Smoking tobacco is used in three ways, in the pipe, cigar and cigarette. Neither adds beauty to the face or is conducive to health. It is stated on good authority that Senator Colfax was stricken down in the Senate chamber as the result of excessive smoking and from that time smoked no more. It caused the death of Emperor Frederick through cancer of the lip, killed Henry W. Raymond, of the New York Times, through heart failure, and struck President Orton and General Dakin down with paralysis of the heart. Rousseau says, “Excessive smoking cut short the life of the poet Berat through nervous effect.” It wielded its sceptre over Royer Collard who died in the dawn of a most brilliant career through his loved cigar. It produced cancer of the throat, which ended the life of President Grant and Robert Louis Stevenson. “Out of one hundred and twenty-seven cancers cut from the lips of persons in a short time,” says the Medical Times, “nearly all were from the lips of smokers.” What a dangerous luxuriant weed! How quaintly yet truthfully “Billy” Bray, the Cornish miner, said: “If God intended a man to smoke, He would have placed a chimney at the top of his head to let the smoke out!”
Tobacco smoke is poisonous. It contains one of the deadliest vapors known to man, which so frequently injures the throat. It has also a poisonous oil which secretes itself in the stem of the pipe. Dr. Brodie says that he applied two drops of this oil to the tongue of a cat, which killed it in fifteen minutes. Fontana made a small incision in the leg of a pigeon and paralyzed it by applying a drop of this oil. The reason for so many pale-faced, nervous men can be traced to this cause.
But supposing that smoking a pipe is not injurious, is it not unbecoming a gentleman? Napoleon said, “It was only fit for sluggards.” Gouverneur Morris, being asked if gentlemen smoked in France, replied, “Gentlemen, sir! Gentlemen smoke nowhere!” Horace Mann when addressing the teachers of an Ohio school, said, “The practice is unfit for a scholar or a gentleman.”
To smoke a cigar may be considered more refined than the use of a pipe. But whoever heard of refining a vice? Horace Greeley, when addressing a class of young men on the subject, said, “A cigar is a little roll of tobacco leaves with a fire at one end and a fool at the other.” At which end should refinement begin? The cigar is more directly injurious than the pipe because the user inhales more of the smoke, sucks the weed, and a greater proportion of the poisonous substance is drawn into the mouth and filtered through the system, causing dyspepsia, vitiated taste, congestion of the brain, loss of memory, nervousness and many other diseases.
THE CIGARETTE.
The worst of all, however, is the cigarette. Sometime ago in New York, an Italian boy was brought before a justice as a vagrant. He was charged with picking up cigar stumps from the streets and gutters. To prove this the policeman showed the boy’s basket, half full of stumps, water-soaked and covered with mud. “What do you do with these?” asked his honor. “I sell them to a man for ten cents a pound, to be used in making cigarettes.” This is not all. In the analysis of cigarettes, physicians and chemists have been surprised to find opium, which is used to give a soothing effect, and creates a passion for strong drink. The wrapper warranted to be rice paper is manufactured from filthy scrapings of rag pickers, and is so cheap that a thousand cigarettes can be wrapped at a cost of two cents. By the use of this dangerous thing, thousands of boys have been mentally and morally ruined. A distinguished French physician investigated the effect of cigarette-smoking in thirty-eight boys between the ages of nine and fifteen. Twenty-seven presented distinct symptoms of nicotine poisoning. Twenty-two had serious disorders and a marked appetite for strong drink. Three had heart affection. Eight had very impure blood. Twelve were subject to bleeding of the nose. Ten had disturbed sleep and four had ulceration of the mouth.
Several years ago Representatives Cockran, Cummings and Stahlnecker, of New York, petitioned the Government to suppress cigarettes by imposing an internal revenue tax upon them. During one year they cut clippings from the papers concerning one hundred young men, mostly under sixteen, who died from the effects of these murderous things, while another hundred were consigned to insane asylums for the same cause. Because of such harmful effects Germany has legislated against it. France, West Point and Annapolis have closed their doors to the boy that uses it and more than a score of States in the Union have prohibited their sale.
WHY HE FAILED.
A young man who had failed by only three points in an examination for admission to the marine corps appealed to his representative in Congress for assistance, and together they went to see the Secretary of the Navy, in the hope of securing what is known as a “re-rating” of his papers. “How many more chances do you want?” asked Secretary Long. “This is your third time.” And before the young man had a chance to answer, the Secretary continued, “How do you expect to get along in the world when you smoke so many cigarettes? Your clothes are saturated with their odor. Pull off your gloves and let me see your fingers. There, see how yellow they are!” pointing to the sides of the first and second fingers. Before the young man found his tongue to offer an explanation the Secretary asked if he drank. “Only once in a while,” was his sheepish reply. Mr. Long then invited the Congressman into his private office, and while offering to do everything that he could added, “I am sick of trying to make anything of these boys that are loaded with cigarette smoke and ‘drink once in a while.’ They are about hopeless, it seems to me.” As they left the department building the young man, half apologizing for his poor showing, remarked, “Drinking, my father says, is the bane of the navy.” “I guess it is,” replied the Congressman. “It is the bane everywhere else, and I should think quite likely it would be in the navy.”
My boy, let tobacco in any form alone. It is a dirty, dangerous, expensive habit. It costs this country six hundred and fifty million dollars annually. Worse than the cost, however, is the injury to body, mind and soul. Figures cannot enumerate nor scales estimate the evil it produces. A story is told of a giant who fell in with a company of pigmies. He roared with laughter at their insignificant stature and their magnificent pretensions. He ridiculed with fine scorn and sarcasm their high-sounding threats. When he fell asleep they bound him with innumerable threads and when he awoke he found himself a helpless captive.