A Victim of Tobacco

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1879

A Victim of Tobacco.

THE case of Maurice O'Connell, the Fair Haven grocerman who was taken to the Almshouse a day or two ago, is a sad one. He is only twenty-eight years old, and has a wife and two children. When he came to this country he was the owner of property to the value of some ten thousand dollars, which had been left to him as his share of his father's estate. He became an habitual and inveterate smoker, and his nervous system became so affected that his brain was injured, and insanity followed. Dr. Francis Bacon and other physicians warned him of the danger of smoking so much, but he failed to give up the habit. He was sent to the Middletown Asylum, and there, deprived of the means of gratifying his appetite, improved and was discharged as cured. But once out he again resorted to narcotic stimulants, and again became insane. This is the second time he has been sent to the Almshouse. The bulk of his property, it is said, is gone. — N. Y. Evening Post.

And yet a great many professing Christians, even ministers of the gospel, use tobacco, with no seeming regard as to its effect on their own bodies, or the influence of their example in the world.—Evangelist.