Health and Temperance by John Harvey Kellogg

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 10.

Health and Temperance.

By John Harvey Kellogg

THE SMOKE NUISANCE.

According to the Cincinnati Times, a citizen of that place fell dead in a street-car, some time since, poisoned by the dense fumes of tobacco smoke with which the car was filled. "He was an occasional sufferer from heart disease, and the trouble was so aggravated by the suffocating smoke of the car, that he died after breathing it a few minutes. The car in which he rode had only one compartment for men, women, and children, and the smokers were allowed full sway in it. Two other passengers were overcome by the tobacco fumes."

If human beings possess one inalienable right more sacred than any other, it is the right to breathe the atmosphere of heaven, pure, free, and unadulterated. No man has any better right to puff tobacco smoke into the air I am about to breathe than to defile the water I am about to drink, or to sit down beside me at the dinner-table, and sprinkle upon my food vile and loathsome substances, obnoxious to the senses and deleterious to health.

Did any of you smokers ever attempt to imagine the felicity of a lady or gentleman to whom the odor of tobacco is sickening and most repulsive, following in your wake on a still summer evening, while you puffed with self-complacency and intense satisfaction the, to you, fragrant Havana? Or did you ever endeavor to picture in your imagination the delightful sensations which must be experienced by a sensitive man or woman who has never offered incense to the smoke god, when compelled to ride in a close cab, on a seat opposite or beside you, while you rolled between your lips the stump of a "cold cigar." Please put yourself in the place of that man or woman, and see if you will not decide with unhesitating promptness that the tobacco-user is a nuisance that should be abated.

Tobacco smoke is excellent in its place. The writer set an old smoker going in a green-house one day, with good effect. Every living thing that was able to travel left for parts unknown, and the few that were not able to get away, died of nicotine poisoning,—all except the smoker himself, who was tough and nicotine-proof. Tobacco is to be recommended as an exterminator of vermin of all sorts, except a kind of parasite that breeds in bar rooms and billiard halls, and may often be seen adhering to lamp posts, or hovering around street corners and railway stations.

Passing a London cigar store one day, the writer noticed a flaming placard announcing "The Devil's Own" as the name of a new brand of cigars just produced by the manufacturers. The name impressed him as exceedingly suggestive, and he wondered that so appropriate a cognomen had not before been utilized. The cigar is undoubtedly one of the devil's favorite instruments for converting boys who might become respectable citizens and useful men into loafers, vagabonds, drunkards, and criminals of every description.

Notwithstanding the repeated exposures which have been made of the dangers to life and health incurred by the use of the filthy weed, the number of its devotees seems to be constantly upon the increase. The tobacco habit must be regarded and treated as a moral disease which has fastened itself upon society,—one of "the devil's own" means for degrading and depraving humanity. How perverted, indeed, are the instincts of the human being who deliberately defiles the image of his Maker till nearly every trace of the divine workmanship is obliterated by the scourge of the stinking weed, and he becomes fit only to be labeled "the devil's own"!

If smokers will persist in defiling themselves and spoiling the pure air, adulterating its life-giving oxygen with a deadly vapor, offensive to the natural instincts of man and beast, let them be compelled to indulge their precious poison by themselves, apart from the rest of human kind. Let them together enjoy the pleasures of the pipe, cigar, and cigarette. Perhaps this plan might result in the annihilation of the whole race of smokers, and rid the world of a vice which originated among savages, and is worthy only of an uncivilized and barbarous race.—J. H. Kellogg, M. D., in Good Health.