Tobacco Effects: Classic Articles

Welcome to some classic articles on tobacco effects, early exposés of the dangers of tobacco, facts you don't normally find in the mass media, due to the tobacco taboo.
Tobacco pushers and their accessories conceal the breadth of tobacco effects, the enormity of the tobacco holocaust, and the long record of documentation.
The concealment process is called the "tobacco taboo." Other pertinent words are "censorship" and "disinformation."
The classic tobacco effects articles constitute early exposés of tobacco dangers. They cite facts you don't normally ever see, due to the "tobacco taboo."
The phrase "tobacco taboo" is the term for the pro-tobacco censorship policy—to not report most effects of tobacco.
As you will see, information about the tobacco danger was being circulated long, long before the famous 1964 Surgeon General Report. Be prepared.

CONTENTS

1.—Fontanelle's 'Tobacco Poisoning' (1836) Fontanelle

2.—"Physiological Indictment" (1904) Am. Med.

3.—Carter's "Alcohol and Tobacco" (1906) Carter

4.—Gray's "Boy and Cigarette Habit" (1909) Gray

Fontanelle - 1836
"Death occurred in nearly all of the cases of nicotine poisoning within a few minutes to a few hours . . . ."—Julia Fontanelle, 2 Jour. de Chimie Med. 652 (1836).

"A Physiologic Indictment against Tobacco"
American Medicine pages 680-681 (23 April 1904)
The latest report that we have received from the Old World of special importance in relation to the influence of the use of tobacco on the human economy is decidedly against its reputation. It represents the promiscuous employment of "the weed" as antagonistic to the survival of the human race. The cigarette has been brought up in scientific custody, charged by Dr. Le Tuge de Segrais, of Luchon [Ed. Note: France], with the infliction upon its too confiding devotees, of the physiologic mutilation of impotence. The prosecution was opened in the pages of the Archives Générales de Médecine, and the charge has been further maintained by the corroborative testimony of Dr. Georges Petit, who conducted experiments on a number of conspicuously philoprogenitive animals—dogs, cocks,
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rabbits, and guinea pigs—by the various methods of inhalation (of smoke) of gastric injections, and of rectal enemas. Sclerotic changes were induced by such procedures, in the testes and ovaries, respectively, of the animals subjected to experiment. Coming from the chosen land [Ed. Note: France] of dwindling population and decreasing families, such information deserves special attention.
Ed. Note: Writings
by Dr. Georges Petit
Guide des Travaux Pratiques de Chimie à l'école de Médecine de Paris (Paris: Société d''éditions Scientifiques, 1893, 1894)
Manuel Préparatoire aux Examens de Chirurgien-dentiste: Rédigé suivant le Programme de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, et suivi d'un Questionnaire (Paris: Société d'éditions Scientifiques, 1897)
Physiologie, Physique Biologique, Chimie Biologique; Programme & Questionnaire avec Réponses en 10 Leçons (Paris, Société d'éditions Scientifiques, 1898)
Pour nos Enfants; Conseils d'hygiène Physique et Morale (Paris, Société d'éditions Scientifiques, 1898)
Le Tabac, Conférence faite à l'Université Populaire (Paris, Société contre l'Abus du Tabac, 1901)
Le Tabagisme & son Traitement: Revue des Principaux moyens employés pour Combattre la Tabacomanie, et les Accidents Causés par l'abus du Tabac (Paris: Société contre l'Abus du Tabac, 1902)
Étude Médico-psychologique sur Edgar Poe (Lyon, A. Storck, 1905; and Paris; Lyon: A. Maloine, 1906)
Les "Petit" Medecins (Etude Historique) (Paris: 1912)
Essai sur une Variété de Pseudo-hallucinations: Les Auto Représentations Aperceptives (Bordeaux: Y. Cadoret, 1913)
And see background on French anti-smoking observations, research and activism in that era, cited by Meta Lander, The Tobacco Problem (1882), pages
12-13 (activism overview),
63 (second-hand smoke death),
64 (tobacco poisoning),
71-73 (harming students' intellect),
76 (premature death),
84-85 (youth symptoms),
94 (impaired pulse),
97 (memory loss),
124 (insanity),
143 (mouth cancer),
144 (paralysis),
151 (color blindness),
152 (injuring children),
379 (Victor Hugo, nonsmoker), and
383 (adverse impact on animals).

For more data from that era on tobacco's depopulation impact, see Dr. Hippolyte Adéon Depierris (1810-1889), Physiologie Sociale: Le Tabac, Qui Contient Le Plus Violent des Poisons, La Nicotine Abrége-t-il l'Existence? Est-il Cause de la Dégénérescence Physique et Morale des Sociétés Modernes? (Paris, Dentu, 1876, reprinted and edited, E. Flammarion, 1898) and his La Tabac et la Famille: Il Cause la Rareté et la Sterilité des mariages, la Débilité Native et la Mortalité des Enfants, la Dépopulation des Pays (Paris: E. Dentu, 1881).
Modern French writings on tobacco include the following:
Émile Lévy, Le Coût Social du Tabac (Paris: Dunod, 1977)
Jean François Lemaire, Le Tabagisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980)

And in this connection, it is interesting to note that in the quaint and rare volume published by the French explorer, André Thevet [1502-1590], who went (in 1555) to America with the object of taking part in the foundation of a French colony near the mouth of the Rio Janeiro, there is special mention made of the anti-aphrodisiac properties of tobacco. In Les Singularités de la France Antartique, autrement nommé Amerique, et de plusieurs Torres et Isles déconvertes de nostre temps [Ed. Note: (Paris: Heritiers de Maurice de la Porte, 1557; reprinted Lilly: Christophe Plantin, 1558; Venice: Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, 1561; London: Henry Bynneman, 1568 and 1658; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1900 and 1987; São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1944; New York: 1869; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1878; Paris: Le Temps, 1982; Paris: La Découverte/Maspero, 1983; Paris: Chandeigne, 1997)], a quarto dear to the heart of the bibliomaniac, and bearing the date 1558, this observant traveler tells us that "the women in America forbeare the taking of tobacco, because that they have been taught that it will hinder conception and bodily lust" (Parkinson's paraphrase). What physiologist, even in the twentieth century, can be absolutely confident that he has made an undeniably original discovery!
Ed. Note: "When something 'new' in medical literature is published, it is a wise precaution to read previous literature on the subject—that 'something new' may not really be new."—Alison B. Froese and Prof. A. Charles Bryan, "High Frequency Ventilation," 123 Am Rev Resp Dis (#3) 249-250 (March 1981).
Tobacco-caused deterioration, personal and national, has long been reported, as per a lengthy list of references.

