that tobacco is injurious, but whether the father is a smoker or not, a thorough discussion of the subject in all its aspects is sure to prove beneficial. As the boy at this age is in the hero-worship period and as his heroes in early adolescence are always athletes, an appeal to his innate longing to attain physical perfection and athletic distinction will be found more potent than the appeal for mental or moral perfection, although the latter should not be neglected. The additional grounds of abstinence from motives of personal purity and self-respect have their effect, although the argument that he should not needlessly cause annoyance or discomfort to others has little weight with a boy prior to the reflective period. If such warning is given to the boy before he contracts the habit it will usually prove effective. Some parents conclude their instruction with the statement that the son, on attaining his physical maturity at approximately twenty-four years of age—when the danger of nicotine poisoning on the growing boy has passed—may then make his own decision as to whether he will or will not smoke.

In conclusion a word of suggestion is offered as to the means which should be employed with boys who have already contracted the habit. Dr. H. Krebs of Chicago, Secretary of the Anti-Cigarette League, has used in his practice a simple remedy for the cigarette habit which is reputed to be of great effectiveness. Its base is the chemical reaction of a weak solution of silver nitrate with nicotine, which creates an intensely disagreeable taste in the mouth. After the smoker has rinsed his mouth with this solution and draws in a whiff of cigarette smoke, the chemical effect of the nicotine in combination with the solution produces such a nauseating taste that further smoking for that day is impossible. The treatment should be protracted until desire has waned and will-power has become reëstablished.

CHAPTER XII
BOY GANGS

BOYS are as gregarious as sheep. Their desire to herd together and have a leader is one of the requisites of play, a most important factor in their educational development. The call of the wild to you is not half so loud as the call of the lot to your boy. It is as natural for boys to run in gangs as it is for minnows to run in schools; youth calls to youth. There they find others possessing the same viewpoint, tastes, desires, ambitions, and occupations as their own. To the active boy the gang is a democracy made up of those of his own kind in which he is a free citizen without paternal or maternal restraint. In his new world there is no querulous nor uncomprehending adult to shout repressive commands directed at conduct or action. All is as wild and free as his own wild nature.