Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 24, 1864

Tobacco - Using. No. 2.

God made man upright—in his own image; but he has sought out many inventions. Fallen and degraded as man now is, there comes with the fall no moral necessity for his adding to his degradation by low and indecent violations of the laws of his physical nature. He has no occasion for dissatisfaction with his natural appetites, while they are rightly treated and kept within due indulgence. All his natural appetites are right in themselves, and, while treated rightly, will all contribute to true happiness and health. It is from undue indulgence of natural appetites, and the creating and fostering of those wholly foreign to his nature, that disease, and suffering, and premature death, are brought on.

Men seem to think they must have, however unnatural and unpromising to health it may be, some one, at least, favorite indulgence. And tobacco-using has become, to the vast majority of men, that favorite. Instead of studying the true economy of life, calculating their highest earthly interests, and trusting in the unabused resources of nature for the enjoyment of life, they madly seek to make themselves happy by indulgences which are unnatural, uncongenial to the constitution, and bring on early old age, and a premature grave.

The remark is often made, in reference to this habit, as well as in multiplied other instances, "I want to enjoy life while I do live:" as much as to say, "The God of nature has given us such meagre natural resources of happiness, that it becomes necessary for us to get up artificial means,—means contrary to nature, and in direct conflict with the law of Deity revealed in the human constitution." How foolish men are to indulge the idea that they can excel the skill of the Almighty in establishing ways and means of human happiness!

While men are resorting to such agents in securing the desired ends of life, they are digging away, most effectually, the underpinning of the house they live in; so that, though it may stand to-day, looking as though it would remain safe a hundred years to come, to-morrow it falls with fearful crash, because the last stone that bore it up is torn away. Nature will bear abuse as long as she can, without complaint; but by and by she will utter groans of agony, and cease to maintain her equilibrium. That man is insane who indulges the idea of increasing his amount of happiness in this life, by seeking to do it at the expense of the true resources of Nature.

The Creator has supplied, even to this fallen world, abundant resources for the comfort and happiness of man. He has caused the earth to bring forth plentifully its rich fruits, to supply him with the most healthful nutrition to support his vitality. He has also given a natural appetite for these fruits; so that while they give strength and vigor, they also give pleasure to his physical tastes,—while he is delighting his taste in their luxuriousness, he is supporting life.

But when he resorts to tobacco, or any other unnatural thing, to add to the enjoyment of human life, he is actually diminishing it. While he resorts to this, he is doing violence to his natural instincts; and those instincts, thus mutilated and crushed, become gradually paralysed and insensible; so that they can no longer rightly appreciate the true luxuries which the Creator has furnished for our comfort and benefit. The most delicious fruits, which so delight the unabused natural taste, become to the tobacco-user comparatively stale and tasteless. The real enjoyment to be derived from them is less, because that deadly weed has weakened the sensibility of his natural appetites.

Besides impairing our natural physical tastes, it deadens our natural mental tastes. The Author of nature has furnished abundant resources of beauty for the delight of the mind, through the optic, auditory, and olfactory avenues. But this deadly narcotic stifles their perceptive and discriminating powers. A profound worshiper of this demon weed is less able to appreciate any beauty in the flowery field, the harmony of voices, or the odor of natural perfumery. His susceptibilities to these divinely instituted luxuries of human life, are oppressed and benumbed. He makes an exchange of these heaven-born delights, for that loathsome, inconvenient, and sub-brutish violation of nature.

While the natural sensibilities of the unmarcotized man are awake to the variegated beauties furnished by the different kingdoms of nature, the tobacco-user's chief delight is confined to puffing and champing the dirty plug, and spitting in all directions its abominable fluids. While the one is feasting on the rich luxuries which Heaven has spread over earth, the other, a bond-slave, is working hard at the tobacco-mill, grinding the weed, expressing its juice, and spreading its odor, and essence upon everything within its reach.

The drunkard drinks because he wants to enjoy himself. He, too, wants to live while he does live. And if he indulges only with moderate drunkenness, he is not wasting as rapidly his true resources of life and comfort, as he who gluts himself with that more deadly poison, tobacco. He uses an article which burns up the vital powers by its stimulus merely. But tobacco besides possessing a burning power by virtue of its stimulus, continually deadens and paralyzes the vital energies of the body by its narcotic properties.

