Part 59 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: A section of the diseased Lung of a cigarette smoker, highly magnified.]

THE DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF CIGARETTE SMOKING.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Ill.u.s.trating the shrunken condition of one of the Lungs of an excessive smoker_]

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Cigarettes have been a.n.a.lyzed, and the most physicians and chemists were surprised to find how much opium is put into them. A tobacconist himself says that ”the extent to which drugs are used in cigarettes is appalling.”

”Havana flavoring” for this same purpose is sold everywhere by the thousand barrels. This flavoring is made from the tonka-bean, which contains a deadly poison. The wrappers, warranted to be rice paper, are sometimes made of common paper, and sometimes of the filthy sc.r.a.pings of ragpickers bleached white with a.r.s.enic. What a thing for human lungs.

The habit burns up good health, good resolutions, good manners, good memories, good faculties, and often honesty and truthfulness as well.

Cases of epilepsy, insanity and death are frequently reported as the result of smoking cigarettes, while such physicians as Dr. Lewis Sayre, Dr.

Hammond, and Sir Morell Mackenzie of England, name heart trouble, blindness, cancer and other diseases as occasioned by it.

Leading physicians of America unanimously condemn {450} cigarette smoking as ”one of the vilest and most destructive evils that ever befell the youth of any country,” declaring that ”its direct tendency is a deterioration of the race.”

Look at the pale, wilted complexion of a boy who indulges in excessive cigarette smoking. It takes no physician to diagnose his case, and death will surely mark for his own every boy and young man who will follow up the habit. It is no longer a matter of guess. It is a scientific fact which the microscope in every case verifies.

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The Dangerous Vices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INNOCENT YOUTH.]

Few persons are aware of the extent to which masturbation or self-pollution is practiced by the young of both s.e.xes in civilized society.

SYMPTOMS.

The hollow, sunken eye, the blanched cheek, the withered hands, and emaciated frame, and the listless life, have other sources than the ordinary illnesses of all large communities.

When a child, after having given proofs of memory and intelligence, experiences daily more and more difficulty in retaining and understanding what is taught him, it is not only from unwillingness and idleness, as is commonly supposed, but from a disease eating out life itself, brought on by a self-abuse of the private organs. Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the diminished energy of application, the languid movement, the stooping gait, the desertion of social games, the solitary walk, late rising, livid and sunken eye, and many other symptoms, will fix the attention of every intelligent and competent guardian of youth that something is wrong.

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MARRIED PEOPLE.

Nor are many persons sufficiently aware of the ruinous extent to which the amative propensity is indulged by married persons. The matrimonial ceremony does, indeed, sanctify the act of s.e.xual intercourse, but it can by no means atone for nor obviate the consequences of its abuse. Excessive indulgence in the married relation is, perhaps, as much owing to the force of habit, as to the force of the s.e.xual appet.i.te.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GUARD WELL THE CRADLE.

EDUCATION CANNOT BEGIN TOO YOUNG.]

EXTREME YOUTH.

More lamentable still is the effect of inordinate s.e.xual excitement of the young and unmarried. It is not very uncommon to find a confirmed onanist, or, rather, masturbator, who has not yet arrived at the period of p.u.b.erty.