Health and Temperance by John Harvey Kellogg

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1886

Health and Temperance.

By John Harvey Kellogg

Physical Effects of Tobacco.

NO RESPECTABLE authority will dare assert that tobacco is not a poison, one of the most decided kinds. It is vain to quote cases of men who have used the weed for years, and still live and apparently enjoy a reasonable degree of health. The same is true, in exceptional cases, of any and all improper courses, all bad habits. The most violent of the poisons may be taken gradually, the system conforming to such a course, the penalty being less manifest than it would be were such poisons taken in large doses at first. It is because we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” that we are able to resist a part of the effects of wrongdoing, or to postpone the penalty, rather. One may become accustomed to the most unnatural treatment, and, for a time, seem to escape the penalty; but the day of reckoning will come and the wrong-doer must suffer.

Of the more prominent effects may be cited, in brief, those connected with the digestion of our food. The fact that we are supplied with five small glands in the mouth, the salivary, is sufficient evidence that this saliva is an important aid to digestion, especially in the changes of starchy foods. Its waste in smoking and chewing is inevitable, while our observations convince us of the natural results. One of these results is practically admitted by the fleshy man, who well knows that he can so far impair digestion by the use of this poison as to reduce the fat, and yet we have heard just this argument used by smokers, that they used tobacco to become less corpulent; as if it were well to impair their digestion and become less healthy, when the same object might be gained far more philosophically by the whipping post, or by sawing wood, etc., or by eating only what the wants of the system will justify.

It may be that a large per cent. of the sudden deaths from heart disease may be accounted for from the use of this poison.

On this subject Dr. Marshall Hall says:— “The smoker cannot escape the poison of tobacco. It gets into his blood, travels the whole rounds of his system, interferes with his heart’s action and the general circulation, and affects every organ and fibre of the frame.”

In accordance with these views, Dr. Brodie writes: “It powerfully controls the action of the heart and arteries, producing invariably a weak, tremulous pulse, with all the apparent symptoms of approaching death.”

Another says: “If we wish at any time to prostrate the powers of life in the most sudden and awful manner, we have but to administer a dose of tobacco, and our object is accomplished.” Of course this dose is given to one not accustomed to its use, the uniform effects of which is to nauseate and then depress, waste vital force.

Dr. Willard Parsons, excellent authority, says: “It is now many years since my attention was called to the insidious but positively destructive effects of tobacco on the human system. I have seen a great deal of its influence upon those who use it and work in it. Cigar and snuff manufacturers have come under my care in the hospitals and in private practice, and such persons cannot recover soon and in a healthy manner from cases of injury or fever. They are more apt to die in epidemics, and more prone to apoplexy and paralysis. The same is true of those who smoke or chew much.”

Many other authors are equally explicit and decided in their opposition to its use, all regarding it as a poison. It is more potent than the average of those poisons on the shelves of the druggists, as may be abundantly proved. It is related of a child that she picked up a quid from the floor, supposing that it was a raisin. Putting it into her mouth, she died of the poison the same day. According to a surgeon of the St. Jules Hospital, “leeches are instantly killed by the blood of smokers, immediately dropping dead when applied.” If this is true, what can be the condition of such blood, and the health of such poisoned victims?—J. H. Hanaford, M. D.