The Danger of Cigarette Smoking
THE danger of cigarette smoking had a practical illustration the other day in Washington, where a boy died almost instantly and without premonition, from aortic regurgitation caused by depression of the heart’s action—all due to cigarette smoking. Probably, if the average young man were offered $1,000 a year for ten years of his life—$10,000 in all—he would refuse the offer on economic reasons alone, apart from moral considerations, deeming a year of life worth more than $1,000. Yet what the young man would refuse to sell to another he voluntarily throws away, and not only without securing an equivalent, but he pays a big price for the privilege of squandering. In plain English this means that in very many cases cigarette smokers shorten their lives, dying from ten to fifteen years sooner than they would if they did not absorb the deadly empyreumatical oil of the cigarette. Not only so, but the intellectual powers become weakened—this is found to be the case with the will power and the imagination—till, ten or fifteen years before his time, it may be even earlier, the young man goes where there is no cigarette smoking, his life work not half done. This may be considered a strong way of putting the matter, but it is the truth, and we are advised some of the life insurance companies are recasting their tables, and that they recognize the evil as forming an important factor in the problem of life insurance. This all being so, it would seem as if the matter should have the attention of the small boy who smokes, and not his attention alone, but that of the feeble-minded parent, too, who so far disregards his duty as to allow the small boy to do exactly according to his sweet, we mean his nicotinized, will.—Sel.