Whenever you hear anybody speaking in praise of tobacco, you must remember he is speaking of tobacco and not of cheap cigars. "Young man," said an old smoker, "that cigar contains acetic, formic, butyric, valeric, and proprionic acids, prussic acid, creosote, carbolic acid, pyrodine, virodine, and cabbagine, and burdockic acid."
The old gentleman was laying it on too heavy, perhaps, for even a bad cigar. He was not exaggerating, however, if he was speaking of the modern cigarette. The cigarettes now sold in every cigar store and in every street consist chiefly of bad paper, bad tobacco, and dirt. Many of them contain worse ingredients, such as opium. The effect they produce when used immoderately is much worse than any results of tobacco smoking.
In the famous Polytechnic School of France, the difference between the pupils who smoked cigarettes and those who did not was so marked that the use of tobacco was prohibited in all government schools. At the Naval School at Annapolis, Commodore Parker was so struck with the evil that he consulted Dr. Hammond in regard to it. The doctor's reply was that he had no doubt that the smoking of cigarettes was injurious to the cadets, for he had constant evidence of the fact in his private practice.
The paper in which the cheap tobacco is rolled for cigarettes is of poor quality, producing empyreumatic oil, which contains creosote in large quantities. The odor they give out is ranker, fouler, and more acrid than that from a clay pipe. From a cigar to a cigarette the descent is from the sublime to the ridiculous.
We are not talking, however, about smoking in general, but about this modern fashion of cigarette smoking by boys. It is far worse than pipes or cigars. One old smoker who dropped into poetry occasionally wrote,
"Smoke not, ingenuous youth, or if you do,
I recommend clay pipes and 'honey-dew.'"
I would prefer to say, "Smoke not at all, my ingenuous boy; but whatever you do, smoke no cigarettes." The nicotine will hurt your nervous system, and by weakening the action of the heart will diminish the force of the circulation of the blood. Your hands will begin to tremble, your memory to be affected. You will not be able to enjoy or take part in a good honest out-of-doors game. You will lose your appetite, as well as weaken your brain.
Apart from the inferior quality of the tobacco from which cigarettes are made, the method of smoking them is the most injurious possible. The smoke, whether inhaled or blown out through the nostrils, produces dryness in the fine membrane which lines the mouth, the speaking apparatus at the head of the windpipe becomes enfeebled, and the voice loses the sweetness and liquidity of its tones. "Every boy," writes Dr. Sayre, "who desires to become an orator should never smoke a cigarette."
And now last but not least, cigarette smoking makes you look ridiculous, as it shows at once that you are a novice, and do not know good tobacco from bad.