TOBACCO is an aromatic plant and leaf, and probably its sweetness and slight acrid taste, its stimulus and its power to appease hunger, had at first more to do with its use than any other cause. It has been variously claimed to be a food, a tonic, a condiment, a stimulant, a nervine, and an intoxicant. It is when we turn to a materia medica, or to some work on toxicology, that we find the fullest account of it. Its first free use generally causes giddiness, trembling of the limbs, faintness, depression, sickness of stomach, and cold sweats. The pulse is weak and quivering, the breathing hurried or embarrassed, and the vision impaired. In toxic doses, the action is on the central nervous system, producing failure of respiration. If the chewing or smoking has not been very excessive, the ordinary symptoms soon pass off. If its use is much less, or if a toleration of it is acquired, it acts as a pleasant sedative.
Whatever may be the ultimate accommodation of the system thereto, as with alcohol, a class of symptoms very different from those from the use of milk or meat or cereals or fruits tells us that it rightly finds its classification among articles unfriendly to the best health or to the nourishment of vital forces. Its most decided effect is upon the functions of organs rather than upon their structure. As a rule, it is not near so apt to make change of structure as is alcohol. Yet permanent changes, especially to blood-vessels and the nervous system, result therefrom. Woodman and Tidy, in their volume on "Forensic Medicine and Toxicology," speak thus: "Excessive smoking has proved fatal, as in the cases recorded by Gmelin, when two men smoked seventeen and eighteen pipes respectively at one sitting. Mr. Smith, of Sheffield, records two cases of paralysis of the porta dura directly caused by hard smoking."
There is a general testimony that dyspepsia, heart palpitation, and nervous symptoms often result therefrom. Its evil effect upon young persons has been accurately set forth by Dr. Decaisne, and Dr. A. C. Gorgas, Medical Inspector U. S. N. This testimony is the more significant because there was a return to the use of tobacco on the part of the students of the Naval Academy, but the contrasted facts caused a subsequent renewal of the order to desist from its use. The evidence has been such from other sources that a prohibitory law applicable to youths has been enacted in Germany. While during the growing period of life all are more susceptible to the evil effects of tobacco, those of full age are affected in a milder degree. There is a constant tendency of the habit to increase.
Even among those who have the belief that the moderate use of tobacco does not injure all persons, there is such agreement as to its effect upon the young, that most of them favor laws which make it a punishable offense for those under age to use tobacco in any form.
There is reason to believe that our young population is being greatly injured thereby, and also that the use of tobacco has become so general, and often so excessive among adults, as to be traceable in special injurious effects upon them and their descendants. Tobacco smoking increases pulse rate. Both in chewing and smoking there is an unnatural stimulus of the salivary glands. Their office as aids to the first process in digestion is interfered with. While it is true that the evil effects of very occasional smoking are transitory to many, it is equally true that, the excess in the habit which generally occurs makes in time a permanent impression upon the nervous system.
Its effect in checking growth is unmistakable. So far as the young are concerned, it is doing more harm to bodily health than alcohol. A substance which will produce such profound impression as it does when first used, and which has caused death when applied for a long time to the raw surface on the body, and which has by its irritation induced cancer, surely ought not to be in ordinary use among mankind.
The cigarette has been found to be even more harmful than the other forms of smoking. Besides many evils which its use involves, not the least is one already noted as to alcohol. It not only becomes a habit that it is hard to abandon, but the very failure which so many make in their efforts to quit its use shows too plainly that it undermines the power of self-control, and so is a weakening of that vigor of trained will, of that mastery of self, which is a part of the physical as well as of the intellectual welfare and prowess of manhood. As an interest both of the individual and the State, the use of tobacco in any form by children should be prohibited under proper penalties. As a matter of public and personal health, and in the interests of the vigor of the coming generation, this restraint is demanded.
Some of the States have already passed laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to those under sixteen years of age.
There seems to be good evidence that modern modes of life, and the pressure of excessive business, incline many to indulge in that class of substances which produce a slight exhilarating effect, followed by a calm such as occurs in the first stages of narcotism. There is great occasion for the young to guard themselves against all plausible excuses for any of these indulgences. We have never known anyone to regret abstinence from them, and have known very many, in the moderate use of some of the milder forms of excitants and sedatives, to be earnest in advising against the acquirement of such habits.—Independent.