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"Alcohol and Tobacco"
by Robert Brudenell Carter, M.D. (1828-1918)
250 Littell's Living Age 479-493 (1906)
A large amount of attention has of late been directed, by sanitarians, philanthropists, and social reformers, to the possible action upon the community, and especially upon the young, of the national habits in relation to the consumption of alcohol and of tobacco, even in cases in which these habits do not approach the confines of what would commonly be described as excess. At a meeting recently held in the City of London, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor, men of business were seriously invited, by medical
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and other speakers, to consider the possibly detrimental effect of the ordinary use of alcohol upon "commercial efficiency"; and juvenile smoking is beginning to be seriously regarded by many observers as at least an element in producing an alleged tendency towards physical deterioration among important sections of the English people.
In these circumstances the prominent positions held by alcohol and tobacco as contributors to the national revenue, as the bases of great industries, and as sources of gratification to many thousands of persons, although they should in no way render us unmindful of any evil influences which the agents in question may exert, should undoubtedly render us careful in scrutinizing the character and value of any evidence which may be brought against them.
If we take first the effects of alcohol. It is much to be regretted in the interests of truth, that the attainment of complete scientific knowledge of these effects has been impeded by a certain element of fanaticism which has frequently been displayed by the advocates of total abstinence, even when they have been persons from whom calmness of judgment and adherence to fact might not unreasonably have been expected; and, among the forms of mischief brought about by this fanaticism, none have been more manifest than those of a reactionary character, producing a popular tendency to dismiss, as exaggerations, even the most reasonable warnings against the seductions of indulgence. No one, probably, now denies the ill-consequences which attend upon alcoholic excess, or seeks to palliate the evils of habitual drunkenness; but the question of the legitimate uses of alcohol is still much under debate, and the controversialists appear to have no present prospect of arriving at any agreement with regard to it.
The animal body is interpenetrated, in all its parts, by a structure known to anatomists as "connective tissue," which envelops every fibre of nerve or muscle, every blood-vessel, every cell of nerve, or gland, or bone, or fat, in such a way that if all other structures were abolished or withdrawn the connective tissue would still represent the bodily outline in its entirety, and, if possessed of sufficient rigidity, would preserve its unaltered form. It follows that any general contraction of this all-pervading tissue must compress the structures which it surrounds and contains, and must tend at once to diminish the blood-supply which they receive, to check the activity with which their ordinary functions are performed, and to lead eventually to structural degeneration of their essential parts.
Some contraction of this kind appears to be the process by which the best known of the admittedly injurious effects of alcohol are produced. The actual contraction and its effects are alike most manifest in the larger glands, such as the liver and kidneys, and in the brain.
When alcohol is taken in small quantity, in a freely diluted condition, and combined with agreeable flavoring matters, as in a glass of light beer or cider, it seems to have no other appreciable immediate effect than the relief of a thirst which itself is often of a very artificial character, and any superfluity of actual water which may thus be swallowed is speedily removed from the system through natural channels. To what extent the alcoholic element is removed together with the water, or to what extent it is retained to be afterwards burnt up and eliminated in the respiratory process, is a question on which physiological chemistry does not yet appear to be able to speak with certainty. Different conclusions with regard to it have been reached by different observers, and have seemed, sometimes at least, to harmonize suspiciously with their previously declared opinions.
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When alcohol is taken in a more concentrated form, as in a glass of generous wine, the pleasure afforded to the palate is distinctly enhanced by a sense of comfortable warmth in the region of the stomach, and by a feeling of exhilaration which speedily succeeds thereto. The sense of warmth is due to the local effect of the stimulant in causing a flow of blood towards the stimulated part; and is the probable foundation of the popular belief in alcohol as a cold-resisting agency. This belief is absolutely erroneous; for nothing can be more certain than that a dose of alcohol lowers the temperature of the body as a whole, and that anything more than a very small quantity of it is definitely injurious when severe cold is to be encountered. The feeling of exhilaration is probably due partly to the sensation of warmth itself, but in great measure to the first general effect of alcohol upon the nervous system—an effect which chiefly displays itself as a slackening or removal of restraint.
Many bodily operations are habitually controlled by the nervous system in the sense of being "inhibited," that is to say, of being kept within certain limits. There is a nerve, for example, which restrains the action of the heart; and it is known that, if the functions of this nerve be checked or suspended, the heart will beat wildly and irregularly.
In the same way, judging from analogy and experience, some restraint is exercised by a well-balanced nervous system over the order and the rapidity of succession of the thoughts, with the result that a certain gravity and decorum are maintained, and that the facts of life are regarded in their correct relative proportions to each other.
Under the influence of alcoholic stimulation [Ed. Note: and, especially, more so, tobacco-induced abulia, the
[1] normal grip upon the thoughts, so to speak, early becomes relaxed,
[2] the currents of associated ideas become more rapid,
[3] the possible consequences of injudicious speech [or act] are forgotten or ignored, and
[4] checks which would be imposed by prudence are apt to be cast aside.

Under this influence, if it be not carried too far, the shy or silent man may become a brilliant talker, and an ordinarily sluggish brain may be roused into temporary activity. It would be through this action that [English poet and essayist Joseph] Addison [1672-1719], according to [English historian Thomas] Macaulay [1800-1859],
"found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect,"
and by its aid overcame the timidity which, in the presence of strangers, arrested his unrivalled powers as a conversationalist.
Every one has seen farther stages of the same effect, during which increased rapidity of thought has passed into incoherence, and incoherence into stupor, while volitional control over muscular movements was impaired and ultimately suspended. The resulting condition may be described as acute alcoholic poisoning, and is clearly due to the presence of alcohol in the circulating blood, and to its deleterious effect upon the cells of the brain and other nervous centres to which it is conveyed. The acute stage is usually followed by headache, by nausea or sickness, and by various evidences of severe disturbance of the digestive functions; and these consequences pass away as the alcohol is gradually eliminated from the system. A single occasion of drunkenness—that is, of acute alcoholic poisoning—may probably be perfectly recovered from, leaving no physical injury behind.
It is a favorite contention of total abstainers that alcohol is never of any real use in the organism, that any temporary increase of physical energy or of intellectual activity which it may apparently produce is always followed by a corresponding or even a greater degree of reaction, and that it contributes nothing to the repair or the maintenance of the tissues. It does not appear to me that either of these contentions can be maintained. I have often
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experienced, or at least have believed, that, when tired or jaded, a glass of wine has helped me to pull myself together for an effort to meet some urgent professional requirement; and I have not been conscious of any subsequent depression.
I have seen, and so, I think, must every man in large medical practice, many instances in which life has been maintained for long periods upon alcohol alone, or at least upon the forms and combinations in which it is commonly administered, and in which, if it did not actually maintain the bodily tissues, it yet saved them from destruction by being itself burnt off as fuel for the maintenance of animal heat I attach far more importance to sick-room experiences of this kind than to laboratory experiments, even when these have not been instituted merely for the support of a foregone conclusion; and I think there is valid evidence that, in the great majority of persons, a small amount of alcohol may in some way be utilized In tbe economy; and that, either by sustaining heat by inhibiting waste, or by supplying material for the maintenance of tissue, it may be used up with beneficial results, or at least without injury, to the consumer.
There is an apparent, but I think not a real contradiction, between the statement that alcohol ordinarily lowers the bodily temperature and the statement that it may in certain circumstances supply fuel by which the temperature is maintained. When there is already an abundant fuel supply, alcohol appears to diminish the rate of combustion; although, when there is a deficiency, it may itself be utilized. If we throw a quantity of coal dust upon a brisk fire, we shall damp it down for a time, but we shall also preserve it from complete extinction for a considerable period.
It is nevertheless probable that the amount of alcohol which can be habitually consumed beneficially, or even quite harmlessly, is, for the majority of people, far less than they are commonly accustomed to believe; and it is also probable that the customary sensations of average well-being, of which the majority of moderate drinkers are presumably conscious, usually represents a standard of health somewhat lower than that which would actually be attainable by the same individuals.
In other words, there is reason to believe that the ordinary citizen in comfortable circumstances consumes, as a rule, more alcohol than is good for him, or than he can eliminate without some degree of injury; and that to some unknown extent he thereby diminishes his prospects of longevity and his power of resisting the inroads of disease. Whether the pleasure afforded by the alcohol be worth the consequences of consuming it is, of course, a question for individual consideration; but it is certain that hundreds of prosperous men die in the course of their seventh decade, or even earlier, who, if they had been total abstainers, would probabl have lived ten years longer.
When alcohol is habitually consumed in excess of the moderate quantity which can be utilized with benefit, or at least without apparent injury, the excess appears to bring about a long succession of nutritive changes, of which the immediate cause, as already mentioned, is a slow overgrowth and contraction of the connective tissue, apt to be especially manifest in those portions of it which form the supporting fabric of the brain, the liver, and the kidneys. The slowly increasing interstitial compression to which these great vital organs are thus subjected has the twofold effect
of gradually cutting off the blood-supply which is essential to the performance of their functions, and
of strangling and destroying the cells which constitute the the essential portions of their structure.
The rate of progress of such changes, and the speed with
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which they undermine the powers of life, are very variable, but may perhaps be said to depend mainly upon three factors—the
amount and regularity of the alcoholic excess,
the amount of food consumed, and
the amount of exercise taken.

