Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Feb 4, 1886

Health and Temperance.

A Lesson for Smokers.

HERE is another case of cancer caused by smoking, and Dr. Markoe, of this city, says it is precisely like that of General Grant. He examined both cases, and knows them to be as we have now stated. Here are the facts: A few days ago a patient, thirty-eight years old, was taken to the New York Hospital for a surgical operation in his throat, to remove what had been previously pronounced to be a cancer. In September last the patient first discovered the trouble; but it was not thought then to be very serious. About a month ago he consulted a young physician in regular standing, by whom his case was diagnosed as either cancer of the throat and tongue or the result of specific disease. If it was of specific origin, it might be relieved, he thought, and permanently cured, by constitutional treatment, while, if it proved to be cancer, only temporary relief could be given by the surgeon's knife. The physician placed him under treatment which would have given marked relief had the trouble been of specific origin. No effect being produced, the cancerous nature of the affection was proved, and the man was sent to the New York Hospital.

The operation to remove the cancer was performed by Drs. Weir and Bull, the attending surgeons, assisted by three of the house surgeons, three trained nurses, and one stalwart attendant. The patient, it is expected, will not long survive. The spectators numbered about eighty, and comprised many old practitioners and a number of medical students, brought together by the extraordinary interest of the case. Professor Weir, in giving its history, called attention to its resemblance to that of General Grant, and discussed the influence of smoking in inducing cancers of the mouth, throat, and tongue. He stated that cases of this kind were six times as numerous in men as in women, and that the men affected were almost invariably smokers.

A word here may be permitted. If you would rush away for your life—as you probably and wisely would—from a mad dog, why not hasten, with equal fear, to stop the poisonous indulgence of drinking and smoking? Why not, if life is worth living, try to save it? Why deliberately and voluntarily dose yourself with tobacco poison, or alcohol or malarial poison, or any other poison? Those who rashly do so, and thus defy the laws of their being, may expect to suffer the most serious consequences. But you may say, Smoking and drinking don't hurt me. Yes, they do, if you indulge in either, and more surely if you indulge in both. God has not given us life here, with known laws for its protection, and at the same time given any human being the right to tamper with it. Any self-indulgence which shortens life or endangers health is in itself morally wrong, and should be immediately abandoned in honor of our Maker, for the sake of a good example, and from the lower motive of self-respect.—Independent.