Tobacco and Its Effects.
By John S. Ross
THAT the habit of using tobacco wasts time and money, injures health, impairs intellect, and shortens life, can be substantiated by philosophy, physiology and reason. Self-respect, regard for others, and common-sense, therefore, dissuade from this pernicious practice. Snuffed, chewed, or smoked, the use of tobacco is equally unbecoming and unworthy of a gentleman. It is this consideration that often induces men to hide while smoking. Smokers and chewers move in an atmosphere thoroughly tobacconic. Their whole system is impregnated with the offensive effluvia; their breath sickens all who come in contact with them. Is not that filthy, whereby churches, chapels and public halls are polluted with ejected quids and tobacco saliva? Smoking cannot be carried on secretly in such places; but wherever it is practiced, its nauseous savor is manifest to all. It wastes time. Mostly every smoker spends some hours each day beside his pillar231of smoke. Golden hours and precious moments are spent in vain. If snuffers (as Earl Stanhope reckoned) spend over two hours each day in their practice, smokers must consume more still. Can mortals, whose days are passing swifter than a weaver's shuttle, afford to lose so much of their time? Can men, whose days are as a shadow, spend one day in ten, or thirty-six annually, in this employment? But how many men spend two hours daily, offering incense to this tobacco-god, who have never spent an hour in a lifetime in humility and secret prayer before the living and true God? Christians who forget their daily devotions, never forget their tobacco. They cannot afford time to read the Bible, but find abundance of time to smoke. Men who cannot find time to think about the end of their existence and the fast-coming future, squander hours daily in smoking. Those who neglect the cultivation of their minds by thinking and reading, devote their time to the pipe. All the time which many can employ apart from hours of toil and repose, they thus willfully waste. It wastes means. It robs a man of money as well as of time. Means needed for higher and important purposes are lavishly spent on tobacco. The consumers are even greater slaves than drunkards, for they know nothing of self-denial. Smokers can never resist the craving of this appetite. They can shut their ears to the cries of want, and the wails of poverty and distress around fireless and foodless homes, but never deny themselves their favorite weed. Wives robed in rags; children naked and starving; squalor, want, and misery, reigning triumphant in their homes, appeal to them in vain. The money spent is enormous. Great Britain blows away in smoke, to darken the understanding and dim mental vision, £10,000,000 annually. If the United States spend proportionately as much as New York city, where over $10,000 are daily spent for cigars, how vast the expenditure! Over $200,000,000 annually, not only wasted, but made instrumental in destroying life and property! How great must be the sum spent annually in our own provinces! It costs a moderate smoker from six to thirty dollars a year. Thousands of our day laborers spend ten dollars a year in tobacco. This sum running at compound interest, would swell up, in about forty years, to $3,000. The money thus spent might furnish many a home with necessaries, and keep many a family in old age. Many of the most inveterate smokers in our land are miserably poor. They cannot find raiment whereby their families may attend school, and they themselves places of worship, and still they justify themselves in consuming, in smoke, what would greatly assist in purchasing these things. Young men and mechanics who are saving nothing for the future, could, with their tobacco money, pay a premium on a life-assurance policy for two thousand dollars. There are those who are supported by the charities of the benevolent who smoke the most of the day and part of the night. Is it right or just then to spend means while there are many objects of necessity all around? Is it right to waste means which could be profitably employed in alleviating misery, wretchedness, and suffering? Will smokers persist in converting their wealth into unsavory smoke, corrupting heaven's pure air, while ignorance, disease, and death might be prevented by the right use of that wealth? Is it not unreasonable that men should impose such heavy taxation upon themselves? If civil government should try to impose a similar tax, the people would revolt in one day, and declare the law the most unreasonable one ever enacted. How can Christians justify their conduct before God? The amount that one spends in ten or twenty years might send many copies of the Bible to the heathen, and many souls might be saved by these books. They are responsible for their money and how they spend it. Responsibility extends to the smallest sum. If two mites cast into the treasury deserved such commendation from the Saviour, what must we think of those professing to serve him, who spend so much in tobacco? Many Christians never miss a smoke in twelve months who fail to help many objects of charity in that time. There are many smoking Christians who never give one cent to further the gospel in any way. I do not understand how any Christian can justify himself in spending six dollars every twelve months for tobacco, who cannot give twenty-five cents to any of the claims of Christ's cause. IT IS AN INJURIOUS HABIT.
