CHAPTER XVII CIGARETTE SMOKING
Most of you have fathers, mothers, and perhaps brothers and sisters. You love them more than all the world. What would you think if I should tell you I can make you hate your mother, strike your father, lie, cheat, steal, do everything vile, and at last send you, disgraced and despised, to a wretched death?
You are shocked and cannot believe it; but, if you will walk the path I mark out, you will do just what I have said and reach the dreadful end that is, if you live long enough.
The Havana cigarette is made of fair tobacco, but is rolled in thick, vile paper and soaked with creosote, which is very hurtful. But those cigarettes which pretend to be made of Cuban tobacco are imitations that are as bad as they can be.
cigarette wrappers is worse than that. It burns white, because of the acids and chemicals in it.
If one could select a fine, healthy boy of from twelve to fifteen years of age, well known for his fine physique, even disposition, and great strength, and start him in his career as a cigarette smoker under the observant eye of the public, what results might not accrue from such example as the panorama was unfolded to them?
The decay of physical power, emaciation, the irritable temper, the sallow complexion, the drawn and anxious look, the unsteadiness of the hands, the dyspepsia, the capricious appetite, the aversion to parental and other advice, the tendency to seek lower companionship, could hardly fail to leave its impress upon such an audience.
More especially in the nervous diathesis does this rapid decay make itself apparent, and in varying degrees according to the amount of indulgence. Physicians daily watch this process with pain and anxiety for those intrusted to their care. Indeed, if my own professional experience were to be my guide, I could declare the evil of cigarette smoking to be even greater than that of alcohol.
So alarming has become this evil that in some States, laws have been passed against cigarette smoking. But I trust that if any of you has felt like forming the vile habit, your own good sense will not allow you to do so.
What is the first step toward the ruin of the body and soul? What is the second step? What follows?Where will you be by this time? What then will follow?
How is it that some boys do not seem to suffer from cigarette smoking? What takes place every year?
How many cigarettes were smoked in this country in 1883? Of what are they generally made? What of saltpetre?
What is said of the genuine Havana cigarette? Are there many genuine ones made?
What of the oil of tobacco? Of the oil of the paper?
How does smoking affect the young?
What loathsome disease is almost certain to result from cigarette smoking? Why?
What does cigarette smoking tend to produce? What other effect has it on the system? What is its effect on the appetite? How does it excite a craving for drink?
What is said by Dr. Keep, of Brooklyn?
What has been done by some of the States? What are your own views on the vice of cigarette smoking? Are you weak-minded enough to be persuaded ever to place a vile cigarette between your lips?
CHAPTER XVIII ALCOHOL
does not exist in nature. It is a fluid made by fermentation, or the rotting of vegetables and their juices. Beer, cider, and wine are produced by the decay of a sweet liquid taken from grain or fruits. Alcohol is that element in malt and spirituous liquors which produces intoxication.
Those who use alcohol are very liable to disease. In Russia the cholera swept off one year every drinking person in a certain town before it affected a single temperate one. In New Orleans, five thousand drinking men died one season from yellow fever before it touched a sober one. In 1832, in Park Hospital, New York, out of 204 cases of cholera, only six were men of temperate habits; these all recovered, while 122 of the others died.
Sir John Ross, the famous Arctic explorer, never used alcohol or tobacco. On one of his voyages, when a youth, every one of the crew that was a drinker, died; but he himself was not sick a single hour. When exploring the frozen regions, he was an old man, the oldest of his crew being twenty years younger than he. His men used tobacco and spirits, but he went without either; and with his advanced years, stood the rigors and hardships better than any of them.
At a recent meeting of surgeons and officers of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company to arrange for medical and surgical supplies to be placed on trains and at each station on the road, the question of adding alcoholic stimulants to the supplies was at once rejected; some of the surgeons claiming that in case of shock from injury, it was worthless.