The influence of the first of these factors must be so obvious as to require no consideration, unless it be necessary to point out that different persons display different powers of resistance to the effects of alcohol, and that no complete or sufficient expIanation of these differences has hitherto [Ed. Note: meaning, pre-1906] been forthcoming.
The amount of food consumed is a matter of supreme importance, and the more so because a certain degree of habitual excess in eating is scarcely condemned by public opinion, or regarded in its true light by many who would be described as educated peop1e.
It has been well said that vast numbers of persons "dig their graves with their teeth," or, in other words, that they habitually consume an amount of superfluous food which casts a heavy burden upon the organs by which such superfluity is removed. These organs are mainly the liver and the kidneys, and to overtax them is to permit the body to be poisoned by its own waste.
It is manifest that if they are not only overtaxed, but at the same time impeded in their activity by changes in their connective tissue produced by alcohol [Ed. Note: about 90% of alcohol abuse being by smokers],
the two evils will react upon and aggravate each other, and
that the effects of self-poisoning [Ed. Note: compounded by TTS toxic chemicals] will be increased and accentuated by those of structural degeneration.

Ed. Note: See modern verifying analyses:
Walford, Roy L. The Immunologic Theory of Aging (Copenhagen: Munksgaard; & Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1969)
Walford, Roy L., The Relation of Aging to Immunity (New York, MSS Information Corp. 1973)
Adelman, Richard C.; Roth, George S., Methods in Aging Research (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1980)
Adelman, Richard C.; Roth, George S., Endocrine and Neuroendo-crine Mechanisms of Aging (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1982)
Adelman, Richard C.; Roth, George S., Testing the Theories of Aging (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1982)
Adelman, Richard C.; Roth, George S., Altered Proteins and Aging (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1983)
Walford, Roy L. Maximum Life Span (New York: Norton, 1983)
Walford, Roy L., The 120-Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986)
Richard Weindruch & Roy L. Walford, eds., The Retardation of Aging and Disease by Dietary Restrictions (Springfield, IL.: C.C. Thomas, 1988)
Walford, Roy L., The Anti-Aging Diet (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994)
Walford, Roy L.; Walford, Lisa, The Anti-Aging Plan: Strategies and Recipes for Extending Your Healthy Years (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994)
Hayflick, Leonard, Ph.D., How and Why We Age (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994)
Cheol-Koo Lee, Roger G. Klopp, Richard Weindruch and Tomas A. Prolla, Univ of Wisc., "Gene Expression Profile of Aging and Its Retardation by Caloric Restriction," 285 Science (#5432) 1390-1393 (27 Aug 1999). (Obesity damages health, perhaps changes in genes linked to aging. Eating less means living longer, perhaps 50% longer. Most gene alterations were wholly or partly prevented by eating less, the only action that research shows "retards aging in mammals." Analyses of "calorie-restricted animals suggest" that eating less "retards the aging process by causing a metabolic shift toward increased protein turnover and decreased macromolecular damage.")
Walford, Roy L., Beyond the 120-Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000)
George S. Roth, et al., "Biomarkers of Caloric Restriction May Predict Longevity in Humans," 297 Science (#5583) 811 (2 Aug 2002)
Daniel Buettner, The Blue Zones:Lessons for Living Longer From The People Who've Lived the Longest (Natl Geographic Society, 2008)
Daniel Buettner, "More Good Years," AARP The Magazine (Sep-Oct 2009), pp 22 and 24, and citing aarporg/longevityquest
"Eat Less, Live Longer" (CNN, 2 Aug 2002) (results of eating 30% less: biomarkers of more youthful levels of DHEAS, reduced body temperature and insulin level, and 40% greater longevity).
"Eating After 8 p.m.: What it Does to Your Metabolism" (24 July 2013) ("consume only the calories needed for the day. That being said, it’s incredibly important to pay attention to what exactly you’re eating after 8 p.m. You definitely do not want to eat any form of carbohydrates late at night because it will only add to the glycogen stores in your body, keeping you from going into fat burn while you’re asleep. . . . your liver will actually use up all the glycogen in your body to regulate your blood-sugar levels. So it moves on to something else: body fat. So . . . make good food choices like lean proteins, vegetables and healthy fats instead of ice cream, cookies and cake.")
Chicago Study, 43,000 health professionals, eating 3-5 oz. fish 1-3 times weekly, 43% fewer strokes in 12-year followup period (24 Dec 2002)
Adler, Jerry and Anne Underwood, "Starve Your Way to Health," Newsweek pp 51-52, 54 (21 Jan 2004) (citing 1930's - present beginning with Cornell's "Clive McCay [who] discovered that food-deprived rats lived longer and looked younger than those who ate normally" (51) and Prof. Brian Delaney (President, California Calorie Restriction Society), 5'11" 139 lbs, 1800 calorie diet, 2 meals a day; "reduce food intake by roughly a third, while maintaining adequate nutrition, and life span goes up by about 30 percent . . . in theory make it past 150 [years of age], but citing Dr. Michael Alderman, "The most powerful determinant of longesvity was exercise" (p 52).
"Being overweight does increase health risks." "The cumulative evidence is now even stronger," says Dr. Michael Thun, Chief Epidemiologist, American Cancer Society, cited in "Even a few extra pounds risky: Study says little room for denial," The Macomb Daily, p 2A (23 Aug 2006), pursuant to data by:
Kenneth F. Adams, Ph.D., Arthur Schatzkin, M.D., Tamara B. Harris, M.D., Victor Kipnis, Ph.D., Traci Mouw, M.P.H., Rachel Ballard-Barbash, M.D., Albert Hollenbeck, Ph.D., and Michael F. Leitzmann, M.D., "Overweight, Obesity, and Mortality in a Large Prospective Cohort of Persons 50 to 71 Years Old" (Volume 355:763-778, 24 August 2006, Issue # 8)
Sun Ha Jee, Ph.D., Jae Woong Sull, Ph.D., Jungyong Park, Ph.D., Sang-Yi Lee, M.D., Heechoul Ohrr, M.D., Eliseo Guallar, M.D., Dr.P.H., and Jonathan M. Samet, M.D., "Body-Mass Index and Mortality in Korean Men and Women" (Volume 355:779-787, 24 August 2006, Issue # 8).
See also Dr. John Burdell's 1848 'six-hours-between meals' advice, p 12, and his food chart, p 27.
And see Eating Well Editors, "Add years to your life with these 7 anti-aging superfoods" (Jewish World Review, 25 June 2013), citing olive oil, yogurt, fish, chocolate, nuts, wine, and blueberries. Compare with Dr. Joel Fuhrman's emphasis on immunity-system builders: 1. Greens, 2. Onions, 3. Mushrooms (cooked), 4. Berries, 5. Beans, 6. Seeds, cited in his book Super Immunity.
Jim Pierce, "The Biggest Fat Loss Myths EXPOSED!" (6 August 2013) (". . . Although exercise reduces your cardiovascular risk by a factor of three, too much vigorous exercise, such as marathon running, actually increases your cardiac risk by seven, according to a study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2010 in Montreal. ")
The human body is 90% composed of water, a 1:9 food - water ratio.

