A Menace Rivaling the Evils of Alcohol by Daniel H. Kress, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 7, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 26.

A Menace Rivaling the Evils of Alcohol

By Daniel H. Kress, M. D.

The Cigarette as a Mind and Body Destroyer — The Host of Boys Addicted to the Habit — A Growing Number of Women Who Smoke — The Danger-Signal Should Be Hoisted

By DANIEL H. KRESS, M. D.

DR. KRESS is a regular medical practitioner with an unusual variety of opportunities for study and observation, not merely in different parts of this country, but in his travels abroad. He has taken even more interest in the study of reforms that promote and preserve health than in the rather prescribed practise of healing those who are broken down by disease, although his work as an ordinary physician has been extensive.

His interest in a reformatory way has led him into wide research of the cigarette evil, particularly among school children. His investigations and work have been favorably and quite extensively commented upon by the press.

Two articles from his pen upon this subject will follow. The next one will give a brief history of the use of tobacco in various nations; and the last will tell something about the insanity, the criminality, and the susceptibility to disease that may be traced to the cigarette.

HEART PULSATIONS AS SHOWN BY SPHYGMOGRAPH

THE cigarette is to-day one of the worst evils of civilization. It contains one of the most subtle and deadly of all poisons. There are few substances that destroy life more rapidly.

EIGHT DROPS KILLS A HORSE

A few puffs of tobacco smoke will immediately destroy insects on plants. One drop of nicotin — the active poison found in tobacco — placed on the tongue of a cat will cause death in less than four minutes. Two drops will kill a good-sized dog, and eight drops is sufficient to kill a horse.

In every cigar of moderate strength there is sufficient nicotin to kill two or three men. Fortunate it is, for the smoker, that not all the nicotin is absorbed. Most of it is thrown into the air surrounding the tobacco user, to be inhaled by his friends.

CREATES UNNATURAL THIRST

The use of tobacco creates an unnatural thirst, and invariably tends toward the use of beer and other stronger drinks. In the countries where the tobacco habit is most prevalent, we find alcoholic drinks used most freely. Nearly all drunkards are tobacco users, and nearly all begin with tobacco and follow it by strong drink, or some other drug, as cocain, heroin, etc.

The use of tobacco is especially injurious to the young, preventing the development of both mind and body, and the result is physical, mental, and moral deterioration.

IT LESSENS VISION

It lessens the acuteness of vision. The changes in the optic nerves are brought about gradually and insidiously, and for this reason many do not realize the damage wrought, until too late. Many of the accidents by land and by sea could be traced to defective vision instead of fogs, etc., if a little effort were made. At present the Canadian government finds it necessary to reject about two thirds of her young recruits for the navy, owing to impaired vision due to the cigarette. The state of Massachusetts is obliged to reject a similar proportion of young applicants for the navy.

THE TOBACCO HEART

"Tobacco heart" is common in men of forty to fifty years, and the mortality from heart failure is rapidly increasing. Men who smoke before they go on the running track or into the gymnasium quickly get out of breath, while the same men, if they abstain from smoking before exercising, have good wind.

The fact that tobacco weakens a man's wind and lessens his endurance, affords the best positive proof that it shortens life; for the power to live long means simply the power to breathe well and endure long the physical strains and emergencies to which the body and especially the heart is continually subjected during life.

GREATER CURSE THAN ALCOHOL

I regard tobacco, because of its prevalent use by boys, a greater curse to the human family than is alcohol.

The boys of to-day will be the men of to-morrow. Whenever a boy takes up with the cigarette, a good man is buried. The boy who begins the use of cigarettes at ten to twelve years of age is usually handicapped for life. He seldom passes his entrance examinations for high school. He is a failure in any profession he may take up later in life.

Morally he is inferior to the abstainer from cigarettes. The crimes of to-day are committed usually by boys or young men; and in almost every case, these young criminals are cigarette addicts.

Not only is the user himself injured by the smoke he inhales, but the air about him is poisoned by the exhalation through his lungs and skin, and all who are obliged to be near him suffer. Fathers need not be surprised to have their boys continue tobacco smoke inhalation by the use of cigarettes as soon as they are able to do so, if they have been previously compelled to live in a tobacco-laden atmosphere and inhale the smoke. The habit had been formed before they took up with the cigarette. Many an infant is slowly poisoned by sleeping in the room or in the bed with a tobacco-using father. Many a wife has been made an invalid by sleeping alongside a tobacco-saturated husband, from whose body emanated deadly odors.

It would be considered a crime for a man to go through the country contaminating or poisoning the water-supply of our cities. Is it not strange that we should permit this wholesale poisoning of the air that others have to breathe, the purity of which is much more essential than that of water?

PREVALENT AMONG WOMEN

The tobacco habit is becoming quite prevalent among women — not as yet to a very great degree in public, for sentiment is against it; but the present indications are that this sentiment will soon vanish, and that in the near future the sight of women smoking in public, the same as men, will be no uncommon thing.

Two hundred years ago, public sentiment was as much against the use of tobacco in public among men, as it now is against its use by women — in fact, more so, for those who were found thus using it were punished as criminals.

Woman has an equal right with man to use tobacco. If tobacco is a blessing to men, let us encourage its use among women, and among children as well. If it is a curse, let the fathers acknowledge the fact, and be consistent enough to abandon the use of the stuff, and then let them discourage its use among their wives and children. Let them teach by example as well as by precept, and results will follow. Until fathers set the right example, we can not hope to accomplish much in our efforts to suppress the use of cigarettes among boys through educational or legislative efforts.

THE PREACHERS AFRAID TO SPEAK

The use of tobacco is so general that few ministers dare, from their pulpits, make mention of it as an evil; and owing to the money received for advertisements, few papers dare say all they would like to say on the subject. There is no one evil to-day that is doing more to neutralize the efforts of the ministry than the use of this drug. The boy who uses cigarettes has no relish for things religious. He is not found in church services or Sunday-school. The cheap moving-picture show, the tango, or the pool-room is more in accord with the lowered moral plane on which he lives.

INCREASED FOUR HUNDRED PER CENT

During the past ten years, the use of cigarettes has increased over four hundred per cent. In some of our public schools I

DR. KRESS TESTING THE DEGREE TO WHICH SMOKING HAS AFFECTED A BOY'S HEART ACTION

have found ninety per cent of the young fellows to be victims of the cigarette. In others, the percentage is considerably lower; but the assertion can be made safely that eighty per cent of all our boys will become smokers before they reach the age of twenty years. This is a conservative estimate. And all, practically, will begin with the cigarette, and the great majority of them before reaching the age of fourteen years.

The average consumption of cigarettes in America is about twelve hundred for every male inhabitant over ten years of age. This is a drug addiction that stands side by side with that of opium, heroin, and cocaine, and it binds its victims about as securely as do these other drugs. Yet little is said against it from the pulpit or by the public press.

The time is coming when we shall be compelled to suppress the use of tobacco in America, as in China they are now suppressing the use of opium.