The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-11-15
"Legislate against it tt

low millions on millions or ClRdT' cites to be manufactured every year? q don't know what we're going to now | adays. It's always something for the l stimulation of the nerves-whiskey spir- | its. cocaine, morphine, cigarettes, and | frightful inventions for whirling upside down in a -the-loop-everything to | excite the nerves. That's what the peo- pie want. And that reminds me of a l funny thing. I was on my way down to Atlantic City last Sunday in an automo- | bile, and I wasn't sure about the road so | when 1 saw a bicyclist approaching I | determined to ask him.
 When I got abreast I shouted to him without slaokening our speed. He never raised his head, and the answer came to us from half mile back. Then I saw it was a motor cycle. Strenuous times I should say so; we were making thirty to thirty-five miles an hour and he was going all of twenty, so we passed each other about fifty miles an hour.
 Cigarettes Do Much Damage. But about cigarettes. They do so much damage it's hard to know where to be- gin. By their evil effects on the nerves they, of course, throw the whole physical system out of order, and especially the digestive organs. 'The medulla oblongata is the large nerve that controls the action of the stomach, and the effect of the acrolein | is to excite an undue flow of the peptic 1 juices and to waste them when the stom- ach is empty. And your cigarette smoker has no regard for the condition of his stomach. He smokes when he goes to bed, and he smokes when he is dressing in the morning, and he smokes all the forenoon, and he smokes all the after noon.
 "A person will smoke a cigarette when he wouldn't think of lighting a pipe or cigar. They are so internally convenient and small and inexpensive that he will | light one after another simply for want of something to do.
 I've fellow working for me now who nearly died from the effects a few months ago. His stomach and all his digestive organs went completely back on him, and he had mighty close call. While he was i'll he couldn't smoke, or I should say, they wouldn't let him. And when he finally managed to crawl around had a good talk with him about it, and persuaded him to smoke cigars instead. He tried 1t, and for a while he was pretty well, but I saw the poor wretch with a cigarette in his mouth only a day or two ago. O, it's an awful hamit. Once it gets hold on you it's hard to break 1t. Creates Appetite for Drink.
 There is a slight quantity of pyridine present in cigarette smoke that dries the mucous coat of the mouth and throat and that makes a man want to drink They go well together, those two drugs-cigar- cites and alcohol-and they accomplish wonders in reducing man to vicious an- imal.
 The disastrous effect doesn't stop at the Arrangement of the digestive organs The influence on the nerves is felt all over, even to the hearts action. The brain, being merely great mass of nerve matter, suffers largely in time, and the result is loss of memory and the sense of moral responsibility. The whole plane of intellect is lowered.
 There are accounts in the papers every day of boys going insane and commit ting suicide. Three murders in Phlladel- phia this year were committed by young men who were crazed by smoking cigar cites.
 There is a man now in a New York prison awaiting capital punishment for strangling his wife few months back He confessed the horrible crime with an utter disregard of consequences. and now he spends the netire time smoking cigar etts necessarily in his cell.
 It's not the tobacco that makes the trouble smoke constantly. and I work from in the morning till midnight and I'm never sick, and don't know what it is to break down. Of course take re- taxation in the way of automobiling, and l get plenty of exercise.
 My father was an inveterate smoker Of cigars-would smoke six or eight a day-and ne lived to be ninetyfour It's all bosh about nicotine doing the damage. | The nicotine is almost entirely consumed in the burning of the tobacco. and what little is left is filtered through the end | of the cigar, and as for the statement that single drop of it will kill dog. I don't believe it,
 But what if 1t would? You wouldn't get drop of it from smoking a half n dozen cigars
 If cigarettes were put up in tobacco wrappers instead of paper vou could smoke them with impunty: but there g the rub, the cigarette smoker wouldn't want them. The taste is different. and the powerful nerve stimulant of the aero. lein would be absent.
 Cigarette tobacco smoked in a pipe Is A different thing from smoking a cigar. ette. You wouldn't recognize it.
 Makes Race of Degenerates.
 That English scientist who says that
 in ancient times the Turks were a fierce
 rowing race like the nomads of the desert
 and that incessant cigarette smoking has changed them into a quiet, sedentary peo- pie, is about right. And he could go far
 ther and say it has made them a race oi
 weak. vicious degenerates.
 There's another indirect effect of cig.
 arette smoking. The constant inhalation
 of the smoke so infames the membrane
 of the lungs that a full, deep inspiration
 of air causes discomfort so that the cig-
 arctic smoker becomes weak lunged and
 short winded simply through the lack
 of properly using his lungs.
 ''The other day found package some
 one had dropped on my office step. The
 sight of it gave me feeling of disgust
 and I went back into the office and
 wrote this sign.
 "A degenerate who is retrogrsding to-
 ward the lower animal life has lost his packet
 And I tackled 1t up with the sign in a conspieuous place. I was downright mac