The consequences of common habits of life may be seen any day in the obituary list of the "Times" paper, referring, as it does, exclusively or chiefly to the well-to-do. That list, for the day on which these words are written, and which was taken absolutely at random, contained thirty-five names, and the ages of the deceased persons were given in twenty-seven instances. Among them were seven persons in their eighth decade, and one gentleman of ninety-four; but the ages of the remaining nineteen reduced the average age at death to sixty-seven, and when the eight long-lived persons were omitted, the average age of the nineteen was only sixty years and six months.
People are said [Ed. Note: by the media] to die of gout, or of heart-disease, or of kidney disease, or of liver disease, or of a complication of those maladies; but what they really die of, when they died prematurely, is usually degeneration of tissue consequent upon superfluous food and upon superfluous wine, or upon the dally recurring overtaxation of the vital organs by which the processes of nutrition are conducted or controlled.
Sometimes we find the premature death ascribed to pneumonia, or influenza, or to accident; and we may generally read between the lines of the announcement, that the powers of vital resistance had previously been reduced below their proper standard.
What is the meaning of the annual exodus of rich people to foreign watering-places and "cures" except that good cookery and fine wines have tempted them to the daily over-indulgence of undisciplined appetites, and that they seek, in comparative or complete abstinence, and in violent medication, what is at best a temporary relief from discomfort, and a temporary renewal of their power to do violence to the dictates of nature and of common sense? "Nature," Sir Andrew Clark used to say, "never forgets and seldom forgives."
The foregoing observations are intended, of course, to apply only to persons, or classes of persons, who lead perfectly orderly and decorous lives [Ed. Note: i.e., excluding smokers], and who would be shocked and indignant if they were individually described as the victims of excess. This, however, is precisely what they are; for the proper measure of excess, in
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respect of food and of alcoholic drink, is furnished by the amount of either or of both which can be employed for the purpose of making good the daily expenditure incidental to the processes of life. Everything beyond this becomes itself an occasion of effort for its mere removal; and, if the effort be not made, becomes a source of poisoning, the tendency of which is to be cumulative, and to display itself now and again in a more or less explosive fashion, in the guise of a fit of gout or of a so-called "bilious attack."
It is self-evident that a very small consumption of food will permit of a more free indulgence in alcohol, and that total abstinence from alcohol will permit of a more free indulgence in food than would be possible if what may perhaps be described as a moderate degree of excess were to be practised in both directions at once.
It is the ordinary daily "good dinner," perhaps eaten too quickly for its more than satisfying character to be recognized, and the superfluous glass or glasses of wine attendant upon it, that do the mischief in ordinary life and among reputable people. The existence of the sot may undoubtedly be prolonged by the diminisbed inclination for food which follows from the injury done by alcohol to his digestion; and the advantages of abstinence from alcohol may as undoubtedly be diminished, in a large proportion of cases, by the amount of food, and especially of sweet dishes, frequently consumed by total abstainers.
In order to obtain the full benefit of their self-denial, if self-denial it be, the latter estimable class should act upon a precept which was much inculcated by the grandparents and great-grandparents of the present generation, and should "rise from table with an appetite."
On the whole, a daily superfluity of food is perhaps a worse evil than a daily superfluity of alcohol, assuming neither to be carried to manifest excess. The latter has at least the excuse of the attendant exhilaration, while the former brings mankind into comparative1y close kinship with the porcine animals which most people would think it discreditable to resemble.
The amount of exercise taken by any individual largely determines the amount of his expenditure of force and of tissue, and hence determines also the amount of nutriment required for the maintenance of his body in full activity. A highly accomplished physician, the late Dr. Peter Hood, was accustomed to insist very strongly upon the frequent illnesses which were produced, among men in easy circumstances, by the continuance during the London season, or during the session of Parliament, as a mere matter of habit, of a consumption of food and wine which might not have been excessive during daily active exercise in the pursuit of sport, but which became injurious as soon as this pursuit was discontinued. The hard-drinking squires of the eighteenth century were mostly men of great activity of life, and even then were seldom conspicuous for longevity; while at all times and in all classes there have been exceptional individuals who have set ordinary rules at defiance, and have nevertheless enjoyed an immunity from evil consequences which has seldom been extended to their imitators.
I remember a trial about a right of way, in which the evidence of some of the oldest inhabitants of the locality was adduced, and which was held before a learned judge who was at once deeply conscious of the mischiefs wrought by alcohol, and earnestly solicitous to improve any occasions for moralizing which his duties might afford. A witness was produced, a village patriarch far advanced in his eighties, erect, vigorous, clear-headed, who replied to all questions with promptitude and de-
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cision. Before he left the box the judge complimented him upon his atate of preservation, and asked by what ordering of his life it had been maintained. Nothing loth, the witness replied that he was a teetotaller and a vegetarian, and described his dally existence in some detail; and the judge, deeply impressed, recommended all who heard him to follow in his footsteps. The witness was succeeded by his own elder brother, equally alert and well-preserved, to whom the judge said: "No doubt you, too, like your brother, whom we have just heard, have preserved your health and vigor by the strictest temperance?" The reply was brief and to the purpose: "I h'ant been to bed sober vor vifty year, my lord."
Exceptions prove nothing, unless it is that compensating influences of an unknown character may render a few persons exempt from consequences which would fall with certainty upon the average member of the human race.
Ed. Note: See Prof. Bruce Fink's more complete 1915 analysis.

