Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

I am not going to quarrel with the use of tobacco in general by mature men. He who has come to man's estate is free to decide for himself whether he shall force a poison on his revolting stomach; for the nausea that follows the first use of tobacco is the stomach's attempt to eject the poison which has been absorbed from pipe, cigar, or cigarette. The grown man, too, is able to determine whether he wants to pay the tax which the use of tobacco levies upon his time, his health, his income and his prosperity. The most that can be said of the use of tobacco is that if habitual users of the narcotic weed are successful in life they must be successful in spite of the use of tobacco and not because of it; for it is opposed to both reason and common sense that the habitual use of a poison in any form should promote the development and exercise of the faculties whose energetic use is essential to success.

What I desire to do is to warn the boy, the growing youth, of the baneful influence of the cigarette on minds yet unformed, on bodies yet in process of development.

The danger of the cigarette to the growing boy lies first in the fact that it poisons the body. That it does not kill at the outset is due to the fact that the dose is small and so slowly increased that the body gradually accommodates itself to this poison as it does to strychnine, arsenic, opium, and other poisons. But all the time there is a slow but steady process of physical degeneration. The digestion is affected, the heart is overtaxed, liver and bowels are deranged in their functions, and as the poison spreads throughout the system there is a gradual physical deterioration which is marked alike in the countenance and in the carriage of the body. Any person who cares to do so may prove for himself the poisonous nature of nicotine which is derived from tobacco and taken into the system by those who chew or smoke.

Dr. J. J. Kellogg says: "A few months ago I had all the nicotine removed from a cigarette, making a solution of it. I injected half the quantity into a frog, with the effect that the frog died almost instantly. The rest was administered to another frog with like effect. Both frogs were full grown, and of average size. The conclusion is evident that a single cigarette contains poison enough to kill two frogs. A boy who smokes twenty cigarettes a day has inhaled enough poison to kill forty frogs. Why does the poison not kill the boy? It does tend to kill him. If not immediately, he is likely to die sooner or later of weak heart, Bright's disease, or some other malady which scientific physicians everywhere now recognize as a natural result of chronic nicotine poisoning."

A chemist, not long since, took the tobacco used in an average cigarette and soaked it in several teaspoonfuls of water and then injected a portion of it under the skin of a cat. The cat almost immediately went into convulsions, and died in fifteen minutes. Dogs have been killed with a single drop of nicotine.

A single drop of nicotine taken from a seasoned pipe, and applied to the tongue of a venomous snake has caused almost instant death.

A Western farmer tried to rear a brood of motherless chickens in his greenhouse. But the chickens did not thrive. They refused to eat; their skins became dry and harsh; their feathers were ruffled; they were feverish and drank constantly. Soon they began to die. As the temperature and general condition of the greenhouse seemed to be especially favorable to the rearing of chickens, the florist was puzzled to determine the cause of their sickness and death. After a careful study of the symptoms he found that the source of the trouble arose from the fumes of the tobacco stems burned in the greenhouse to destroy green flies and destructive plant parasites. Though the chickens had always been removed from the greenhouse during the tobacco fumigation and were not returned while any trace of smoke was apparent to the human senses, it was evident that the soil, air, and leaves of the plants retained enough of the poison to keep the chickens in a condition of semi-intoxication. The conditions were promptly changed, and the chickens removed to other quarters recovered rapidly and in a short time were healthy and lively though they were stunted in growth because of this temporary exposure to the effects of nicotine. The symptoms in the chickens were almost identical with the symptoms of nicotine poisoning in young boys, and the effects were relatively the same.

The most moderate use of the cigarette is injurious to the body and mind of the youth; excessive indulgence leads inevitably to insanity and death.

A young man died in a Minnesota state institution not long ago, who, five years before, had been one of the most promising young physicians of the West. "Still under thirty years at the time of his commitment to the institution," says the newspaper account of his story, "he had already made three discoveries in nervous diseases that had made him looked up to in his profession. But he smoked cigarettes,—smoked incessantly. For a long time the effects of the habit were not apparent on him. In fact, it was not until a patient died on the operating table under his hands, and the young doctor went to pieces, that it became known that he was a victim of the paper pipes. But then he had gone too far. He was a wreck in mind as well as in body, and he ended his days in a maniac's cell."

Another unfortunate victim of the cigarette was, not long ago, taken to the Brooklyn Hospital. He was a fireman on the railroad and was only twenty-one years old. He said he began smoking cigarettes when a mere boy. Before being taken to the hospital he smoked all night for weeks without sleep. When in the hospital he recognized none, but called loudly to everyone he saw to kill him. He would batter his head against the wall in the attempt to commit suicide. At length he was taken to the King's County Hospital in a strait jacket, where death soon relieved him of his sufferings.