TOBACCO ON HEALTH

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 14, 1864

TOBACCO ON HEALTH

Tobacco - Using. No. 5.

TOBACCO ON HEALTH.

In addition to its deadly work on internal organs, and the general circulation of the fluids of the body, its effects are found on its surface. The skin is constantly impregnated with it, and is giving off its essences through the exhalent vessels. The perspiration, whether sensible or insensible, is tinctured with it. It prepares the skin to imbibe other hurtful agencies from the atmosphere. And not only this, but the skin of the tobacco-user is constantly giving off influences detrimental to those who are in close contact with him. Many a tobacco-user's wife, by constant sleeping with him has suffered ill-health. It is very easy to see the philosophy of this. The whole circulating fluids of her husband's body are impregnated with the poisonous stuff; his skin is consequently giving off a measure of those influences. The tobacco, affecting also his nervous system, affects his whole electrical circulation. The electricity of his body is impaired and poisoned by it; and his skin is constantly giving off those electrical influences. Why is it bad for young persons to sleep with aged people? Because of the electrical influences growing out of immediate personal contiguity. So the wife, by immediate contiguity with her husband, receives hurtful agencies from his body, saturated with tobacco.

No tobacco-user, therefore, is fit for a bed companion. He is giving forth pestilential vapors from all the pores of his skin. He is an embodiment of perpetual miasm. The immediate atmosphere surrounding him is inevitably impregnated and polluted with the constant effluvia which emanates from his whole surface. He becomes a perfect walking distillery of the deadly essence, sending forth its fumes and vapors into the surrounding atmosphere. His mouth is the mill which grinds out the weed, and his whole body the distillery for its essence. Put a chewer or smoker into a vapor bath, with no tobacco in the room, and in a short time the whole room will be strongly scented with tobacco effluvia that has emanated from his body. Put him into a warm bath, and get up perspiration; then put that water upon flies, or the vermin of plants, and it will instantly destroy them.

As just remarked, the influence of this article on the skin prepares it to imbibe hurtful agencies from the atmosphere. The man who uses it—other things being equal—is more liable to be affected by any atmospheric disease. The morbid condition of the skin, as well as internal surfaces, exposes the system to miasmatic and epidemic influences, which, otherwise, Nature could wholly, or comparatively, ward off. That fearful disease, the cholera, is vastly aided in its dreadful ravages by this means.

According to some statistics by Dr. Mussey, it appears that in 1833, Havana, with a population of 120,000, lost in a few weeks 16,000 people by the cholera. In Havana it is estimated that $10,000 worth of cigars are used daily. In Matanzas, with a population of 12,000, the cholera swept away 1500. Here is an eighth of the whole population in both places destroyed.

It is stated that in Campeachy, Mexico, about one quarter of the population died of cholera. Here it is said "everybody smokes cigars;" even children of

two years old. It can be plainly seen that, in the Western and Southern States, where tobacco is more extensively used than in the Eastern States, cholera was more fatal than in the latter section.

Tobacco injures the constitution materially, also, by perverting the healthful agency on the glands of the mouth. The Creator, for wise purposes, put three pairs of glands in the mouth, called salivary glands. They are made for a specific purpose; to supply a fluid, called saliva, to be mixed with the food intended for nourishment, and prepare it for the stomach; without which the food is unfitted for the process of digestion, and for the nourishment of the body. While the food is being finely masticated by the teeth, these glands throw out their fluid, and it becomes intimately mixed with the fine particles of the morsel, which prepares it for the labor of the stomach.

Without the intimate mixture of this fluid with the finely broken particles of the food, it is impossible that what we eat shall fully answer the purpose for which it should be taken. The organs intended for its digestion cannot faithfully perform their several offices upon it. They cannot extract the proper amount of nourishment from it. The food consequently passes through the system without imparting that amount of nutrition for which Nature has designed it. Tobacco usurps the whole service of these glands, and stealthily carries off their secretions from their appropriate purposes. It causes the chewer to throw away this health-sustaining, life-preserving fluid. He is spitting away an essential element of his vitality. This is the great cause why tobacco-users are a much leaner set of men, as a general rule, than others. This shows how it is, also, that some who have ceased their spitting, and have swallowed their tobacco-juice, have increased in flesh. Swallowing the juice would be far more fatal, so far as simply the tobacco is concerned, because by so doing they get more of its poison. But saving the saliva—a fluid so essential to life—more than compensates for the increased damages of swallowing the syrup. This shows the great value of saliva for the purposes of life and health; the great service in the digestive process, and the extraction of nutrition from food for the support of the body; and its importance in preserving the tone and vigor of the digestive functions.