There is perhaps some foundation for the belief that strenuous and continued exertion of the intellectual faculties may resemble bodily activity in its power to increase the demands of the system, and thus to produce tolerance of what would ordinarily be alimentary or alcoholic excess. It is said that Lord Chancellor Eldon drank a bottle of port wine every week-day during many successive years; and that every Sunday, when his brother, Lord Stowell, dined with him, they each drank two. Their ages at death were respectively eighty-seven and ninety-four.
The variability of the factors above referred to—that is, of the amount of food consumed, of the amount of effort made and of consequent expenditure incurred, and of the personal equation of the individual, renders it very difficult, even if it be possible, to lay down any general rule as to the quantity of alcohol which constitutes sufficiency or excess; but, as I have have said above, I believe the point of excess, or at least the limit of beneficial or even of harmless consumption, to be reached much earlier than is commonly supposed.
I think, too, that the common belief that old people bear alcohol better than young ones, or, as it has been put, that "wine is the milk of old age," is decidedly erroneous. In old age, vital activity and the waste arising from it are reduced all round, and the demand for aliment in any form must be reduced in a corresponding degree; so that an increase of alcohol, unless more than counterbalanced by a decease in the amount of solid food, can hardly be anything but injurious to the consumer.
In the course of many years of practice I have seen and watched several cases in which experimental total abstinence was not successfull so long as the activities of middle age were being maintained, but in which the abandonment of alcohol in more advanced life was definitely conducive to health and comfort.
The position occupied by the medical profession with regard to the habitual and moderate dietetic use of alcohol has not, I think, been an entire satisfactory one. The few medical enthusiasts who are themselves total abstainers, who run full tilt against alcohol in all its forms, and who rest their denunciations upon inconclusive so-called chemical or physiological experiments, mostly "made in Germany," may safely be left out of consideration.
But, apart from these, the public mind has been exercised from time to time by the wide circulation of certain medical counterblasts to alcohol—counterblasts of which the origin, has not always been free from suspicious circumstances, and which sometimes appear to have been signed, almost at random, by even eminent persons who would not have been individually prepared to support by facts and arguments the
-485-
assertions to which they had set their names. In one instance many of the signatures to such a document had shortly before been appended to a collective recommendation of a particular brewage of bitter beer. Another, which was extensively signed and. widely circulated in 1871, was launched under the auspices of the late Sir George Burrows, then President of the Royal College of Physicians. My signature was early asked for, and I wrote to Sir George, whose name was already appended to the paper (which had been sent to me as a "proof"), pointing out certain grave inaccuracies in it, and some of the alterations which it seemed to me to require.
Sir George, in his reply, gave away the whole case. He said that my suggestions came too late for adoption, the paper having already been signed by 150 persons, and continued:
I entirely agree with you in the opinion you express about alcohol as an article of diet. I think to a large class of persons in the climate of England it is indispensable, and I know many remarkable cases in confirmation of your own experience of the attempt to abstain wholly from alcohol. On the other hand, I think there are large classes of persons, in other more favored and in tropical climates, who may ahd do abstain from alcohol with advantage to their health.

The counterblast, which Sir George had already signed, set forth, among many other very questionable propositions, "that many people immensely exaggerate the value of alcohol as an article of diet," and it did not seem to me possible "immensely to exaggerate" the value of an agent which Sir George himself declared to be "indispensable" "to a large class of persons in the climate of England." As far as I understood the matter, the counterblast was intended to apply to English people living in their own country, and scarcely at all to the inhabitants of other and more favored climates. Circumstances which afterwards came to my knowledge led me to believe that Sir George had been overpersuaded into attaching his name to a paper which be had not thoroughly considered, and that he thus found himself placed in a position of embarrassment from which it was difficult to escape.
The true position for the medical profession, in relation to the whole question, must, I think, rest on the admission that it may often be an individual one, as to which there can be no general rule that is not weakened by a great number of exceptions. My own experience and observation have convinced me that most men who are actively engaged in the serious pursuits of life may take a small quantity of alcoholic drink daily with decided advantage, and that it will supply them with material for the augmentation of tissue or for the maintenance of temperature at a smaller expenditure of force than would be required for the digestion and conversion of an equivalent amount of solid nutritive material.
I believe that the quantity which can be consumed in this way with advantage is small, much smaller than is generally supposed, and that it becomes still less as vital activities are diminished by advancing years. Everything beyond it may, in strict language, be regarded as excess; and it is probable that continued excess, even to a very small daily degree, always does more or less harm to the person committing it.
Habitual and large excess, as we all know, speedily produces consequences which are fatal alike to health, to intellect, and to character; and it seems reasonable to suppose that a smaller degree of transgression must entail at least some amount of punishment. My own impression is that it lays the axe to the root of longevity, but that, in the enormous majority of cases, it does not
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either entail misconduct or impair efficiency during the active years of life. This view appears to be supported, as regards longevity, by the unquestionable fact that the comparative moderation of modern times is at least coincident with a remarkable general prolongation of life in the upper and middle classes, and, as regards efficiency, by the fact to which the late [Ed. Note: surgeon and pathologist] Sir James Paget [1814-1899] called attention in an essay which, according to his wont, carried common sense to the confines of inspiration. He pointed out that the British people had been composed, for many generations,
of a great majority of moderate drinkers,
of a minority of sots, and
of another minority of teetotallers.

Assuming that the two minorities neutralized each other, the history of England, and the achievements of Englishmen, were the history and the achievements of the majority; in which case moderate drinkers had no reason to be dissatisfied with their record, and very little reason to suppose that it would have been improved by total abstinence.
Whether the daily pleasure incidental to the extra glass of wine, or to the nocturnal whiskey and water, be worth purchasing at the cost, of a probable abbreviation of life, is a question which every individual concerned must weigh and answer for himself. However this may be, I think it must be conceded, by all who are conversant with the dietetic habits of the most distinguished members of the medical profession, that total abstinence from alcohol is .not the rule among them; and, on the other hand, I have been assured by public caterers that less wine is consumed per head at a purely medical dinner than at one attended by any other class of the community.
Perhaps on the whole, the main facts of the question could hardly be stated more fairly than they were by the son of Sirach two thousand years ago:
"Wine measurably drunk and in season bringeth gladness of the heart and cheerfulness of the mind; but wine drunken with excess . . . diminisheth strength and maketh wounds." [Ecclesiasticus 31:36, 38.]

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be permissible to call attention to the probable influence of beer drinking upon the longevity, and hence indirectly upon the duration of the usefulness, of the artisan and laboring classes. We have lately been told by a popular preacher that
"two-thirds of the national drink bill is incurred by the working man,"
and also, as a rider to this statement, that
"he is often lazy, unthrifty, improvident, sometimes immoral, foul-mouthed, and untruthful."
I will leave the reverend gentlemen to establish the latter portions of his accusation by whatever evidence he can adduce in support of them, and will content myself with calling attention to the obvious fact that the working man is short-lived. According to returns issued by the Registrar General,
"the general laborers of London are an unhealthy body of men. At all age groups, their death-rates are in excess of those of occupied males in London, and are therefore much more in excess of the standard rates. The comparative mortality figure of London laborers exceeds the average among occupied males in London by 23 per cent; and, when compared with the standard figure for occupied males generally the excess among London laborers is as much as 48 per cent."

The mortality among males of the class, notwithstanding the accidents of child-birth, is much in excess of that among females. Now, every one conversant with the habits of the working man knows that his consumption of alcohol is not confined to meal-times or to a night-cap, but that he has cultivated an extraordinary capacity for drinking beer on all occasions and at all times. His thirst is perpetual and unquenchable. In every other station of life
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the suggestion of a drink would sometimes be declined, but by the working men seldom or never. A job or the want of one, a quarrel or a reconciliation, a birth or a death, a chance meeting or an appointment, are alike in that they all require beer; and the effect has been to develop a vicious habit, not only of taking undue quantities of alcohol, but also of swallowing superfluous liquid to an enormous amount.
Reasonable people, who only drink with their meals, have very little conception of the extent to which this irregular beer drinking is carried, and there can be no question that it is among the most pernicious of the influences to which the working classes of this country are exposed.
It seriously shortens the lives of the men,
it probably diminishes the vigor and viability of their children, and
it leads to an expenditure in noxious self-indulgence which, in proportion to their incomes, is often enormous, and which constantly deprives their families of comforts which would be highly conducive to their welfare.

