Health and Woodland Medicine 323 



"Doctor Wright, of London, showed that nicotin lowers the 

 tuberculo-opsonic index of the blood; that is, it lowers the power 

 of resistance of the body against tuberculosis. He cited the case 

 of a young man who was a great smoker and whose tuberculo- 

 opsonic index was zero instead of 100. The young man was 

 suffering from tuberculosis and died within a few weeks. 



"Post-mortem examination made at the Phipps Institute 

 showed that smokers are twice as subject to tuberculosis as 

 non-smokers." 



These are only a few of the thousand facts, the writer goes on, 

 that might be cited on his side of the question. Nothing in 

 them shows that there is any distinction between the child and 

 the adult, and the fact that the effects are often less apparent 

 in the latter is due, we are told, solely to the fact that they 

 possess greater vital resistance than children. Finally, he 

 remarks : 



"We would remind the editor to review the study of phys- 

 iologic chemistry and pathology, and consult a few up-to-date 

 standard works on the practice of medicine in relation to the 

 cause of Bright's disease, arteriosclerosis, angina pectoris and 

 other maladies involving the heart and blood-vessels, the death- 

 rate from which has kept even pace along with the increase of 

 tobacco during the last thirty or forty years. " 



SEX MATTERS 



Some of our best authorities tell us that more than half 

 of our diseases, mental and physical, come from ignorance 

 and consequent abuse of our sexual powers. 



We have long known and realized vaguely that virtue 

 and strength are synonymous; that the Puritan fathers, 

 for example, notwithstanding their narrowness and their 

 unlovely lives, were upon the whole a people of pure life, 

 who reaped their reward in their wonderful mental, moral, 

 and physical strength, not entirely gone to-day. 



All men realize the desirability of virtue; and hitherto 

 we have attempted to keep our young people virtuous by 

 keeping them ignorant. Most thinking men to-day admit 



