IS THE MODERATE USE OF TOBACCO INJURIOUS?
THE tobacco-user may insist for years that the drug does him no harm, and wonders why he should at last find himself suffering from tobacco heart, or tobacco blindness, or other grave disease due to the long-continued action of this poisonous drug. He does not comprehend the fact that nature has been all these years battling in his behalf, and has only yielded when unable longer to maintain the struggle. The final collapse comes, not because of nature’s unwillingness or neglect, but because her resources are exhausted. Let the man who suffers from tobacco heart or tobacco blindness cease the use of the drug, and if irreparable damage has not been done, the disturbing symptoms will rapidly disappear; not because nature good-naturedly cooperates with the man when he undertakes to help himself, but because nature, by simply continuing the efforts which she has been making all the time in the man’s behalf, attains success because the man himself has ceased to thwart her efforts by his own wrong-doing.—Selected.