No single reform could be more valuable to the working man than one by which he was induced to take beer only with his meals, and to abandon the irregular potations which have so powerful an influence in hindering the elevation of the class to which he belongs. This would be indisputable, even if the liquor consumed were of a character which any one not a teetotaller would describe as wholesome, but such a condition is by no means universally fulfilled.
Some years ago I was familiar with country districts in which most of the beer sold in public-houses to laborers was saltedrers was salted to increase their thirst, and drugged to give them a belief in its potency. I heard of men refusing a suggestion to drink at the "White Hart," because they had a pint there last week and "felt nothing of it." They preferred to walk another quarter of a mile to the "Black Bull,' where a pint would make a man dizzy almost before he had finished it.
In large towns, where the publicans are mostly supplied from great breweries, admixtures of this kind are less probable; but it must not be forgotten that the chemicals employed, even in large breweries, have quite recently been responsible in the north of England, for a very wide diffusion of a so-called "accidental" arsenical poisoning, by which many deaths and much permanent disability were occasioned among the consumers.
Tobacco

From the consideration of drugged beer the transition is easy to that of the consumption of narcotics generally, and especially of tobacco—the latter a question which I approach with some distrust of my power to be impartial with regard to it. It is possible that I may be unduly prejudiced in the matter,
partly by dislike of the smell and taste of the drug in all its forms,
partly by the fact that my professional avocations have for many years brought its noxious effects very prominently under my notice, and
partly by a survival of the recollections of my youth, a remote period at which smoking in public, or in the presence of ladies, was hardly tolerated among gentlefolk.

A cheap cigar was introduced into Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year," in 1839, as an almost essential part of the outdoor holiday equipment of Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse; and. although it may be true that public smoking is now indulged in by quite distinguished persons, it does not by any means follow that the change is an improvement. It certainly has not been conducive to culture among their social inferiors. Living a short distance out of London, and often coming thence by train, I have frequent opportunities of observing the crowd of men and boys who return home after business hours, nearly all with short pipes projecting from their months, puffing smoke into the faces of
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women on the platform, and elbowing them away from the approach to the narrow door of exit. These creatures always seem to me to be quite exceptionally boorish and aggressive, even as specimens of the class to which they belong, and I cannot help in some way associating their pipes with their characters. Their want of self-control, and their animal eagerness for a selfish indulgence, lead them to utter disregard of the comfort or the convenience of their neigbors.
If any advocate of the consumption of tobacco is content to rest his advocacy upon the fact that he likes the practice of smoking, or that he likes what he conceives to be its effect, there is, I presume, nothing more to be said. Tastes differ, and must continue to do so.
The only assertions requiring examination are those of the people who say that tobacco is in some way beneficial; and the most common of these assertions is that it is "soothing." My own reply to this plea depends mainly upon its humiliating character.
I do not think that a man has any business to require "soothing."
Ed. Note: James Parton
had said the same in 1868.

He should be able to face his duties and responsibilities with a clear view of their extent and nature.
If he cannot do this without the aid of a narcotic, I am certain that he cannot with; for the narcotic, although it may disguise difficulties, is manifestly unable to alter facts.
A man who talks about requiring to be "soothed" reduces himself to the level of a fractious baby; and my own observation leads me to believe that his narcotic tends at once to the permanent diminution of his nervous energy, and to the production of a sort of fool's paradise in which he is content to live.

Ed. Note: Thomas Edison agreed with Dr. Carter's "permanent diminution" data, and cited permanent tobacco-caused brain damage eight years later, in 1914.

At one of the great American universities, I think at Harvard, the authorities instituted a definite series of comparisons between smoking and non-smoking students, with the result that the former were surpassed by the latter in every competition in which they engaged, whether physical or intellectual, whether in the class-rooms, in the playing-fields, or in the gymnasia.
Ed. Note: Record cited by Meta Lander (1882) and Dr. John H. Kellogg (1922).

All teachers are familiar with the type of student who lives in a fond belief that he will pass his examinations without the trouhle of working for them; and he is invariably a smoker.
Ed. Note: See related data by Dr. John Hinds, pages 94-95 (1882) and Prof. Bruce Fink, pages 11-17 and 67-71 (1915).

Smoking, again, is in an extraordinary degree conducive to sheer idleness, to intellectual vacuity and bodily inertia, from the deceptive resemblance which it bears to an occupation. Few men could sit and do nothing, without a book or an amusement, if they were not smoking; but hundreds do so with the aid of a pipe or a cigarette, and all the time fancy themselves to be employed. In such circumstances they sometimes go to the length of saying that they have been "thinking."
Admitting freely what is unquestionable, that an enormous number of men and boys like smoking, and smoke because they like it, we are still entitled to ask whether the practice can be regarded as essentially harmless. For the vast majority of adults who smoke moderately the answer must probably incline towards an affirmative. I have a very strong belief that whatever a smoker may be able to do well, he would have been able to do still better if he had never smoked at all; but the accuracy of this belief does not admit of demonstration.
We know, it is true, that tobacco is a powerful poison; that even a very moderate quantity of it, taken internally, would be fatal to an unseasoned adult, and that the first experiences of smoking boys are by no means unchequered; but we are assured by the advocates of the drug that complete tolerance of its poisonous effects is soon produced by habit, and that, when once this stage of toleration has been reached, smoking will thereafter be purely beneficial.
On this -489-
point I can only express my doubt. We know that a tolerance of all vegetable narcotics is soon induced, at least in the sense that larger and larger doses are required in order to reproduce the original effect; but there are none, unless it be tobacco, in which tolerance implies eventual harmlessness. The rule is that all such agents, which, when freshly introduced into the system, modify the functional operations of the nervous centres in some agreeable way, end by producing structural degeneration of the tissues upon which their action is chiefly exerted. The easily acquired tolerance of morphia, of cocaine, or of Indian hemp is only a natural step towards the degradation ultimately attendant upon their use.
The most important fact at present known with regard to a definitely injurious effect traceable to tobacco is its tendency to produce blindness. Concerning this effect, forty years ago [ Ed. Note: 1866] I was myself somewhat sceptical, and wrote of it in the sense that I regarded the evidence as incomplete, but time an larger experience have placed the matter beyond the reach of doubt.
In common, I believe, with every other ophthalmic surgeon, I have now seen a great number of cases in which habitual smokers have suffered from a definite form of gradually increasing failure of vision, attended by characteristic symptoms dependent upon manifest changes in the optic nerves, and always curable, if taken in time, by the total abandonment of tobacco, but always leading to complete and hopeless blindness if tobacco in any form were continued.
In a certain proportion of these cases, as Dr. Priestley Smith was, I think, the first to point out, excessive smoking has appeared to be rather the predisposing than the exciting cause of the disease—that is to say, it has appeared to have reduced the nerves to a condition of weakness or vulnerability in which they were unable to oppose their normal degree of resistance to other injurious influences.
Ed. Note: Books/Articles by
Dr. Priestley Smith (1845-19__)
Glaucoma: Its Causes, Symptoms, Pathology, and Treatment (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1879)
"Erasmus Wilson Lectures on the Pathology of Glaucoma," 1 Brit Med J (#1475-1478) ___- ___ (6-27 April 1889)
On the Pathology and Treatment of Glaucoma, Being a Revised Publication, with Additions, of the Erasmus Wilson Lectures, Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in March, 1889 (London, J. & A. Churchill, 1891, 1900, 1970, 1979, 1983)
"The Ingleby Lectures on the Mechanism of Binocular Vision and the Causes of Strabismus 1 Brit Med J (# 1851-1852) ___-___ (20-27 June 1896)
"The Bowman Lecture on the Etiology and Educative Treatment of Convergent Strabismus," 2 Brit Med J (#1957) ___-___ (2 July 1898)

