"THIS VILE HABIT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 224, 22 September 1938, Page 23

"THIS VILE HABIT."

A JUDGE'S OUTCRY.

THE SEXES AND TOBACCO,

SHOULD WOMAN SMOKE.

(By "TATTLER.") LONDON. Mr. Justice Farwel] referred to cigarette, smoking by women and girls as •'this vile habit" in the Chancery Division. Doe* "my Lord" wish it to be understood that, in his opinion, cigarette smoking is a habit which is vile, or that it is vile only when the "pernicious weed is smoked by females? There cant be any differentiation between the sexes. If smoking is vile for women and girls, it is equally vile for men. In itself smoking is either good or bad, alike for males and for females. Smoking is not a natural habit, so [that members of either sex are at liberty to adopt it or to eschew it as it pleases them. There was an Knglishman who was eluded by a "cannv Scot" upon his smoking habit. "If had intended .man to smoke." -aid the Scot, "He would have equipped him with a funnel at the top of I.U head." "And if God had intended man to take snuff." the KnglUliinan reforlfd. "He would have turned hi< no-e up-ide down." Why Should She Not? Should woman smoke? Why should ; she not? There is not any logic in say-| ing that a man may smoke and that "a woman may not. It is for women to decide for themselves whether smoking i* a habit which they should acquire. | Many of us can recall the time when j the spectacle of a young woman astride a bicycle shocked " "goody-goodv" folk. Some there were who declared that the "brazen hussies" wore driving to Old Nick! Ir the same way. the early female smokers of cigarettes aroused the indignation of old members of their sex, and. too, the indignation of "old women" of the stronger sex. If smoking is really good, there is, as I have written, no sense in claiming that only males should smoke. Ever since tobacco was introduced into England, on the return from Virginia of Admiral Drake, about the vear 1586. the "weed" has had its detractors. Did not Kin* James VI, of Scotland, in 1604, hold smoking to be "A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the tins*, harmful! to the braine. dangerous to the lunges, and in the black stinking fume thereof neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomeless?" To The End of Time. Loathsome, hateful, harmful, dangerous, stinking tobacco! If this vigorous Royal condemnation were supportable by facts, it is a matter for surprise that there are smokers anywhere. But there it fe; tobacco has always bad its advocates, as well as its denunciators, and so firth a grip has the habit upon all sorts and conditions of men and women to-day that K looks as if it will persist to the end of time! Doctors may say against it this, that or the other, but smoking gratifies and satisfies people, and, though medicos and sociologists may rave against the habit, we may be certain, that the habit win not lessen its grip upon the multitude. As soon as a light or serious meal is finished, out come cigarette cases, and there is an almost general puffing. It would seem, so general is. this practice that there is widespread belief in the' value of tobacco as an aid to digestion A seventeenth-century rhyme runs: It helpeth digestion— °'_* hat there's no question; Be it'eariy oSVte? »• «■*■: Tls ae>r out of date. He may safely take it that pleaseth. Smoking Spiritualised. *" my collection vf cutting* I also find tn.s which is supposed to have been written at the end of the seventeenth century—one hundred years after tobacco was introduced to this country: TEi'L I i! ,d f an weed - now withered quite: Th S 0 h U o g w h s g th y en de R ca;. 00n ' "" d ° Wn 2t n ' eht - All flesh Is hay: Thus think, and smoke tobacco. Tho-^S" 1 J h ? smok * ascends on hirii Then thoti behold'st the vanity 8 ' Of worldly stuff Gone with a puff: Thus think, and smoie tobacco. Th., to ; th J et i tbou ™aye«t say. That to the dust Retur . thou must: Thus ;.unk, and smoke tobacco. A German Denunciation. Germans are notorious smokers I wh!„ i ere £- ed a " 4 amused > therefore, when, looking over my collection of scraps, I found this anti-tobacco' outburst, which appeared in a German journal years ago:— '"This plague like the Egyptian plague of frogs is felt everywhere and in evfry thing It poisons the streets, the clubs, and the coffee-houses; furniture, clothes equipage, person, are redolent of the abomination. It makes even the dullness of the newspaper doubly narcotic: the napkin on the table tells instantly that native hands have been over itevery eatable and drinkable, all that can be seen, felt, heard, or understood is saturated with tobacco; the very air we breathe is but a conveyance for this poison into the lungs; and every man woman and child rapidly acquires the complexion of a boiled chicken. Prom the hour of their waking, if nine-tenths of the population can ever be said to awake at all, to the hour of their lying down, which in innumerable instances the peasantry do in their clothes, the pipe is never out of their mouths; one mighty fumigation reigns, and human nature is smoke-dried by tens of thousands of square miles. But if it be a crime to shorten life, or extinguish faculties, the authority of the chief German physiologists charges this custom with effecting both in a very remarkable degree. They compute, that of 20 deaths of men "between 18 and 30, 10 originate in the waste of the constitution by smoking. The universal weakness of the eyes, which makes the Germans par excellence a spectacled nation, is probably attributed to the same cause of general nervous debility. Tobacco burns out their blood, 'their teeth, their eyes, and their brains; turns their flesh, into mummy, and their mind into metaphysics." More Inveterate Than Men. Never was a habit so vigorously trounced. Yet never has a habit exer:ised so mighty a grip upon the world's peoples. Our women folk are fast becoming more inveterate smokers than poor men. I know one- young lady ■ who smokes 30 cigarettes a day. It is I thus not difficult to accept figures which I t read the other day—that in the course I »f a year women smoke something like I 10,000,000 cigarettes I |