Smoking and Scholastic Performance
SCIENCE and statistics have attacked the smoking fraternity, and smokers will not very much relish the verdicts. For instance, a comparison recently made between smokers and non-smokers in the Polytechnic school of Paris shows that the smokers not only rank below the non-smokers in every grade, but that they lose grade constantly. This would mean to anti-tobacco preachers, of course, that the smokers had less brains to start with, or they would not have adopted the habit in the first place, and that the weed tended to destroy what little sense they had. At any rate, although brains and cigars do seem to live and flourish in harmony on this side of the water, the French Minister of Public Instruction has forbidden pupils to smoke or chew the dangerous weed. If we add to this testimony the words of some of the most celebrated physicians, that many of the nervous diseases of this generation can be traced to the free use of tobacco, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that the “coming man” will drop that with other “social” and unnecessary habits.— Sel.