If a man possessing a large fortune should squander it in costly entertainments and extravagant enjoyments, till he had reduced himself to poverty and beggary, would he not label himself, in the eyes of all who knew him, a consummate fool? And is he less a fool who is guilty of squandering property of higher value than oceans of gold, which Providence has cast into his hands? What sane man will waste the vital properties of his nature, destroy his health, and make himself a miserable sufferer for the rest of life? Who squanders the greater wealth, and who the greater fool, he who squanders silver and gold, houses and lands, or he who treats with shameless wantonness the life and health which God has given him?

If man would pay the same respect to his own instincts which the dumb animals are accustomed to do,—if he would behave himself with as much propriety in this respect as the brute creation, he would save himself from vast suffering. If he would follow the example of the brute, in scorning the taste of this deadly poisonous vegetable, he would elevate his own dignity. But, in using it, he degrades himself below the level of the brute. He takes that into his mouth which the brute creation, as a standing rule, will not eat. There are but three kinds of animals which generally will taste it. The Rock Goat of Africa, whose stench is so insufferable that no other animal can approach it, the Tobacco Worm, whose intolerable image gives to every beholder an involuntary shudder, and one other sort of non-descript animal, whose tobacco froth-ings and spittings defile his own visage, bespatter and bedaub everything within his reach; who besmudges and pollutes the atmosphere with his nauseous fumigations, and whose Stygian breath seems to denote approximation to some bottomless pit.

Tobacco is a narcotic stimulant. Its character, in this respect, resembles that of opium, but possesses greater power in the same form. It gives an unhealthy stimulus to the nervous system, which is followed by a narcotic or deadening influence. Its narcotic and paralyzing power is not easily discerned while its stimulus is kept up; nor is the re-acting and debilitating influence of alcohol detected while some degree of its intoxication is continued. But let any one, long accustomed to the stimulus of tobacco, cease to use it for forty-eight hours, and he will probably have a fair view of its narcotic and destroying power. The whole nervous system will be found prostrated; the power of muscular exertion greatly diminished; the mind exceedingly deranged and prostrated; the memory gone; the disposition disturbed. In short, the whole man is found in a debilitated, deranged, topsy-turvy condition, which defies description. Here may be seen the power of this destroying angel upon the body, soul, and spirit, by its narcotic properties.

It gradually supplants the vital energies of the body. Natural vitality is being driven out, and the narcotic stimulus of tobacco is taking its place. Genuine vitality is being dispersed and wasted, and a counterfeit is being furnished. Instead of a healthy electric fluid circulating throughout the nerves,—instead of a healthy vital force pervading the nervous system,—there is found the deadly narcotic power of this poison, sending its exciting and paralyzing influence into every nerve of the body.

This is a perversion of Divine law. As before said, Nature bears ill-treatment without murmuring as long as she can, so that the user of this poison verily flatters himself that it is harmless. He goes on destroying his native vitality, and supplying this counterfeit, to which he has become so strongly attached; feeling the glow of hourly excitement which it gives, without perceiving the waste going on in his natural vitality, till Nature, no longer able to bear abuse, bows down under her cruel load. And even then, such is the blinding nature of this infernal charm, that the sufferer does not perhaps perceive the true cause of this wreck of health, but tries to quiet himself under the Heaven-insulting idea that this is a visitation of Providence.

By way of proving that tobacco drives out natural vitality, as just stated, let the use of it be discontinued a few days, and he will soon find his vital energies weakened; and if a large consumer, he will find them exceedingly prostrated. His natural energies of life and of mind will be so far prostrated, that he will be ready to conclude that his very continuance in life depends upon his return to the deadly thing; and though he may have supposed his resolution to quit it to be strong, there are nine chances in ten that, like the dog, he will return to his vomit again.

Its work of destruction on the powers of life, as before remarked, is generally unperceived. If it would kill men suddenly, with as much certainty as it is killing them gradually, they would be frightened into its disuse. But, though gradual in its work of ruin, it kills as truly as though its first touch was death.

Tobacco as truly intoxicates the brain and nerves as does alcohol. The word "intoxicate" is derived from two Greek words, en and toxon; the toxon was an arrow dipped in poison, to render its wound more certainly fatal. He who had received this into his flesh was intoxicated. He, too, who receives any other poison into his system, has a measure of intoxication proportioned to its power and quantity. Tobacco being a more powerful poison than any other used by the known world as a luxury, it therefore more powerfully intoxicates the system than any other. Though it is not now pushed to an extent which results in immediate insanity, like alcohol, yet its tendency is that way; and the habit of depending on its intoxicating properties is more steadfast, unremitting, and unconquerable.

