The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-07
WOMENSMOKERSIN ENGLAND
INCREASED GREATLY IN NUM-
 BER IN LAST FEW YEARS.
Smoking More of Fad Than a Habit Some of the Injurious Results Women Prone to Extremes.

The number of women who have
 aeopted the habit of cigarette smoking has increased enormously of late years
 Ten or fifteen years ago smoking
 among women in this country was
 more or less confined to isolated cases of young girls who thought 1t clever or
 amusing and elderly females of the
 tramp class who found solace for an
 uncomfortable existence in sucking an aged pipe of unclean description.
 It is very different to-day. There are women smokers in every class of the community, students, society women
 shop-girls and journalists, artists, girls in business and girls who stay at home, young girls and married women says Elizabeth Sloan Chosser in London Daily Chronicle. Even the grand mothers are not beyond suspicion, al- though the very word seems incom- patible with cigarettes. It Is, perhaps, too much to assert that most women smoke; but that a great many of them appreciate the soothing influence of what man has so long considered his pet luxury cannot be denied Woman smokers are increasing, at the same time man Is becoming more tolerant and more accustomed to the sight of a woman manipulating cigarette, It seems as if woman means to smoke, in spite of the fact that the habit has been condemned on moral, aesthetic and medical grounds.
 The chief argument against women smoking is that-it is always best to acknowledge a selfevident fact right away-wonen are more prone to the extreme than men, When smoking is once acquired as habit it Is a difi- cult matter to keep it within strict and sensible limits; and what may be very moderate smoking for a young girl A man may smoke a dozen cigarettes in twenty-four hours without any appar- ent damage to his health; the girl who habitually disposes of six or eight cigarettes a day is deliberately under mining her constitution. One of the first duties of a woman is to preserve her health; because, in spite of all the assertions and indignant denials of the shrieking sister-hood, the chief reason of our very existence is to provide the mothers of future generations.
 have often been told by women that they have started smoking more as joke and that the habit had grown up- on them until they could not imagine existence without their cigarette case. And there is no more pathetic figure than the heavy smoker of the genter sex. Thin, anaemic, highly strung, rri- table, with cold, clamny hands and stained finger tips, she Is one of the least admirable products of the woman movement.
 She is either brave woman or she is ignorant of the dangers she runs in smoking what she calls a harmless, nerve soothing cigarette. Those who argue that woman should smoke to soothe he domestic worries might as well say that girl should take brandy or opium to counteract the depressing effects of an unfortunate love affair. Smoking in that sense is drungging: the tobacco is to be regarded as a nar- cotic, and all narcotics are to be avoid- ed unless ordered by a doctor.
 One cause of the prevalence of dys~ pepsia nowadays Is smoking, and dys- pepsia acts as a brake on an ambitious woman and blot on a pretty one. And yet few women will believe that the red nose of dyspepsia is secondary to their habit of smoking, In strict moderation smoking is apparently harmless; but what is moderation? Four cigarettes day cannot possibly be the cause of my Ill health" plain lively asserts the martyr to padpitation and Indigestion but nicotine affects dIf- ferent people in varying degrees. Two cigarettes a day Is excess for the neu- rotic woman, who should never smoke at all.
 When women begin to smoke they like to do it thoroughly and visit to the smoking room of any the wmen's clubs is sufficient to prove to the ob- server that the dangerous habit of in- haling is far too common. Most people have a haZy glimmering of the fact that much smoking; especially accom- panied by inhaling, is a bad thing The physiological effects of tobaccao are due to an alkaloid, nicotine; which acts chiefly upon the heart causing ir- regular action and producing the con- dition known as smokers heart. The girl who is an habitual smoker under. mines her health and units herself for work
 A frequent complaint of the smoker is loss of mental tone and inability to concentrate the attention Nervous symptoms will be more apparent in a woman smoker than a man, because won1an's nervous organizat ton is of a more delicate order and more easily upset. That smoking, even in modera- tion, Is harmful to women is very prob able There are many who assert that habitual cmoking has q deteriora ting the children would be physically inferi- or to the children of smokers, other things being equal.
 This is mainly a personal considera. tion. It is not so much what we do that seems to matter, but how we do # and this is true of smoking as of everv- thing else. To smoke in a public placs lays woman open to the criticism of strangers, and although a girl Is not necessarily fast" because she enjoys an occasional cigarette, the true gentle woman avoids doing anything uncon- ventional in public. If girl will smoke she should only do so among friends in the privacy of her own house and pref erably, in a gathering of women and of men who smoke themselves.
 There are neOnle who considay q o,irI