The Anti – tobacco Movement.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 858, 10 August 1888, Page 9

The Anti - tobacco Movement.

By a Non-Smoker in the Ball Mall Gazette. The lady who spiced her speech at Friday’s meeting with the remark that cannibals do not eat smokers, is author w£ a most effective counterblast against tobacco. We are now at the tercentenary of smoking, and to say nothing of women, it has become the chosen accompaniment of rno&t of the seven ages of Englishmen. Elderly men remember when to smoke in the streets or to wear a moustache was a mark of rave eccentricity. Now man andyouth might almost bedescribed as smoking animals. Is this good or evil? I was a smoker for fifteen years, and now, although tobacco is by no means ari offence to me, yet I am convinced that it yields no benefits, and that so far as smoking has any effect it is injurious. 1 did not know how world-wide the habit was until a chance meeting with that champion collector of pipes, the late Dr. Bragge, of Sheffield. He obtained lists of foreign missionaries, and used to send them money to purchase pipes of every sort, till his museum presented hundreds of varieties, yet it did not include the * tubaco ’ of South America, shaped like a Y, with a tube for each nostril, the name of which has, it is said, been transferred to the plant, which may now he smoked in the form of ‘ Rothschild Havanas ’ at three guineas, or iu lowly shag at 4s a pound. The total value of imported tobacco is under L3,000,OOf), while the taxation upon this value exceeds L 9,000,000. Taking pipes and pouches, lights, and other articles with retail profits into the account, it is estimated that the people of the United Kingdom spend ' L 16,000,000 upon tobacco, or nearly L 3 a head for every man, after deducting a fifth for abstainers. Economy, therefore, counts for something in the question. The man who smokes cigars at fiftoenpence each, the price at which the best are labelled at my own club, and the labourer who takes eighteen pence per week from his wages for tobacco—and I have met with many who spend that amount—might without difficulty make better expenditure of their money. I am inclined to believe that no man of tho very highest order of intellect is a smoker. I have often seen Mr J. S. Mill and Mr Gladstone x-efuse tobacco, and the abstinence of Lord Salisbury, of Herr von Ranlco and Kaiser Wilhelm, will be compared to the inveterate habit of Bismarck. But I suppose that for the range and industry of intellect no one would compare the German Chancellor with either of the three Englishman I have mentioned. In any fair comparison the non-smokers have it in intellect as surely as in athletics. It is true that the oldest member of the House of Commons has been a great smoker, as was his brother, Lord Clarendon, and is a man of bright wit, So was Charles Kingsley, who wrote pages in praise of the weed. But Disraeli, who resembled his successors in the office of Prime Ministers as to smoking, was superior to Kingsley as a novelist and to Villiers as a satirist. ' Tobacco is the tomb of love.’ No devoted enthusiast has ever been wild enough to suggest that tobacco contributes to muscular development and power. In this important respect there can be no doubt of its injurious effect. Whenever there has appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette the record of an interview with any athlete, I have observed that non-smoking is regarded as a necessity, All agree with Hanlan, the champion sculler, that 1 the best physical performances can only be secured through absolute abstinence from the use of alcohol and tobacco.’ But it appears that while perfect health and strength are incompatible with the use of tobacco, the records of actual disease press hard in the same direction. I am not surprised that those of the Anti-Narcotic League—of which lam not, and because of my ; frailty cannot be, a member—glance sorrowfully at the sufferings of the German Emperor, and utter warnings from his sad case, for, unlike his father, his Majesty bad been a constant smoker, and there is undoubted ground for tho assertion that cancerous disease of the throat is extremely rare if not altogether unknown except in those who are habitual smokers. It would bo well if the League were to seek the opinion of Sir Morell Mackenzie upon this point. But the tendency is notorious. _ The League has given publicity to tho opinion of Dr. Drysdale, that ‘cancer of the lip is seldom seen except in men who smoko,’ and to that of W. R, L. Carpenter, ‘smokers' sore throat and diseases of the gums are notorious.’ The sight of lire in pipe or cigar has inflamed the delusion which Kingsley cherished as to the heating effects of smoking. That the use of tobacco reduces the action of the heart, and therefore the temperature of the body, is one of the physiological facts of the controversy which is not contested. Of men, as compared with women, who may generally be reckoned as non-smekers, “the premature mortality is generally connected with some form of heart disease, and there are no witnesses upon this point so deserving of attention as the physicians who examine applicants for life policies. One of these—Dr. T homson—writes : * Nearly every one I have rejected, after examining them for life policies, has brought on an affection of the heart by smoking.’ It is very unusual to find in a greai smoker a healthy appetite for plain food, and medical opinions may he had in any number as to dyspepsia, caused by smoking. There can be no doubt that smoking injures the eye-sight. Mr Critchett, the oculist, said : 1 1 am constantly consulted by gentlemen for commencing blindness caused solely by great smoking.’ To whatever degree the habit affects the nervous organisation, it appears to be certain that the process, which js regarded as soothing is really dist.ructive. Sir Benjamin Brodie must have known what he was writing about when he declared that ‘the poison of tobacco acts by destroying the function of the brain.’' In a Russian hospital in 1886 aDi. Chadnowski took the liberty of examining by means of a pump the digestive powers of six smoking and as many non-smoking soldiers, and he recorded that ‘in the former the time required for digestion was seven hours, while in the non-Rmokers the mean period of digestion was only six hours.’ With the present enormous consumption of tobacco, the social consequences, apart from those concerning the bodily and mental powers of the consumers, are important. It is not possible for such an indulgence to be restricted by severe limits of age or sex. The boy who is obliged to breathe an atmosphere heavily charged with his father’s smoke and to wait for the age when he may himself indulge, is trained to be a smoker long before he reaches manhood. Women do not as yet smoke in public resorts, but if they visit the gardens of the Italian or any other Exhibition they must inhale tobacco smoke whether they like it or not. ‘What is good for the gander is good for the goose,’ arid in their homes, where millions of women and tender children are weakened by living in a tobaccoladen atmosphere, there. must be an ever increasing number who think it more agreeable to adopt for themselves the habit of their male relations. If a smoker were forced to consume his own smoke there would be no pleasure in smoking. If a smoker is shut in a dark closet and the fire of his pipe concealed, he cannot tell whether he is or is not smoking, and there

is no enjoyment, The Prince of Wales has done more than any other man to establish after-dinner smoking. I remember meeting his Royal Highness about twenty years ago at dinner at Lord Granville’s, when the introduction of cigars and cigarettes was regarded as a strange innovation, entirely due to the illustrious guests, and to have heard about the same time how the late Lord Foley invited the Prince to his stables as the only place in which he could have license to smoke. The smokers are now in power; they are undoubtedly a majority of the manhood though a minority of the population. They may please to remember that the inhaling of narcotics is bad for infancy, disagreeable to most women, to many men, and that 0 the contact of their own tongues with nicotine can only be harmless to themselves in proportion as it is trifling.