The more inveterate the poison habitually used, the more powerful are its chains binding to slavery. Those who have been addicted habitually to alcohol and tobacco, and have quit them both, will uniformly testify that it was almost infinitely more difficult to conquer the latter than the former.

The degree of morbid excitement which it produces is not generally known. The smoking of a single cigar will create such a degree of fever as to increase the number of the pulse from fifteen to twenty beats in a minute. The pulse which beats naturally seventy strokes per minute will be increased to eighty-five or ninety. Such, too, is the effect of chewing. No man can be constantly provoking such a febrile action of his system, without gradually exhausting the forces of physical life.

Objection is sometimes raised against the proof of its poisonous power, on the ground that men live under its use to old age. So, too, some live to old age who have kept themselves literally pickled in alcoholic liquor. Some have lived to advanced age who were habitual opium-eaters. Do these instances prove the habitual use of opium and alcohol to insure health and longevity? They only prove the native strength and firmness of their natural constitutions; and enhance the guilt of those whose habits show a disregard for the possession of such blessings. The habit of using this article tends to lessen its immediately perceptible effect. But what is the true philosophy of this? How is it that a man by habit can use such a quantity, and not kill himself outright? The answer presents a fearful truth. It is this: the habit of using it tends to stupefy and paralyze the immediate sensibility of the nervous system to its properties. The more it is used, the less vivid are the nervous susceptibilities to it. And that deadening process is going on as long as the tobacco shall continue to be used. And in the latter part of life, if not before, its deadly workings will more clearly develop themselves in local diseases, or in the form of a broken constitution.

Nature's feelers after danger, set to watch day and night for her safety, become stupid and insensible, by being long drugged with narcotics. Her physical perceptions are comparatively destroyed. They lie prostrate and trodden under foot of her assassins. Their voice is hushed, and the destroyers riot undetected, till her habitation is demolished; and she, ravished of her virtue and her pride, is abandoned to wantonness and ruin.

The habitual use of any poison will produce analogous results. Habitual opium-eaters so overcome the susceptibility of the nervous system to an immediate recognition of the narcotic power of this drug, that they only perceive its stimulating properties, and verily think they are made better by its use. So, too, persons may for a long time continue taking arsenic, till they can bear a quantity that would destroy the life of two or three persons, who should divide the same quantity between them for a first dose.

In like manner as the continuance in crime tends to stupefy the conscience, so the continuance of poisons to the body blunts its susceptibility to impressions. Want of conscience, or its obtuseness by oft-repeated crime, does not relieve the weight of real guilt; nor do oft-repeated poisons to the body diminish their intrinsic power. Though unseen for a time, their inundating forces upon the foundation of health and life will finally manifest themselves; and perhaps too late to make amends.

Many chewers of tobacco take enough every day to kill any three men who never used it before, if compelled to use it in the same way for the same time. Take one man's twenty-four hours quantum, cut it into three equal parts, and give them to three men, compelling them to use the article in the same way, and they would all be, within twenty-four hours, dead men. Although men paralyze the susceptibility of their nerves to its perceptible power, yet its poison is there, and takes permanent lodgment in the system. The habit of using it does not lessen its really poisonous property, but only the susceptibility of the nerves to take cognizance of its presence and destructive potency.

The use of tobacco, as already stated, not only strikes a deadly blow on the nerves, but sends its essences throughout all the fluids of the body. The tobacco flavor, denoting the presence of its essential properties, can be detected in the blood taken from a tobacco-user's veins. Every drop of blood that passes through his heart, that circulates through his arteries, and flows back through his veins, is flavored and impregnated with the essence of this offensive drug. And from this tobacconized blood the secretions of the various glands and membranes of the whole body are made; so that every drop of the fluids of the whole system becomes saturated with the foul tincture.

Tobacco is not only carried with the circulating fluids, but into all the solids. In proof of this, it is an incontrovertible fact that the race of human beings called cannibals—from their habit of eating human flesh—detect in the flesh of tobacco-users, by the flavor and the taste, the presence of the article, and cast that flesh aside, as unfit for their use. The reputation of human flesh, among cannibals, therefore, is destroyed by being tobacconized.

The use of the article would destroy, also, the reputation of the hog fatted for pork. Let a farmer bring his pork to market; and on being asked how it was fatted, if he should say, "Fatted chiefly on tobacco," no man of sense—not even the tobacco-chewer or smoker himself—would purchase the pork. Such would be the intuitive perception of the unavoidable tobacconization of the flesh thus fatted, that every one would reject it, at any price, as unfit for market.

(To be continued.)