SMOKING AND COLLEGE STUDENTS 171 



way irritable. It tends to calm and continuous thinking, and in many men 

 promotes the digestion of food. To those good results there are, however, 

 exceptions. It sometimes sets up a very strong desire for its excessive use; 

 this often passing into a morbid craving which leads to excess and hurt. Used 

 in such excessive quantity tobacco acts injuriously on the heart, weakens 

 digestion, and causes congestion of the throat as well as hindering mental 

 action. In many people its use tends towards a desire for alcohol as well. 

 I have repeatedly seen persons of a nervous temperament where the two excesses 

 in tobacco and alcohol were linked together. Tobacco, properly used may, in 

 some cases, undoubtedly be made a mental hygienic. 



Dr. Pereria says : 



I am not acquainted with any well-ascertained ill effects resulting from the 

 habitual practise of smoking. 



Dr. Bichardson writes of tobacco in the London Lancet: 



It is innocent as compared with alcohol; it is in no sense worse than tea. 



In the Fourth Annual Eeport of the Henry Phipps Institute, 1908, 

 Dr. Lawrence F. Flick reports that of 443 male patients treated for 

 pulmonary tuberculosis, 72.68 per cent, used tobacco. The result of 

 the treatment was favorable in 38.28 per cent, of the patients who used 

 tobacco, as against 47.42 among non-users. Unfavorable results oc- 

 curred in 61.7 per cent, of the users of tobacco, and in only 52.62 per 

 cent, of the non-users. Dr. Flick concludes : 



Here again, as with alcoholism, we have merely evidence as to the influence 

 of tobacco on the development and mortality of tuberculosis and not upon im- 

 plantation. . . . The statistics here given, if they have any meaning at all, 

 would seem to indicate that the use of tobacco by males may be one of the 

 explanations why tuberculosis is at present as much more prevalent among 

 males than among females. Tobacco undoubtedly depresses the heart and inter- 

 feres to some extent with vigorous circulation. It is generally conceded that 

 anything which depresses the circulation interferes with nutrition. 



Under the title " The Effects of Nicotine," Dr. Jay W. Seaver pub- 

 lished an article in the Arena, for February, 1897, in which he gives 

 some statistics of the differences in the physical measurements of 

 smokers and non-smokers among Yale College students. Unfortunately, 

 Dr. Seaver does not give any figures of the actual measurements or the 

 number of cases that he observed. He says : 



A tabulation of the records of the students who entered Yale in nine years, 

 when all of the young men were examined and measured, shows that the 

 smokers averaged fifteen months older than the non-smokers, but that their 

 size, except in weight, which was one and four-tenths kilograms more, was 

 inferior in height to the extent of seven millimeters (about J inch), and in 

 lung capacity to the extent of eighty cubic centimeters. 



In explanation of the difference in age between the smokers and the 

 non-smokers, Dr. Seaver says: 



The difference in age in the two groups points to an age limit to parental 

 restraint, and raises the inquiry as to what might supplement this influence. 



In regard to the influence of smoking on the increase of physical 

 measurements of college students, Dr. Seaver says: 



