How Smoking Injures the Voice

Evening Star, Issue 8406, 6 January 1891, Page 3

How Smoking Injures the Voice

[By Sib Morell Mackenzie.] In the ' New Review' Sir Morell Mackenzie writes on ' The Effect of Smoking on the Voice' : A very large acquaintance with vocalists of all grades, extending now over a longer period of years than I care to think of, enables me to Bay that while a few consider their voices as improved, the vast majority think it is more or less injured by smoking. I have not the least doubt that smoking may be injurious to the voice, even when it leaves no visible marks of its action, by impairing the precision of muscular movement necessary for perfect production. It usually finds expression in what is vaguely called " nervousness "; the pulse becomes flurried and the muscles more or less relaxed and unsteady. This is why smoking is so strictly forbidden to men training for athletic feats. Something analogous to what takes place in the eye as the result of the abuse of tobacco occurs in tho larynx, or rather in the part of the brain which governs the movements of that organ. When the nicotine doeß not injure the nervous system the smoke may still irritate the lining membrane of the throat and windpipe. The evil effects wrought by tobaoco on the larynx consist generally in patches of congestion affecting the upper part of the organ, and occasionally the vocal cords themselves.

The result is that most of the leading actors in London suffer from a relaxed condition of the upper part of the throat, brought on entirely, I believe, by smoking. To Bum up, I believe that most people can smoke in moderation without injury, and that to many tobacco acts as a useful nerve sedative. On the other hand, if indulged in to excess the habit is always injurious. To conclude with a little practical advice, I would say to anyone who finds total abstinence too heroic a stretch of virtue, let him smoke after a substantial meal; and if he be a singer or speaker, let him do so after and never before ÜBing the voice. Let him smoke a mild Havannah, or a longstemmed pipe charged with some cool-smok-ing tobacco. If the charms of the cigarette are irresistible, let it be smoked through a mouthpiece which is kept clean with ultraMahomedan strictness. Let him refrain from smoking pipe, cigar, or cigarette to the bitter, and, it may be added, rank and oily end.