Tobacco perverts this Divine arrangement in another way. It brings these glands into unnatural exertion. It not only stimulates them by acting on their nervous susceptibilities, but sets on them by mechanical pressure. The act of chewing, whatever may be the substance, calls these glands into action by the motion of the jaws, and the muscles which sustain them. While the muscles of the mouth are at work, these glands are constantly secreting their fluid. The chewer of tobacco keeps his masticating apparatus constantly at work: while he is awake there is no cessation. So these glands are kept evermore at labor. They never find time to rest, and their fluid is constantly flowing.

This makes a very great draft upon the system. This secretion, of course, is formed from the blood, and costs the system an amount of this vital fluid which it cannot afford to spare. It is like a largely running issue or ulcer; it is draining the body of its vitality. It is like any other morbid or excessive secretion. How soon will Diabetes drain the system of its healthy blood! This extra secretion and exit of fluid in this way weaken the whole system. Almost a continued stream of this saliva is running from the mouth; so much so, that, especially considering its polluted state, a wish has often been in my heart, that a long tube could be fastened steadfast to every mouth containing tobacco, that would reach into some deep sewer, or some far-off quagmire, where the unwholesome, filthy, sickening stream could discharge itself, for the safety of 'all the world,' and the peace of 'the rest of mankind.'

Not only is tobacco-chewing doing this injurious work, but smoking also. The glands are in this case operated on, not only by its stimulus, but by the effort of the mouth in making its draft upon the pipe or cigar. Smoking, probably, does not make so great a draft upon these glands, as chewing; yet it keeps up a great taxation on them. Smoking may not do as great damage to health in this way, as chewing; but it probably makes as great, if not greater, inroad upon the natural arrangement of the nervous system, and the good quality of the blood. The essence of tobacco, in chewing or smoking, mixes with that portion of the saliva which is not spit off, but passes through the digestive organs into the circulation; so that it not only imparts the saliva for subserving the purposes of healthy digestion, but enters, with all its vile properties, into the rivers and streams of life.

Persons leaving off tobacco invariably find, after giving Nature a chance to recover herself from the effects of the abuses she has received, that they improve in health and flesh. This invariable, uniform testimony—where everything else is right—gives positive proof of its destroying agency. Some have excused themselves for using it, on the ground of being too corpulent; for the purpose of keeping down their flesh. This plea might have some little plausibility in it, provided the Creator of his body had perpetrated a blunder in his physical arrangement, and made him fatter than he intended. But this plea will not do; no blunder has been made in the original economy of his being. His system is made right, and will work right, if no violation of organic law shall derange it; and if any hereditary influence from violated law in his progenitors is bearing on him, his better way is, so to discipline himself into the path of Nature's law, that Nature herself can overcome, as far as possible, any such embarrassments; and then let him be content with being as fat as Nature originally intended him.

The great trouble is, as a general rule, that these fleshly, squabby men are too fond of pork and beef; of rich greasy gravies and fixings; and of other so-called good things of life. If they would curtail their rule of life to the principle of EATING TO LIVE, rather than LIVING TO EAT, they might be relieved from the burden of corpulency. When a man confesses himself so illy made that he is obliged to resort to such an unnatural, uncomely habit to bring him right, he makes an admission that is not only degrading human nature, but which cannot be true. In too many of these cases, there is another, and the more difficult argument to counteract, hid behind the curtain—the hardest argument in all the world to meet; it is embraced in three small words, which, if uttered by them, would stand thus, 'I LOVE IT.'

But the great and momentous question for every lover of tobacco to settle is, which will he value most—which love the strongest—health or tobacco: which prize the highest, health and soundness, or the deadly weed with its filthy gratifications! For he cannot always have both. If he will choose the latter, he must sooner or later part with the former.

The medical faculty have been greatly in fault on this subject. They have not brought their knowledge of the laws of life, and of the real properties of tobacco, to a bearing. They have recommended this dreadful poison as a medicine, without counting the cost; and they have not cried aloud against the extensive and destructive habit of tobacco-using as a luxury. They have not been ready to perceive and declare the deadly doings of this article in their patients, where this has been an important, if not the only cause of complaint.

While passing on the Gulf of Mexico, a man on board the steamer fell in conversation with me on the subject of his health. His case was complicated. He had dyspepsia, torpid liver, palpitating heart, weakness of spine—in short, almost everything that could grow out of a ruined nervous system. He was a man of apparently temperate habits, in the common use of the phrase, but had been from very early life—now about thirty-five—an inveterate tobacco chewer and smoker. No other great cause seemed to account for his complaint. He was now returning from a visit to two different cities for medical advice; but finding himself no better, was returning without hope of recovery.

What pained me more than all in this case was, to find not one of his medical advisers had even hinted to him that tobacco was doing him harm. Not one had discovered that this, which most obviously had done the whole mischief, was the cause of his complaints. After listening to me a while on this matter, he ejected his huge cud into the sea, threw away his tobacco, and solemnly declared it should never more have a chance to destroy him. He kept his pledge while we remained together on the boat, and if he has continued to subdue this created fleshly lust, he probably finds himself recovered or recovering from his complaints.

(To be continued.)