Health In Home

Southland Times, Issue 21660, 23 March 1932, Page 5

Health In Home

SMOKING. (By a Family Doctor.) An apparently guileless young lady of my acquaintance interviewed her medical practitioner one day on account of a troublesome cough which caused her in-

convenience, especially in the mornings. During the course of the consultation the doctor asked her how many cigarettes she smoked a day. Realising that he would probably cut them by half, she said “Forty.” He consequently advised her to smoke no more than twenty. I'hey , 1 went away satisfied, for she was still able to buy her customary daily packet of 20 gaspers. Which only goes to show, what you may already have suspected, that you can sometimes pull the doctor’s leg, * or one thing, and that no one can set hard and fast limitations on smoking, for another. Tlie commonest evil of excessive smoking is “Smoker’s Cough.” This is a persistent and annoying cough, which may do permanent damage to the lungs, leading to chronic bronchitis and possibly an early demise from heart failure. Among the rarer complications of overindulgence are a peculiar form of dimness of vision or a type of neuritis associated with numbness of the extremities. Loss of appetite and chronic laryngitis are common results, and a form of heart disease accompanied by palpitations and giddiness is not infrequently seen. In my opinion, no particular type of tobacco can be blamed more than any other, though inhaling is more especially prone to lead to bad consequences.