TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH 55 



physical and moral organisation it is obviously necessary 

 that we should 



Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find 

 Where nature moves, and rapture charms the mind. 



At the outset, however, it cannot be too strongly emphasised 

 that there is no question as to the baneful action of 

 tobacco in any form on growing youths. Until the age of 

 adolescence is safely passed, or till the riper age of one and 

 twenty has been attained, there should be no thought of 

 smoking. The tests and experiments of physiologists, the 

 untrained observation of laymen, and the accumulated 

 experience of civilised nations are agreed in this conclusion. 

 Remarks pointing to the rapid growth of the smoking 

 habit among youths were made by the Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer in his recent Budget speech, where, commenting 

 upon the augmented revenue from tobacco, he said it was 

 mainly due to the vast consumption of cigarettes, which 

 were specially attractive to our youthful population. ' I am 

 told,' Sir Michael added, ' of one manufacturer who makes 

 two millions of cigarettes a day who hardly made any a 

 few years ago.' 



Every-day observation bears out the statement that the 

 cigarette is the chosen smoke of youths. Go where we will, 

 in crowded streets or country lanes, boys of the tender age 

 of from nine or ten years upwards are almost constantly 

 met with, smoking paper cigarettes, who were they better 

 advised would prefer toffy, as was the case a few years ago. 

 Surely every one knows that children cannot go on smoking 

 tobacco with impunity, without, in fact, doing themselves 

 life-long injury. Since parents are too heedless of their 

 children's welfare to prevent them from pursuing a practice 

 the inevitable results of which will, by-and-by, appear irj 



