CIGARET SMOKING by O. C. Godsmark

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 28, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 22.

CIGARET SMOKING.

By O. C. Godsmark

BY O. C. GODSMARK, M.D.

In reply to a query appearing in a recent number of the SIGNS, in which the question was asked regarding the smoking of cigarets, we hastily offer the following facts, hoping to be able to treat the subject more fully in the near future.

As was stated by the editor, the use of tobacco is always evil, and only evil continually. It affects the blood in both a physical and chemical manner, and thus in turn affects every structure of the system. From the scores of public examinations we have made of the blood of tobacco users, we have found the above to be indisputably correct.

Cigarets have in them all the native narcotic poisons that are incident to the tobacco plant. Being composed largely of the coarse, pulpy part of the leaf, or, more properly, of the stems and midribs, they require being flavored with rum and certain secret chemicals, in order to give them the flavor of the more desirable portions of the plant. Aside from the additions of rum and chemicals to the already poisonous tobacco leaf, they are wrapped in rice-straw paper, which is entirely unfit to be taken into the system in any manner whatever.

The lime, acid, and chemicals used in the manufacture of paper, to reduce the straw to the proper pulp, are exceedingly injurious. That this is the case is very apparent from the fact that different state Legislatures have at times been compelled to prohibit the paper mills from using the rivers as dumping grounds; for by their having so done, thousands of fish have annually been destroyed in our river courses.

The Legislature of Indiana was recently called upon to take immediate steps to save the fish in one of her principal rivers, as they were found lying dead along the shores by the wagon loads, for some distance below where a paper mill had begun operations.

The cheapness of the cigaret places it within easy reach of the small boy's finances, and therefore presents a more easy step to the path that is annually leading thousands of our noblest youth to broken constitutions and ignoble graves.

Bedford, Mich.