The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-08-04
THE SMOKING NUISANCE.
Made Against the Pollution of
the Air We Breathe.

a clean atmosphere nothing is more sur
prising than the apathy with which
the majority of men and women submit
to the wholesale poisoning of the air
which they breathe in theaters. lee
ture halls, even churches, as well as on
the streets, in sleeping cars, street cars,
in hotels-in fact, wherever men con-
gregate in the cities and towns of civil
lied countries. If some lunatic should
take it into his head to carry around a
stinkpot, promenading up and down
all the streets of the town, passing
through street cars, churches, hotels
and now and then, on some pretense,
getting access to private residences, it
would not be long before the public
protest against such insane behavior
would become sufficiently vigorous to
induce public officials to arrest such
purveyor of filth as public nuisance.
If man wants to make smokestack
of himself and to defile his body with
nasty-smelling and deadly poisons he
has, in certain sense, right to DO so;
but he has no right to compel every
body in his neighborhood to partici-
pate with him in his stupid abuse of a
God-given body. The smoker never
seems to realize that his vice is one
which smells to heaven" and that
only a person who himself has the
breath of turkey-buzzard can breathe
the secondhand smoke which ne ex-
hales without qualms of stomach too
vigorous for comfort. The smoking
habit is inherently selfish and cult
Yates selfishness in the man who in
dulges it.
But smoking and tobacco using in all
forms is something more than a nui-
sance. 1t is a physical as well as NOR
al and mental vice, and produces the
direst consequences upon the bodies of
those who habitually use it.
Another surprising thing in relation
to the use of tobacco is the fact that so
large number of physicians who are
perfectly acquainted with the poison
Gus properties and with the destruc-
tive influence of the habit still indulge
it to their detriment and to the detri-
ment of their patients. Tobacco is I'M
questionably one of the most prolific
Of the active causes of the race Geteri-
Grafton which we see taking place about
us. On this account it is refreshing to
find now and then physician sending
a note of warning into the ears IF the
multitudes of young men who are ig-
norantly becoming slaves to the twin
vices-alcohol and tobacco.
DR.. Francis Bowling, in a paper read
before the Mississippi Valley Medical
association, gave the results of careful
Investigations made by him respecting
the influence of tobacco upon the eye
sight. 1t has long been known that
tobacco, when used in considerable
quantities, lessons the acuteness of vi
sion and produces color blindness DR..
bowling proposed to determine wheth-
er the ordinary or so-called moderate
use of tobacco does not, to some degree,
impair the eyesight. He personally
tested the vision of $50 men employed
in a large tobacco factory. He found
that vision was very greatly diminished
in nearly one-third the entire num-
Der. In 30 cases there was very Sc
rious impairment of vision and the men
were almost absolutely color blind. In
rs, or one-half the total number, there
was a persistent contraction of the pu-
pill and accompanying defects in vision.
Other statistics equally convincing
might be quoted.
The effect of tobacco using upon the
eyesight is very insidious, and pro
crosses so slowly that it is not appre-
ciated until after great and perhaps
irreparable damage has been done. It
is for this reason that men go on for
so many years blindly indulging in this
poison habit without awakening to
the fact that they are slowly but surely
undermining their constitution. What
tobacco does for the nerves of sight it
does to every other nerve in the body:
it has not the power to select out a sim
gle nerve and injure II to the exclu-
sion Of all others, but spreads its mis-
chief throughout the whole vital do
main. Not only the nerves, but the
muscles, glands, and indeed every cell
and fiber of the body, are brought I'M
der the baneful influence of this dis
ease-producing drug.
Some years ago an eminent Scotch
physician showed by examination OF
urine that fully ten per cent. OF ordi-
nary tobacco users have albumin in the
urine, which furnishes a strong sug-
gestion that the use of this drug NAV
be one Of the causes of the rapid in
crease in the occurrence of Bright's
disease in countries in which tobacco is
largely used.-Good Health.
Liquor Laws of Ohio
The 1iCnOr -