Thus, for example, the symptoms of tobacco blindness have been observed to occur in a sailor who, having been habitually a smoker of strong tobacco, was for a time exposed to conditions of unusual hardship. They have also been observed in smokers who were engaged in the more speculative forms of commerce, and were threatened by some unexpected combination of adverse circumstances—a combination which not unfrequently had largely increased their customary consumption of tobacco. The true character of such cases may be established by the improvement or recovery of sight which follows the complete abandonment of tobacco, and by the uselessness of any treatment in which this abandonment is not included.
It is not very uncommon, moreover, to find that tobacco poisoning is complicated by alcoholism, and the resulting wrecks of humanity are very piteous to see. I remember one wretch of this kind, a young man of four-or five-and-twenty, who was the uncontrolled master of more money than he had either the education or the capacity to use wisely, and who came to me with the early symptoms of tobacco blindness in a well-marked form, as well as with abundant evidence of habitual excess in other directions. I told him there was no use in beating about the bush with him, that if he would abandon tobacco and alcohol and live decently he would preserve his sight and perhaps prolong his life, but that if he continued his actual practices, he would be blind in three months and probably dead in six. He must take his choice between the alternatives. At the door of my consulting-room he turned as he went out, in order to discharge a Parthian shot at me. "You've a'most broke my 'art," he said.
Regarding the question on a priori grounds, there seems much reason to
-490-
believe that tobacco, which is known frequently to produce chronic inflammation and ultimate degeneration of the optic nerves, may exert a similar influence on other portions of the nervous system, and may lead to nerve degenerations of other kinds, possibly to some the causes of which are still unrecognized.
Ed. Note: Carter was writing in 1906. See the vast research on tobacco-caused nerve/brain damage thereafter.

How obscure these causes may be, and how difficult of identificatlon in the complicated conditions of life, was well shown by the recent discovery that certain extensive local prevalences of neuritis (inflammation of nerves) which had very generally been attributed to alcohol, were really due to poisoning by arsenic contained in beer. Until that discovery was made, alcoholic poisoning had been regarded as the principal or even as the sole cause of neuritis in the intemperate, and all probability was in favor of the correctness of the opinion.
Ed. Note: This 1906 data confirms the precision of medical research on causation processes.

It has since been maintained by some that this opinion must be altogether abandoned, that alcohol must be acquitted, and that only arsenic has been to blame. It will, I believe, be found that neuritis may be produced either by alcohol or arsenic, and with still greater facilty when the two are taken in combination.
On the subject of any corresponding influence which may be exerted by tobacco, or of any part which it may take in producing forms of neuritis in nerves other than those of the eyes, I am not aware of the existence of any evidence sufficient to justify a conclusion.
Ed. Note: See references at our preventbraindamage.htm website.

At the same time it seems to me to be impossible altogether to ignore the possibility, and, in any case of obscure neuritis occurring in an inveterate smoker, I should not hesitate to urge the complete abandonment of tobacco.
I have met, of course, with many instances of heavy smokers in whom no sign of either intellectual or physical decadence, was manifest on the surfaces of their lives, and I know that many imaginative literary men and artists have at least believed that they found aid or inspiration in tobacco. It may be so.
Ed. Note: See Dr. Ochsner's 1954 chemical-quantities analysis.

My own explanation of the facts, as far as they are known to me, would be that such persons had smoked themselves into a state in which their brains were unable to respond to the calls of duty or of volition until they had received a fillip, analogous in its temporary action to the dose taken by the victim of the morphia habit.
I believe in the absolute superiority of the undrugged nervous system to the drugged one, and am convinced in my own mind that the tobacco must often have lowered, and can never have raised, the quality of the totality of the work that was done under its influence. I think every one who has known London well for the last five-and-twenty years would be able to cite more than a few examples of heavy smokers whose careers of promise had closed more or less under a cloud of intellectual failure or of social discredit, such as would naturally have been attendant upon the victims of narcotics of other kinds.
There is extant a letter from the first Napoleon, written from Egypt to the French commandant at Malta, and congratulating him upon the security of the island against any attack by the English. The vessel carrying the letter was captured by an English cruiser, and underneath the delicate signature of Napoleon there now stands a bold scrawl of
"Mark the end.
Nelson and Bronte."
When I see good work of any kind, produced by a man who is dependent upon tobacco, I am apt to remember Lord Nelson's injunction.
A London physician of large experience once told me of his conviction that many professional men lose all the benefit which they might derive from an annual holiday by reason of the single circumstance that they smoke to excess during its continuance. A man who is
-491-
fully engaged with patients, or clients, or in the courts, is unable to smoke, except for a few minutes, until business hours are over; but when he is in Scotland or in the Alps he is apt to smoke all day long. He comes back with a narcotized nervous system, a "smoker's throat," and a long list of discomforts for which he is unable to account. He says that he has slept in damp beds, or that the food in the hotels has disagreed with him.
There is at least one aspect of the consumption of tobacco as to which the hitherto prevailing optimism of this country has of late been somewhat disturbed; and that aspect has regard to smoking by children. Many of the writers who have lately striven to direct attention to the alleged physical deterioration of large classes of our people have laid much stress upon juvenile smoking as an important element in the production of some of the evils which they describe and deplore; and it is certainly true that the immature and comparatively unstable nervous system of the young is more liable to be injured by narcotics than that of the adult.
It is hardly possible, in this connection, to leave entirely out of account that the deterioration is not in growth or muscular development alone, but that it extends to those organs of the intellectual faculties [Ed. Note: e.g., the brain] by which the effects of drugs are first displayed. The steady and progressive increase of insanity among us is the most important fact of the present day in relation to public health, and is such as to render the prevalence of cancer or of tubercle absolutely trivial by comparison. It is a matter of routine to attribute a large portion of this increase to drink, but may there not be something to say also about tobacco?
In the United States there seems now to be a very general consensus of opinion that at least the most facile form of tobacco smoking, the smoking of cigarettes, is a dangerous practice even for adults, and that it is still more dangerous for children.
Several of the great railway companies of America have absolutely prohibited cigarette smoking by signalmen and others who occupy positions in which any error or neglect in the discharge of duty might lead to serious consequences; and in some States the sale of tobacco to children is a punishable offence.
Since these words were written it has been asserted in a London paper that a law has been passed in the State of Indiana, and came into operation on April 15, by which not only is the manufacture or sale of cigarettes totally prohibited within the State, but by which persons having them in their possession are rendered liable to fine and imprisonment It was further said that cigarette smokers were about to appeal to the Supreme Court on the question of the constitutional validity of the enactment; but however this may be, it cannot be supposed that laws and regulations of such a kind could have been made, or could be enforced, in a democratically governed community unless the need for them had been established by a considerable body of evidence.
They seem to me to show that the very best that can be said for tobacco smoking is that many people like it, and that in some instances it may perhaps do no harm.
Ed. Note: Carter understates the TTS toxic chemicals danger: "'Every regular cigarette smoker is injured . . . Cigarette smoking kills some, makes others lung cripples, gives still others far more than their share of illness and loss of work days. Cigarette smoking is not a gamble; all regular cigarette smokers studied at autopsy show the effects.'"—The FTC Report 1968, cited in A. A. White (Law Prof, Univ of Houston), "Strict Liability of Cigarette Manufacturers and assumption of Risk," 29 Louisiana Law Rev (#4) 589-625, at 607 n 85 (June 1969).

