Is Smoking Harmful?

Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13367, 17 August 1907, Page 3 (Supplement)

Is Smoking Harmful?

Is the- use of tobacco in moderation injurious, harmless, or beneficial? Different answers have been given to the question. In an article in the " Cornliill Magazine" some opinions are expressed by Dr. Biiedenell Carter, an eminent. London oculist, that are worth •■ 'tin? attention of smokers. Dr. Carter, who has had a medical experience of. over half a century, admits that ho may not bo impartial, as he dislikes tho tsmcll and taste of the drug in all its forms, and his professional work lias for many years past, brought its noxious effects prominently under his no r tice. He thinks that for the vaet majority of adults who smoke moderately the practice is probably harmkijs, but he unhesitatingly rejects the claim that it is beneficial. It is often asserted that smoking has a "soothing" effect upon the smoker, but Dr. Carter will not hear of this excuse. Why should a man require. " soothing"? he asks with some -warmth. Ho declares that a "man who talks about requiring to be soothed' reduces himself to the level of a fractious-baby. His own observation, he, says,", has led him to tho belief that tobacco tends at once to. the permanent diminution of his nervous energy, and to the production of a sort of fool's paradise in which he is content to live. Yet Dr. Carter, hi his article, tells us that when he has been tired or jaded a glass of wine ■ hais helped him to pull himself together to meet an urgent professional requirement, and lis has riot felt any after depression. A smoker may. claim a similar virtue in a pipe of tobacco. More to the point is his statement as to tho result of a series of comparisons instituted by ono of the American universities—Harvard, he thinks—between smoking and 'non-smoking students. The smokers were surpassed by the npn-smokers in every competition, alike in the classrooms, the playing fields, and the gymnasia. \ The most eerioiis effect alleged against tobacco is ita tendency to cause blindness, with regard to which Dr. Carter speaks with authority as an oculist. Forty years ago, he says, he was somewhat sceptical as to the effect of tobacco, believing that the evidence was incomplete;'' but larger* experience has placed the matter beyond reach .of doubt. In commoii, he belieyeii, with' every other opthahnic surgeon, he has seen a great number of eases in which habitual smokers have -suffered from a definite form of gradually increasing failure of vision, accompanied by characteristic symptoms dependent upon changes in the optic nerves. This complaint is always curable, if treated in time, by the total abandonment of tobacco, but leads to complete and hopeless blindness''if smoking is continued. In .'some- cases the smoking seems to reduce the nerves to a condition of weakness which renders them unable to withstand other injurious ■ influences.. Thuis symptoms of tobacco blindness have been known'to.. Occur in a sailor who had habitually smoked strong tobacco and was for a time exposed to unusual hardship. They have also. be3n observed in commercial • speculators threatened by adverse circumstances —a position 'yhicli not infrequently had largely increased their usual consumption of tobacco. In these cases tho cessation of smoking is followed by an improvement or recovery of the sight, whereas any other treatment fails. In .view of these facts, Dr. Carter thinks it likely that tobacco may have a similar bad influence on other parts of the nervous system. In a eiirae of obscure neuritis in the inveterate smoker, he would l urgo the complete abandonment of tobacco. Ho states that a London physician of great experience once, told him that many professional men lose all the. benefit of their annual holiday by excessive smoking. Having nothing to do, they are apt to smoke all day long, and consequently come back with a narcotised nervous system, a " smoker's throat," and other discomforts for which they cannot; account. While Dr. Carter thinks it not improbable that moderate smoking may do no harm to most adults, he has no doubt as to it's evil effects., upon tho lessstable nervous systems of the young. And the deterioration it causes is not confined to the growth or muscular development, but oxtend's to the. intellectual faculties.