The Ultimate Effects of Tobacco
The apparent cause of trouble in this world is not always the real cause. Many a man seems to be breaking down with overwork, when, as a matter of fact, he could do all the work he is now doing, and more also, without being harmed by it, if he were free from the occasion of worry, and the cause of friction, which he knows all about, but which other people do not suspect. So, again, many a young man who dies of acute pneumonia, or of typhoid fever, would have lived through that attack of disease if he had not wasted all his reserve forces by drinking, or by tobacco-using. It is this view of the use of tobacco that prompts our school superintendents, and our superintendents of naval and military academies, to forbid it to the youths who are under their charge. It is not the immediate and obvious bad effects of tobacco, but the ultimate and probable effects, that make its prohibition a wise and necessary measure. Tobacco-using certainly enhances the deterioration of the physical, mental, and moral welfare of those who indulge in it. As to its possible good, in exceptional cases, Dr. Sargent, who has given the subject much competent study, has said recently: "I can easily conceive of a man's physical condition being such that he might use tobacco in a way that would do him good; but I never saw one who did." Yet Dr. Sargent has had a wide sphere of observation from which to judge. If he hasn't seen the man who was benefited by tobacco-using, do you suppose that you have?—S. S. Times.