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ALWAYS INJURIOUS

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 29, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 5.

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ALWAYS INJURIOUS.

By R. Beverly Cole

[Dr. R. Beverly Cole, Professor in the Medical Department of the University of California, in S. F. Examiner.]
THERE is no time when a man is benefited by smoking a cigar or cigaret. Sometimes a cigar smoked after a meal will aid digestion so materially that one is tempted to call it a positive good; but the certain period of depression which follows the exhalation of the smoke more than makes up for the smoke, and leaves one worse than before. It is like the drinking of whisky in that respect, for the depression which follows the use of tobacco is as sure as that after drinking whisky.
And notwithstanding the great harm done to one's digestion by a cigar, that which comes from a cigaret is much greater. There are several reasons for this, and the first is always the seductiveness of the cigaret. With a cigaret-smoker life is one round of reaching after the unobtainable. So it is that after one smokes a cigaret a short time, as a general rule one turns to the inhalation of the smoke in an effort to secure the desired effect. And then down into the lungs is drawn the smoke of the little paper and tobacco cylinders.
Some good physicians prescribe a smoke after dinner just as others tell a patient to take a glass of brandy and water to stimulate the secretions. But there can be no real benefit to any man through the taking into his system of the narcotic nicotine, and no amount of argument can convince one of it.
Yes, there are men who have used tobacco all through long and active lives, but what does that prove?—Only that they were more robust of constitution and less susceptible to the many dangers to which the taking into their system of so much poison makes them liable. It is not that the tobacco has lengthened their lives, but that they have been able to throw off the effects of it. No man was ever helped by smoking a cigar, no matter how grateful it was at the time, and many men have suffered severely from the habit.