What the Cigarette Is Doing to the Children — All Nations Are Suffering — Military Men, Jurists, and Physicians Alarmed — Is Your Boy Safe?
By DANIEL H. KRESS, M. D.
AT WHICH SHOP?
This is the second of Dr. Kress’s two articles on the cigarette. This one is independent of the one that appeared last week, and hence may be profitably read whether you saw the other or not. The articles are most timely indeed, and should cause parents and guardians to arouse to earnest, faithful action. Editor.
During the Spanish-American war, ninety per cent of our young Americans who were rejected as unfit for the army were tobacco users. Out of sixty-seven medical graduates who volunteered to enter the medical department of the army, forty-three were culled out because they had what was termed “tobacco heart.” At the time, considerable comment was made upon this unfortunate condition, from the platform and by the press; but amid the bustle and rush of American life, it seems to have been forgotten. Since then, the habit has rapidly increased.
Only One in Five Can Pass
Surgeon-General Rixey, of the United States navy, has said: “Cigarette smoking is becoming a serious impediment to robust health in the navy. This habit,” he adds, “seems to have taken a decided impetus in the service since the Spanish war, and has spread with incredible proportions.” So degenerate are the young men becoming upon whom we must depend to defend our country, that only one out of five applicants for the navy was able to pass the required physical tests in 1911 in Massachusetts. It is safe to say that ninety-eight per cent of the rejects were cigarette addicts.
In the Canadian navy, three out of every four of the young recruits have to be rejected for the same reason.
What Will the Third Generation Be?
Some time ago a judge of the juvenile court, in commenting upon the prevalent use of cigarettes by boys, and its terrible effect upon the national life, remarked to me, “If this practice continues to increase among our boys, I cannot conceive what the third generation will be like;” to which I replied, “Judge, there will be no third generation.” While this may be overdrawing the dark picture somewhat, there is no doubt in my mind that the cigarette habit among our boys, more than any other one evil, is responsible for the rapid degeneracy that is everywhere so prevalent, and that is threatening our national life. In spite of our efforts to arrest tuberculosis, one third of all who die between the ages of twenty and thirty still die of this plague. It has been found at the Phipps Institute that the mortality from tuberculosis is twice as great among smokers as it is among non-smokers. Pneumonia is responsible for almost as many deaths in the United States as tuberculosis. The mortality in this disease is due frequently to tobacco-crippled hearts. Degenerative diseases, as heart failure, apoplexy, and Bright’s disease, are responsible for over three hundred and fifty thousand deaths annually, or as many as are caused by tuberculosis and pneumonia combined.
Old age extends forward into middle life. The vital organs, from the abuse that is heaped upon them, wear out prematurely. Men die at an age when they should be able to enter upon the period of their greatest usefulness. In the United States, the mortality between the ages of forty and fifty has increased thirty-five per cent the past thirty years. There has been an increase of over one hundred per cent in the number of deaths from degenerate diseases, as heart failure, apoplexy, and Bright’s disease has increased over one hundred and sixty per cent during the same period in Chicago, and possibly in other large cities.
Chronic Invalids Increasing
There never have been so many chronic invalids in proportion to the population in the United States as there are at present. Three million are constantly disabled on account of sickness. There have never been so many feeble-minded and insane among us. There have never been so many youthful criminals. There never has existed so great a demand for doctors, hospitals, sanitariums, drug stores, insane asylums, reform schools, etc., to accommodate this great army of physical, mental, and moral degenerates. Already we have as many confined within insane asylums as we have students in our universities and colleges; and in addition, there is a great army of insane and feeble-minded at large, for whom no provision has as yet been made. In the state of New York alone, over twenty-two thousand are at large for whom no provision is made. During the past thirty years, there has been an increase of insane altogether out of proportion to the increase in population. A similar condition prevails in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, and other civilized countries.
