What Tobacco Can Do by Ethan Lanphear

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 14, 1902

What Tobacco Can Do

By Ethan Lanphear

ETHAN LANPHEAR

It can poison a family to the third and fourth generations. I once knew a young man of a respectable family, in whose life this truth was exemplified. He early learned the habit of smoking tobacco. He married an intelligent young woman, and they started in life with favorable prospects. He continued his habit until he became an inveterate smoker, and was so saturated with the smoke that his presence was offensive to society, in church or at any other decent gathering. When remonstrated with for the offensive habit, he would say, “I don’t smoke enough to hurt me.”

In time they had two sons born to them. When quite young, these sons formed the habit of smoking, and as they grew to young manhood, father and sons kept their home blue with smoke, so much so that it was a very unpleasant home in which to make an evening visit.

The mother was finally taken sick, and gradually grew thin and feeble. The doctors treated her for various maladies. She was sent to the seashore, where she seemed to rally for a time; but on returning home, she had to breathe air defiled with tobacco smoke, and her decline was rapid. I asked the physician what killed that woman. His answer was, “I think tobacco smoke killed her; but probably I would better not say it publicly, for it might hurt some one’s feelings.”

After this woman’s death, her husband married her sister, who had lived with them for years. She had been in the family so long that she had become affected by the poison of the tobacco smoke. He continued his old habit, and she sickened and finally died, reduced almost to a skeleton. The husband is still living, and is himself a skeleton. He belongs to a church; but carries a stench of tobacco smoke into the church and wherever he goes, presenting a defiled temple

of God if ever the human temple was defiled.

The younger son, who married a delicate little woman, continues the habit of smoking. A nice little girl has been born to them. The wife is a fine-spirited woman, rather feeble in health, and the little girl is sickly looking, with weak eyes, so that she is compelled to wear glasses.

Is it any wonder that hundreds of children wear glasses in these days, are poor in flesh and sickly looking? Can we expect it otherwise when children are born of parents pickled through and through with tobacco smoke, snuff, or alcohol?