If men were only aware of the evil consequences of this custom, they would arise in the might of their manhood and give it up for ever. This age of inquiry demands a reason for tobacco, but no satisfactory reason can be given. Excuses tendered are so trivial and unreasonable that men are now ashamed to mention them. It is injurious physically. The most reliable and distinguished physicians, as well as the most eminent anatomists and physiologists, have recorded their convictions of the injurious effects of tobacco and its tendency to destroy life. Men of thought and integrity, in every land, have endorsed these sentiments. Bodily injuries engendered through this agency are legion. The use of tobacco disturbs the whole system from its normal state. Nature revolts at its first introduction. No man finds it an easy task to use tobacco in any shape. The stomach instantly ejects the nauseous substance; and it is when its natural tone has been changed, and it has been forced into submission by repeated and continued efforts, that either smoker or chewer succeeds, and then he uses it only occasionally and in homœopathic quantities. The weed contains no nutrition, but excites and depresses alternately, and thus wastes the vigor of the nervous system. At once it causes disorder in the digestive organs, by draining from the system saliva, which is an indispensable element in converting the food into blood, and which is as important in its place as the blood itself. Tobacco is a virulent poison, which corrupts the very fountain of life. Medical men of large practice and experience declare that it is a prolific source of dyspepsia; that it produces nervous atrophy, by which it wastes the strongest and most robust bodies to skeletons; it makes the most cheerful and buoyant-spirited hypochondriac, and, in certain cases of constitution, it inevitably leads to insanity. German authorities say, it produces vertigo, blindness, and paralysis. It is an indisputable fact that scurvy has greatly abounded since the general use of tobacco. It is easily shown how destructive it is to animal life. A poultice laid on the pit of the stomach will serve as an emetic. The oil of tobacco inserted into an incision in a pigeon's leg will render its foot useless in two minutes. One drop of the chemical oil of tobacco put on a cat's tongue will produce convulsions and death in one minute. What, then, must be the effects of this acrid salt and strong caustic oil on men who use it constantly for many years? Tobacco so affects the throat that it destroys the voice, and so it has ruined several distinguished singers. In a short time the sweetest voice is changed to raven hoarseness. It is injurious mentally. All the fluids of the body are poisoned by this noxious practice. After long indulgence, the juice permeates the whole system. Signs of injury are especially manifest in the brain—the seat of sensation—and so it directly affects the mind. The relation between the brain and intellectual powers is so intimate that it cannot be otherwise. When any one becomes a victim, his whole life henceforth is as the ocean, subject to storm and calm—storm, when the nerves are excited under the power of the weed; calm, when stupor and lassitude succeed. In this dead, dreamy state, the smoker finds himself incapacitated for any mental exertion whatever. A general state of prostration follows the excitement of indulgence, as in the cases of the drunkard and opium-eater. The power of thinking is paralyzed, volition loses its force, and memory becomes defective. The intellect becomes blighted, and withers under its scathing influence. It unfits for mental effort, which many imagine it aids, and use it for that purpose. Students smoke so as to prepare a hard lesson more efficiently, ministers to prepare a sermon more thoroughly, etc. But the smoke that injures their natural sight extends to their mental powers and darkens the faculties of the mind. Their cure proves their curse, for it has been proved beyond a doubt, that smokers cannot successfully compete with those who are abstainers, in intellectual attainments. It is injurious morally. There can be no doubt but the practice lowers every one who is addicted thereto in the esteem of men. It drags a man down from a dignified position, placing him on a level with the lowest. The educated, refined, and intelligent take caste with the most degraded. This practice leads to other vicious habits, and lays the foundation for drunkenness, which generally accompanies it. It is well said that "There lies coiled up somewhere, some constituent element of the smoker's moral and spiritual character, which corresponds exactly to the filthy habit which he exhibits in the use of tobacco." This practice is very unbecoming in those who