The Literary echo, and Pawcatuck advertiser. [volume] (Westerly, R.I.) 1851-1854, 1854-03-02

and lips are often produced by smoking.
Those who smoke an old dirty pipe,
crusted over with the black residuum of
the oil of tobacco are peculiarly liable
to foul diseases of the lips and mucus
membrane of the mouth. Horrid de-
formities and fetid fungous excrescences
have been many times occasioned by
poisoning an accidental crack on the
lips or the corner of the mouth, with
tobacco smoke or juice, of which 1 have
known several melancholy examples.
No doubt the modern invention of ivory
or glass tubes to prevent the cigar from
coming into contact with the mouth, will
enable the tobacco sot to destroy the
whole nervous system without marring
lIis face.
"Snuffing more especially prcdisposes
to palsy, apoplexy, epilepsy, and insan-'
ity. An eminent professor in one of
the New England medical colleges, not
many years ago, died in mad-house,
his madness being the consequence Of
snufing Habitual snufing always pro-
duces disagreeable alteration in the
tone of the voice, and induces a variety
of filthy local affections of the lining
membrane of the nasal cavities.
"Many an infant has been killed
outright in its cradle, by the tobacco
smoke with which thoughtless father
filled an upventilated room. Many and
many time has the doctor been sum-
moned in haste to child, taken sud-
denly and alarmingly i'll, with spasms,
conyulsions, uOrm fits, choking, strangu-
lation, or strange SPELLS produced by
no other cause than tobacco smoke in
the room cause too often unsuspected
by both parents and physicians. The
strong, rank, fetid narcotic breath Of a
hibitual tobacco user is enough to almost
strangle and quite sicken a newborn
infant which sleeps in the same bed"
The argument that the habitual use
of tobacco is a preventative of bronchitis
is not entirely without force; for if per-
son can "use tobacco enough to waste
all his vitality in ten or twenty years,
though he may die a dyspeptic yet he
may escape bronchitis. And so the
man who kills himself by the use Of al
coholic drinks will escape all other dis
eases; yet that is no argument in favor
of alcoholic drinks"
But the evil effect of tobacco is not
confined to the person who uses it; il
is transmitted to posterity. "That the
offspring must necessarily partake, to q
greater or less extent, of the inirmities
malformations, and functional imperfec.
tions of the parent, is proposition which
all human experience afirms, and tc
which all intelligent minds will assent
The habitual tobacco user, if he propo.
gate his kind, will inevitably curse hi
offspring with an organization more OIL
less disordered, and a class of vital func
tions more or less unbalanced. Tha
, parent whose blood and secretions arr
saturated with tobacco, and whose brail
and nervous system. are constantly semi
narcotized by its influence, must trans
nit to the child so unfortunate as to b.
born unto him, the elements Of dis
tempered body and orratic mind a dc
ranged condition OF organic atoms, whicl
invariably elevates the animalism of tn
future being, at the expense of the mora
and intellectual nature. Against thi
truth let it not be urged that tobacco
users sometimes have comparativel
bright and healthy children. SO d
drunkards. But are they what the
could have been, and would have beer
had the parent been exempt from a
contaminating vices If there is on
act of criminality which nature STAMP
$ with especial adherence, and punisht
g with more terrible and relentless severit
than all others, it is that of the paren
who, by marring his own organizatio
c and vitiating his own functions, b.
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