p. 30 | Tobacco | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1868

Tobacco.

PERHAPS some may think too much is said about the sin of tobacco raising and using. But let them think again of the millions wasted thereby; of the tastes vitiated; bodies dwarfed and enervated; morals corrupted; of the poisonous atmosphere you are obliged to breathe on every street and in every public place, and then acknowledge that too much cannot be said.

In the reports of the transactions of the Farmer’s Club, of N. Y. City, as given in the Tribune, we often find some good things. The following is as truthful, as it is comprehensive:

“The Spirit of King James.—C. H. Murray, Clay City, Clay County, Ill.: I am surprised that so many who condemn spirituous liquors, hop-growing, and wine-making, do not call attention to the almost universal use of tobacco. Perhaps some of these very men do so with a quid of tobacco in their mouths. I have seen some get up and bawl themselves hoarse about the ‘hellish traffic’ in liquor, whose cheeks at the same time were distorted with tobacco, and whose expectorations during their oration would fill a quart spittoon. In truth, the use of tobacco is so general that there is scarcely a public sentiment against it. Lawyers, doctors, and men of letters are all implicated; and ministers of the gospel too frequently send their prayers to Heaven out of mouths that hogs would be ashamed to own. A president of a college, and a D. D., once gave me a lecture on morality, while the tobacco spit was running out of each corner of his mouth. At that college—a prominent one in the West—four out of seven of the faculty were inveterate chewers. Furthermore, all of the geographies in use in our common schools mention tobacco among the useful productions of the States in which it is most largely grown—ranking it with wheat, corn, and potatoes. This, in my mind, is as reprehensible as the mentioning of houses of ill-fame would be, in connection with the useful institutions of a State. It begets in the mind of the child an idea that tobacco is a proper production, and that the consumption of it is not an impropriety. And this thought is carried into practical effect in many of our Western schools; for examples are not rare of boys from 11 to 12 years of age who use an ounce of tobacco a day. Now, if this is not a good thing, it is about time for Christian people to do something against it. I was much amused at an Eastern man’s writing to the Club some time ago of our people out here, and mentioning them as being so sallow complexioned. He attributed this to the prevalence of the ague, and the great use of quinine. Oh! how verdant! Those men that he saw—about Gallatin, Ill.—were pickled and smoked men, as thoroughly smoked as a ham or a herring. They were pickled in a decoction of tobacco, and fumigated in a decoction of the same weed. The process began when they were very young, in their mother’s arms, and was diligently persevered in, until they acquired the color of smoked ham. This, and not quinine, my Eastern friend, was the stuff that tanned them.