A Study of Effects of Smoking on physical and mental aptitude.

The use of tobacco prevails throughout the whole world. Smokers are numbered by hundreds of millions.

“As a whole, tobacco is harmless to the mind, but it may have a mischievous influence on the health, and may cause serious diseases. We should not advise anyone to use it, and should try to keep women and children from doing so. In taking up this part of its programme, and in affiliating itself with teachers of all grades, the Society against the Abuse of Tobacco has performed real service; but it has tried to gain its end by exaggerations that can only compromise it. It is of no use, and would be labor lost, to try to convert adult smokers so long as they experience no inconvenience from the habit. As soon as they begin to feel some troubles, and have reached an age when the troubles may become grave, the dangers to which they are exposing themselves should be described to them without extenuating them, but without making the picture blacker. If dangerous affections are threatened, like angina pectoris, or injuries to the tongue and lips, a decisive course must be taken, and the immediate and complete abandonment of the cigarette and pipe insisted upon, for experience has taught that there can be no gradual leaving off.”