are living in view of a higher destiny, for it blunts all the nobler faculties of the soul. This besetting sin of our day is prevalent and universal. The guilt lies upon all who do not discountenance, as well as discontinue, the growth, manufacture, sale, and use of the drug in every possible way. It is high time that reason and common sense should be heard in this matter. Philanthropy, patriotism, right, and religion demand the united efforts of men in crying down, and their strength in pulling down and destroying the tobacco-god, at whose shrine so many constantly bow in reverence. All the defense that men can bring to sustain the usage is, that it is an unnatural and acquired habit, which produces a pleasant sensation, and that they are the slaves of custom overcome by the cravings of appetite, and fascinated and enslaved by its habitual use. They might as well say that they cannot give it up because they love it as the drunkard his glass, and the opium-eater his favorite extract. Some who wax eloquent against other vices are they themselves the veriest slaves to this ignoble practice. Especially is it incongruous in ministers of the gospel, whose characters should be exemplary. How can they consistently urge self-conquest on their hearers respectively, when they themselves crouch under the control of appetite? How can they preach self-denial, while they are still wedded to their weed. How can they urge self-respect to others, when they cast away their own? How can they enjoin economy, when they spend so much upon tobacco? How can they induce others to "redeem the time," when they waste so much themselves? Apart from every higher consideration, politeness and good-breeding, and the social position they occupy, should appeal to smoking ministers. They are setting an example which too many are ready to cite the minister as their pattern. Those who pollute their garments with tobacco, injure their own reputation in the families they visit. In the pulpit, they urge their hearers to eat and drink, and to do everything with an eye single to God's glory; but when they smoke they cannot think they are advancing that glory! They enjoin the people to "Prove all things," and to "Hold fast that which is good;" while they persist in holding to the use of tobacco, which they know to be a great evil. Christians indulge in this pernicious practice until every pore of their bodies is reeking with tobacco. Christians raise the weed on their broad acres. Christians manufacture it for market. Christians buy it and sell it at immense profits. Christian ministers, elders, deacons, and people unite socially to regale themselves with its sickening perfume. The practice is approved by the age, legalized by the State, sanctioned by Christians, and sanctioned by custom. Its evil consequences affect the best interests of society, and still no voice is raised against the crime. The pulpit savors of it; the church is full of its odor. The school and college are in turn smoking rooms. The factory and shop are in danger by those addicted to smoking. Sign-boards that forbid smoking on certain premises are the only voices that cry out against it. Temperance men wink at this source of evil. O tempora! O mores! There was an age when royal voices and religious orders denounced the practice; when medical colleges united with city councils in condemning the barbarous usage, when canons of States, as well as the canons of the church, forbade it under severe penalties, when sultans, popes, and kings issued their royal mandates against it. The evils resulting to society from this usage cannot be touched in a few pages. All who countenance it in any way are aiding in perpetuating the custom subversive of the best interests of our race,—a custom which destroys life, wastes means, and endangers property. When will men espouse the cause of humanity and resist this aggressive evil? When will the churches of these Provinces follow the example of the "United Brethren," who resolved as follows in Virginia lately: “Whereas, The habit of using tobacco is a filthy one, attended with every other expense; is injurious to the health, weakens the intellect, and shortens the life of the individual and his posterity; therefore the habit is a sin against the Almighty God, ourselves, our children, and those by whom we are surrounded; therefore, Resolved, That the ministers of Virginia Conference be advised to discontinue the habit, in all its forms, of using tobacco; and that we may use our influence or power in society against it.” May the sentiments of this resolution be engraved on the heart of every one who reads it; and if any are led to seriously consider the importance of this subject, the aim of the writer has been gained.—JOHN S. ROSS, in Queanbeyan (C. E.) Age.