The World Going Mad
Dr. Forbes Winslow, the famous authority on lunacy, in referring to this, said: “The world is rapidly going mad. Civilization is on the road to perdition. To-day there is one certified lunatic in every 269 of our population; and if the increase in lunacy continues at the same rate as it has done for the past fifty years, there will be one lunatic in every four of the population by A.D. 2159. One quarter of the world will be mad. I have no patience with those who ascribe this terrible condition of affairs to increased competition, and the wear and tear of modern life. If there is but one sane man left in the world of lunatics, he will be muttering the same absurd excuse. No. It is mere shelving of the responsibility. The true causes of insanity are the vices, not the worries, of civilization.” He adds, “I should put the causes of insanity in the following order: drink, cigarette smoking, heredity.” Dr. Winslow then calls attention to the fact that while the amount of alcohol consumed in England has diminished somewhat during the past ten years, insanity has been rapidly increasing with the increase in the use of cigarettes. Suicides now reach the enormous total of fifteen thousand annually. Nine thousand murders are annually committed.
Cigarettes and Domestic Bliss
Divorce is increasing at an alarming rate. This peril is threatening the American home. Recently a noted authoress of Chicago, in seeking a divorce from her husband, brought the charge: “On arising in the morning, he would prepare a cup of the strongest coffee obtainable, and then devote the remainder of the day to cigarette smoking. He is never without his smoke. It’s the first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night.” The cigarette addict makes a poor husband, generally, as does any other drug fiend; and naturally the use of cigarettes leads to the divorce courts.
The prevalent use of cigarettes is responsible for a large share of the crimes committed. This is recognized by all the judges of juvenile courts. Judge W. N. Gemmill, of the Court of Domestic Relations, Chicago, recently made the statement that of the twenty-five thousand or more criminals who had passed before him, those who had so degenerated morally that they “had lost the faculty of blushing, smoked cigarettes.” It is estimated that anywhere from ninety-three to ninety-eight per cent of all youthful criminals are cigarette victims.
Produces Criminal Insanity
The cigarette produces in the undeveloped mind a form of criminal insanity, making of the addict an irresponsible being, who should be confined in an insane asylum rather than in a prison. Judge Brumm, of Pottsville,110Pennsylvania, in charging the jury in the case of a young man who had committed murder, said, “The fact that he is a cigarette fiend must be taken into consideration.” The use of a pound of tobacco each week in cigarettes was considered as proof that the fellow’s brain was affected. He was declared an irresponsible by the jury, and was released.
Invariably Becomes a Degenerate
The cigarette is threatening to become a greater national evil than alcohol; for it strikes down or blasts the tender youth of our country, interfering with physical, intellectual, and moral development. The boy who begins to smoke cigarettes at the age of nine, ten, or eleven years, invariably becomes a degenerate. Should the use of cigarettes increase at the same rate during the next ten years as during the past ten, what can we hope for or expect in regard to America’s future? The boy with a crippled leg or arm is handicapped in life’s battles, and is an object of pity. He may make a success of life if he has a sound mind; and if he has children, they will be born with two sound legs and arms. But the boy who has ruined his mind and morals by the use of cigarettes, seldom makes a success of life; and if he marries and has children, they will be defectives. Already seventy-five per cent of the twenty million children attending our schools in America are in need of attention for physical defects. That the prevalent use of cigarettes the past thirty years has greatly helped in bringing about this condition, none will deny.
We pass rigid laws shutting out of our country criminals and defectives; but in the use of cigarettes, we are permitting an evil that is changing our most promising youth into irresponsibles, defectives, and criminals. When the boll weevil was discovered in the South, we turned our government scientists loose, and authorized them to spend the taxpayers’ money liberally in an effort to protect our national cotton crop. Shall we feel less concerned in regard to our national crop of boys? Shall we continue to close our eyes to this monstrous evil that is blighting our future prospects as a nation? Shall we permit this juggernaut to pass unmolested up and down our main thoroughfares, crushing out the very life and hope of our country’s future by maiming and crippling our boys in whom its future centers?
