Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-07-07
4 SOCIAL EVIL.

1t is said that everything has an apollo
gist, but we scarcely expected to find 10
the distinguished sanitarian and physiolo.
gist, Sir Henry Thompson, an apologist for
cigarette smoking. Probably he does not
intend to be considered as apologizing for
or excusing it, but his explanations will
have the effect of removing some of the
fears that have been excited regarding its
dangers, and thus what has been deter.
rent will become less 30. He points out
however, that it is best not to smoke cigar
cites under any circumstances, but in a
| communication to the Lancet he shows
that the greatest evil of the habit is re-
moved if the cigarette is but half con-
sumed. This is because small deposit of
very offensive and poisonous Oil is depos-
tied about that time near the mouthpiece,
in the fne-cut tobacco, which acts as
strainer. If, now, the smoker stops when
the cigarette is but half smoked, this poi
| sonous part is not taken into his system.
| Oriental smokers do not consume over one
| third of the tube, and Turkish ladies no
more, and they smoke from twenty to fifty
day, without apparent present inconven-
fence as result, though in time they
suffer for it. If, therefore, a stiff mouth
piece is fixed to the cigarette and plugged
with cotton to catch the offensive matter,
and thIu Tc opaxrn1 NTH oaoh no
the danger is greatly removed. He says
that the maximum of pernicious influence
| is found in the inhalation of the smoke
into the lungs. 1t thus comes into direct
contact with Sae blood, and the toxic effect
is felt by very sensitive person after
| three or four inhalations. Smoked
with the cotton wool guard, and he
believes the cigarette to be less injurious
than the pipe, if the smoke is not inhaled.
His apology is then only in comparative
sense an excuse for the habit As it is
less an evil, under his conditions, than the
pipe or the cigar, he prefers it, but OF
course condemns both pipe and cigar, as
well as the cigarette. Sir Henry is not
! to be understood, however, as touching
the subject of adulteration of tobacco in
cigarettes, and we are surprised that he
does not refer to it. Therein resides the
greatest evil of the habit. Not only is
poor tobacco used, but it is doctored with
some OF the vilest and most injurious of
drugs, weeds and make-shifts, some of
which are rank poison, filthy, and calcula-
| ted to break down the system very early.
Then, too, opium is placed in cigarettes to
make sale for certain brands among those
addicted to the opium habit. By the use
of these they keep up gentle sense of the
opium influence between the times when
they indulge in regular opium smoking de-
bauches. In addition, this kind of cigar
cite is the means of leading youths by
easy stages to the most deadly of habits,
for opium. smoking is more debasing than
the alcohol habit, sooner disposes of its
victim and is more utterly destructive of
all that is worth anything in the life of
young man or woman. In this country
the cigarette is an own cousin to the
opium pipe, and so strong hold has this
already gained that it is now seriously
contemplated to invoke new and most
stringent legislation to check the evil.