The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1886-09-16
CHEVING-GUM.
Doctors Declare that 1t Causes Serious
Bronchial and Other Troubles.

In the thousand and one shops
sprinkled through the narrower streets
of this city, where youngsters buy lolli-
pops, where BOYS invest their savings
in base-balls and cigarettes at penny
apiece. and where the young ladies OF
the tenements purchase the latest yell
low-bound literature, there IS always for
sale a substance known as black chew
ing-gum. Whether it is done up in
spangled tinfoil, or respondent in gaudy
tissue paper, or decorated with parti-
colored ribbon, it is still black chewing
gum. 1t is made generally out of refuse
in the apothecary shops, and is favored
variously with the cheapest of cheap
extracts, licorice, wintergreen, pepper
mint, or, more usually, one of those
poisonous fiavorings that are COM
pounded from acids. The manufactur-
ers cut huge slab of the gum into
quadrangular pieces about the size of a
domino. In cool weather the bits are
friable and break easily; when it is
warm they have the consistency of a
piece of india-rubber.
1t is surprising how much of this
black chewing-gum is used. A little
girl gets hold of a penny somehow. and
she can not get to shop quick enough
to buy some of it. She chews and ehews
and chews on It, her jaws working as
regularly and vigorously as those Of a
Fourth of July orator. If she has bo-
som friend she may bite off bit of gum
and set the other girl to chewing. Ii
cba yviS q TO rrIla q faUnr n
her 5-year-old sweetheart she gives him
a morsel. The young ladies who de-
YOUR the yellow-b bound novels devour
gum, too. They place fragment of it
between the hindermoSt of their pearly
teeth, and while their souls 90 out to
Elvira in her prison, or their hearts
llutter in sympathy with Edgar de
Montmorenci in his attempt to carry off
the heiress, they don't forget to chew
that gum. Young beaus, the leaders in
tenement-house society, chew it, too; for
the men who make it advertise that it
perfumes the breath and lends the
mouth the odor of new-mown field;
also that it aids digestion and clears
the voice and is harmless and beauti-
full substitute for tobacco; that it is, in
fact, penny bit of ambrosial food for
the gods
1t isn't. The physicians of Amster-
dam, N. Y, have just decided IN SOL
emn conclaye that the practice of chew
ing this black gum is most harmful and
pernicious. They have traced directly
to it innumerable cases of sore mouth
and sore throat that they have treated
of late. Their brethren of the medical
profession in New York agree with
them, and not only condemn black
chewing-gum, but all chewing-gum OF
whatever color.
The physician who has charge of the
throat dispensary III one of the largest
hospitals in New York said the other
day: ''Day after day patients, nearly
all girls between and Is years of age,
come in here and complain that it hurts
them when they swallow, or else that
their mouths sting when they drink
anything warm. On examining their
throats | find the delicate mucous men,
brane marked here and there with little
inflamed patches. In nine cases out OF
ten it is caused by chewing-gum.
why is the gum hurtful?"
The flavoring is usually poisonous "
replied the doctor, land by its constant
presence, in however small a quantity,
it sets up an inflammation. But the
ha bit is otherwise pernicious. The un-
firing motion of gum-chewer's jaws
provokes a supcrtluouS flow of saliva
just as if there was always a pinch of
salt on the tongue, and wears out the
the saliva glands. Gum-chewing re-
tards digestion. If woman fills her
stomach with water or saliva she
browns the gastric juices; also the IN
terminable attritlon wears out the teeth,
and foreign flavor by degrees renders
the breath more and more disagreeable.
The practice is bad in every way."-M.
Z. San.