TOBACCO, INSANITY, NERVOUSNESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9028, 5 November 1892, Page 10 (Supplement)

TOBACCO, INSANITY, NERVOUSNESS.

There is an alarming increase of juvenile smokers, and I will broadly state that the boy who smokes at seven will drink whisky at fourteen, take morphine at twenty, and wind up with cocoaine and the rest of the narcotics at thirty and later on. It may look like overstating and exaggerating things when I say that tobacco, when habitually used by the young, leads to a specios of imbecility; that the juvenile smoker will lie, cheat, and steal. This kind of insanity I have observed in quite a number of patients at the St. Vincent's Institution. The patients presented all the characteristics of young incorrigibles. There was not one among them who was able to comprehend that tobacco was injuring him. The sense of propriety, the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong, was lost. Not only in the young is the use of tobacco followed by such disastrous effects. Is it to be wondered at that a drug which, until tolerance is established, has such potent and palpable effects as to produce loss of co-ordination and unspeakable mala.ii, and after the organisation has become used to it, is capable of setting up the well-known heart disturbances—is it a wonder that such a drug finally produces some form of insanity ? t have seen melancholia, more often mania, and very frequently general paresis, hastened and precipitated by excessive use of tobacco. That tobacco really does cause insanity is evidenced by the magic effect seen in some cases after the discontinuance of the drug. Thus I have seen that beginning melancholia with suicidal impulses, hallucinations, forced actions, besides the precursory symptoms of insanity, such as insomnia, crying-spells, precordial anxiety, fears of impending evil, impotency, vertigo, impairment of memory and judging power, I and even the lowering of the moral tone, all of which were attributable to chronic tobacco intoxication, disappered after freedom from the habit was established.

All observers agree that in our country many conditions conspire to make us a nervous people, to produce what has even been styled " American nervousness." 'Ihis " nervousness," in other words, means a weakness, an instability, a vulnerability of the nervous system. Add to this the unquestionably strong quality of the tobacco which the taste of the American public exacts from the manufacturer, and it becomes plain that there exists two cogent reasons that we should be on our guard against the indiscriminate use of the article. French medical observers are of the opinion that one of the factors causing the depopulation of France is the excessive use of tobacco ; for the offspring of inveterate tobacco-consumers are notoriously puny, and stunted in stature, and lack the normal power of resistance, especially on the part of the nervous system; again, it is a significant fact that an astounding percentage of the candidates for admission to West Point and other military schools are rejected on account of tobacco-heart. Some persons labour under the delusion that tobacco increases their working-power, that the flow of thought becomes easier, and that without tobacco they are unable to do any mental work. Instances are cited by them of great men, inveterate and excessive tobacco consumers. They do not consider the possibility that these men accomplish what they did in spite, but not in consequence of, or aided by, their habit. Students of chronic nicotine-intoxication are convinced that the great men among the tobacco-slaves would have been still greater had they never used the drug. Thus, Kant, tho most eminent of German philosophers, is said to have written such an obscure and unintelligible style, because he smoked and snuffed to excess.

Bub these things are trifles when compared with the destructive and degenerate influences the drug exerts on the broad masses. There is only one way to lessen the evil—it is the dissemination of knowledge of the baleful effects of tobacco among the rising generation, initiated and sustained by teachers, clergymen, and physicians. Of course, they ought to practice first what they are going to preach. I know of physicians who nob only smoke to excess themselves, or still worse, indulge to a morbid extent in the unmannerly habit of chewing, bub permit, and even encourage, their own children to smoke. In view of such discouraging facts I hardly expect much good from this contribution and testimonial to the pernicious effects of tobacco, because the truth has nob dawned upon the multitude yet. As in the bodypolitic evils will run their course until there is a general uprising of common-sense which disposes of them, so with the irrational and excessive use of tobacco, which will probably go on increasingly, until a limit of endurance is reached, and the disastrous results of the abuse become patent enough to impress even the dullest mind.— L. Bremer, M.D., in the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety (U.S.A.)