Even so, its financial aspects ought not to be left out of account. On the part of the working classes of this country, it represents the waste of millions of money annually, for the purchase of an indulgence which is absolutely selfish, because it is one in which, as a rule, wives and children have no share, and which, because it is selfish, cannot fall to be degrading.
The craving for it is, I believe, purely artificial, for, if it were not, it would be as prevalent among girls and women as among boys and men. Boys want
-492-
to begin smoking because they see their elders do it, and they think it is "manly," and so they bear the initial discomforts with fortitude, and drug themselves until tolerance and a habit are established.
A somewhat similar educational process seems now to be in progress among women of the more leisured classes. The smoking-room has become an institution in clubs for ladies, and girls will soon be eager to follow the example set by their mothers and their elder sisters. In favor of such a result something might be said.
Ed. Note: Here Carter unfortunately reflects that era's bias on women. Carter's next words disregard the medical evidence on tobacco-induced brain damage, as the source of the 'soothing' effect. Carter cannot, despite such medical fact, overcome that era's anti-woman cultural bias, per the label of ". . . I have always felt [it] 'womanish.' . . ."

I have always felt that the "soothing" effect described by smokers is better adapted to the real needs of the softer than to those of the sterner sex, and that there is something which, if not quite feminine, may at least be described as "womanish" in the practice of seeking refuge in a narcotic from the pinpricks of daily life.
R. Brudenell Carter.
-493-

"The Boy and the Cigarette Habit"
by H. S. Gray
29 Education 294-315 (1909)

(pp 294-308)

grade, 189 from the first grade, 146 from the fourth, 47 from the fifth, 140 from the sixth, only 4 from the seventh, and 1 from the eighth. The boys who were in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades did not smoke cigarettes.
"The habitual truant, as a rule, is a dull pupil and backward in his grade. His physical and mental defects are caused partly by heredity, partly by environment and lack of nourishing food, partly by his cigarette smoking. The habitual truant almost invariably is addicted to the use of cigarettes. Truancy is the cradle of crime. A box of cigarettes and a nickel library can easily make a truant, and such truant, poisoned in mind and body, is the future enemy of society.
"There are very few girl truants. A truant boy's sister has the same lack of nourishing food, the same environment; but the boy smokes cigarettes and the girl does not, and the girl goes to school. Now there is a contrast for you. The girl is usually up in her grade, and the boy is not. He is behind because he is dull. He frequently fails to be promoted. He makes little or no progress. Finally he gets to be so much larger and older than the other children in the grade he is in that he is ashamed and does not want to stay in school any longer, and therefore he becomes a truant. Why is he dull? That is the question. I think cigarettes contribute in a measure to his mental and physical condition.
" There is just as much cigarette smoking among the spoiled children of the rich as there is among the neglected children of the poor. Notwithstanding the laws against furnishing cigarettes to minors, cigarette smoking is on the increase among the school children of Chicago and elsewhere. It is increasing among society women, too.
"I would favor any legislation that would suppress the smell of the cigarette even if, to do it, it is necessary to suppress the sale [Ed. Note: see Iowa's example] and even if that is the only remedy! I think suppressing the smell of the cigarette would be justifiable legislation."—W. L. Bodine, Superintendent of Compulsory Education, Chicago.

In 1905 a state law was passed prohibiting altogether the sale or giving away of cigarettes in Indiana [Ed. Note: as in 1897 Iowa]. It was largely through
-309-
the efforts of Judge George W. Stubbs of the Juvenile Court in Indianapolis that this law was passed. One of the probation officers of his court collected the opinions of teachers, principals and superintendents of schools all over the country on the subject of cigarette smoking among their pupils. Extracts from these letters Judge Stubbs included in an address he delivered in December, 1904, before the Indiana State Teachers' Association, an address which was subsequently printed in pamphlet form, and of which he says:
"The opinions expressed in that address have become more intensified and firmly fixed than ever by my experience during the last four years with boys who use cigarettes.
"Since the Juvenile Court was established here a little more than a year and a half ago, I have had before me 1,540 boys and girls—mostly boys—charged with offenses against law. These charges covered the entire list of offenses known to the law in Indiana, from the most trivial misdemeanor to the greatest of crimes. In inquiring into the causes that have brought about such a great increase in the number of offenses against the law in the last few years by boys, I have reached the conclusion that, aside from the frailties and weaknesses that afflict humanity and that are likely to develop into crime, especially where there is lack of parental control or where the parents themselves belong to the ignorant or vicious classes, by far the most potent factor is the cigarette habit. . . . I have found that in nearly every case where the offense charged was of a grievous, criminal or degrading and debasing nature, the defendant was a user of cigarettes. . . . Cigarette fiends come to think that an education is unnecessary and all kinds of work a nuisance.
"I have had boys before me who had sold their own clothes, and in one case a boy of about fourteen had stolen his mother's dress skirt and had even stolen the blankets off her bed and sold them to a secondhand dealer to get money for cigarettes. Many mothers have told me of their boys having taken articles out of the house to sell in order that their craving appetite for cigarettes might be satisfied. One had taken a chair, another had taken pictures, and one in the course of a few months had

-310-

almost denuded the house, taking the furniture piece by piece while his mother was away from home at her work.
Examples of Other
Smoking-Crime-Link References

1836 1854 1857 1862 1876
1878 1882 1901 1912 1915
1916 1924 1925 1989 1991

"Men who oppose legislation prohibiting the use of cigarettes base their opposition on the point that such legislation is an infringement upon their personal liberty, but
they ignore the fact that all such legislation is intended to save the boys [children] from ruin.
They also ignore the further fact that most states, including Indiana, have for years had laws prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to boys.
They also ignore the fact that such laws never have been and never can be enforced, for the reason that as long as it is lawful for men to buy and smoke cigarettes, the boys can and do find ways to get them.
Such men seem to be anxious to preserve their 'personal liberty,' even if thousands of young boys are destroyed."—George W. Stubbs.

"In this institution we have over a thousand boys, most of whom were cigarette smokers at the time they were committed here. I do not mean to say that they were committed for smoking cigarettes, but most of them had the habit. I believe that cigarettes are injurious in every way: they dwarf the body, dull the intellect, and numb the sense of good morals. Boys having this habit do not seem to appreciate the difference between right and wrong. After these boys are committed here and consequently have no further opportunity to smoke, they seem to take on a better moral tone. Cigarette smoking is indirectly responsible for a great deal of crime and the cause of a large number of boys being sent to this school."—C. B. Adams, Superintendent of The Boys Industrial School, Lancaster, Ohio.

It is not unusual for employers to forbid the use of cigarettes or other forms of tobacco during working hours, but many go farther and refuse to hire men, and especially boys, who smoke cigarettes at all. The idle and worthless, dudes and degenerates, are invariably addicted to the cigarette habit. It is not confined to these classes; but, even so, there are many business men who will not have in their employ those who are addicted to the cigarette habit.
The following extract is taken from the forcible presentation of the subject by Elbert Hubbard in a pamphlet he wrote
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(pp 311-315)

[In interim, pending completion of this site,
you can obtain these articles via your local library.]

Other Writings on Tobacco Effects

The Use and Abuse of Tobacco,
by Dr. John Lizars (1859)
Tobacco and Its Effects: Report
to the Wisconsin Board of Health
by G. F. Witter, M.D. (1881)
Click Here for Titles of Additional Books

Homepage

1.—Fontanelle's 'Tobacco Poisoning' (1836)	Fontanelle
2.—"Physiological Indictment" (1904)	Am. Med.
3.—Carter's "Alcohol and Tobacco" (1906)	Carter
4.—Gray's "Boy and Cigarette Habit" (1909)	Gray