CIGARETTE SMOKING.

Evening Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 76, 18 October 1882, Page 3

CIGARETTE SMOKING.

? The Lancet, which has been writing lately on the injurious habit of taking " nips" of alcohol between meals, remarks that scarcely less injurious, in a subtle and generally unrecognised way, is the growing practice of smoking cigarettes incessantly. It has not a word to say against smoking at suitable times and in moderation, nor do the remarks apply to tho use of cigars or pipes. It ib against the habit of smoking cigarettes in large quantities, with the belief that these miniature doses of nicotine are innocuous. The truth is that, perhaps owing to the way the tobacfco-leofis shredded, coupled with the fact that it is brought into more direct relation with the mouth and air-passages than when it is smoked in a pipe or cigar, the effects produced on the nervous system by a free consumption of cigarettes are^nore > marked and characteristic than those recognisable after recourse to other modes of smoking. A pulse-tracing made after the subject has smoked Bay a dozen cigarettes will, as a rule, be flatter and more indicative of depression than one taken after the smoking of cigars. It is no uncommon practice for young men who smoke cigarettes habitually to consume from eight to twelv.a px.trn hour, and to keep this np for four Or five hours daily. The total quantify of tobacco used may not seem ( large, but beyond question tho volume of smoke to which the breath organs of tho Bmoker are exposed, and the characteristics of that smoke as regards the proportion of nicotine introduced into the system, combine to place the organism very fully under the influence of the tobacco. To youths and young men who have not completed the full term of their physical development the habit of oigarette-BmoMng, as of any smoking, is moat baneful. Health is, in many cases, utterly nndermined by it, and they do not attain full physical life. These little whiffs do land are doing infinite harm, where no misohief is Buspeoted.

Mr. Hardcastle, R.M., accompanied by Mr. James, Clerk of Courts, proceeded to the Lower Hutt this morning for tho purpose of dealing with a case brought by an Otajri resident against a person living near Wellington, but on arriving there it was found that the matter had been amicablo settled, and his Worship therefore retnrned to town. The man Henry Sohultze, who escaped from tho Lunatic Asylum on Monday evening, was captured at the Lower Hutt last night by Constable Maokoy, and handed over to the' custody of one of the officials of the Asylum, who happened to be in the neighbourhood at the tune. A petition, containing 600 signatures, has been preparod relative to the Botanic Garden cose, and is to be presented to his Exoellenoy the Administrator of the Government with as little delay as possible. Tho petition sets forth that in view of the unsuccessful appeal made to the Minister of Justice for a remission of the sentence of one month's hard labour "recently passed in the Resident Magistrate's Court upon a boy and girl for alleged improper behaviour in the Botanic Gardons," the petitioners pray his Excellenoy to exercise his prerogative of mercy " in this unprecedented sentence" It will be seen by an advertisement that the Spring Show of the Horticultural Sooiety is announced for the second week of next month, and that schedules may be obtained from Messrs. P. Laiug and F. Cooper. A Parliamentary paper just issued shows that' the net amount of the national debt on 31st March lost was .£729,056,102 ; the total funded debt was .£709,498,547, and the gross, amount of the debt .£762,832,684. During the year ending at the same date the total reduction of debt was ¦£7,418,4 15. The Alexandria correspondent of a London contemporary states that those who were afloat in the harbour on 29th August, witnessed the unusual sight of keel-hauling three Arab sailors on board the Egyptian frigate Soada. They were tried by courtmartial, found guilty of mutiny, and underwent this terrible punishment. The men were first flogged, and then tied to a rope and hauled up to the port-side yards. ' They were then dropped into the sea, dragged under the keel, and hauled up to the star-board-side yard-arm. It is needless to say that death soon terminated their sufferings.