Tobacco Leaves: Being a Book of Facts for Smokers

by William Augustine Brennan

Physical Effects of Tobacco Smoking

The principal deleterious effects on the human system ascribed to the use of tobacco are:

(a) Throat diseases.

(b) Disturbance of vision.

(c) Heart troubles (smokers’ heart).

(d) Disturbance of the digestive organs (dyspepsia, etc.).

(e) Disturbance of the nervous system.

(f) Disturbance of nutrition.

As regards (a) throat diseases, the following is the opinion of Dr. H. Reik of the Johns Hopkins University, surgeon to the Baltimore Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, as expressed by him in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 162, p. 856, 1910:

“There is not one scintilla of evidence that malignant disease of the throat is due in any way to the use of tobacco; and if it be admitted that carcinoma (cancer) of the lip or tongue has been produced by smoking, it is clearly not tobacco, but traumatism (i. e., injury) from the stems of the pipe or other tobacco container that is responsible.