TOBACCO, INSANITY AND NERVOUSNESS. 11 



the factors causing the depopulation of France is the ex- 

 cessive use of tobacco by its inhabitants; for the offspring 

 of inveterate tobacco consumers is notoriously puny and 

 Stunted in stature and lacks the normal power of resist- 

 ance, especially on the part of the nervous system ; again, 

 in our country it is a significant fact that an astounding 

 percentage of the candidates for admission to \Ve*t Point 

 and other military schools are rejected on account of 

 tobacco-hearts ; from all countries and from all classes of 

 society come reports in increasing numbers of the baneful 

 effects of the tobacco-habit. 



But the consumption goes on and will do so, until an exam- 

 ple is set by those who, above all others, can estimate the 

 disastrous effect of the habit. 



If teachers, preachers and physicians would pronounce 

 the anathema on tobacco and abstain from it themselves, 

 others would follow. But here is the difficulty. It is only 

 exceptionally that a smoking pedagogue, clergyman or 

 physician can be convinced that he would be a better man 

 physically, intellectually and morally, if he would give up 

 tobacco, and that he has no idea what capabilities of well- 

 being he possesses, if he only could muster up moral cour- 

 age enough to abandon the use of a drug which in nine 

 cases out of ten produces, to say the least, a vague sensa- 

 tion of uneasiness and restlessness, which only too often 

 calls for a remedy that will do away with these effects, and 

 that is alcohol. Some are aware that tobacco alone is 

 responsible for a continual malaise or misery, especially 

 when their attention is called to it by others, but like the 

 cocainist, who asserts that the effects of cocaine are horrible, 

 and still goes on, using the poison, so the tobacco-slave is 

 bound, as by fate, to again indulge in a drug which he 

 knows causes him to suffer.* 



* It must be a strangely potent fascination indeed, which tobacco exer- 

 cises over the bulk of its victims, when we consider that some are aware 



