b TOBACCO, INSANITY AND NERVOUSNESS. 



dieted, that there is an alarming increase of juvenile smok- 

 ers; and, basing my assertion on the experience, gathered 

 in my private practice and at the St. Vincent's Institution 

 of this city, I will broadly state that the boy who smokes 



AT SEVEN, WILL DRINK WHISKEY AT FOURTEEN, TAKE TO 

 MORPHINE AT 20 OR 25, AND WIND UP WITH COCAINE AND 

 THE REST OF THE NARCOTICS, AT 30 AND LATER ON. 



It is like a pathologico-moral version of Hogarth's " The 

 Rake's Progress." 



It may look like overstating and exaggerating things > 

 but I know whereof I speak, when I say that tobacco when 

 habitually used by the young leads -to a species of imbecil- 

 ity ; that the juvenile smoker will lie, cheat and steal,, 

 which he would not, had he let tobacco alone. This kind 

 of insanity I have observed in quite a number of cases at the 

 St. Vincent's. The patients presented all the characteristics 

 of young incorrigibles. They had exhausted the indul- 

 gence of their parents, who saw no other way to protect 

 them from their insane pranks, than to commit them to 

 the institution. Had they been less favorably situated 

 financially, they would have landed at the House of~Cbrrec- 

 tion or the Workhouse. 



I do not know whether a lasting improvement was 

 effected in any of them. There was not one amongst them 

 that was able to comprehend that tobacco was injuring him ; 

 they were constantly on the lookout for obtaining it, by 

 begging, stealing or bribing, and regarded the deprivation 

 of the drug as a punishment. The sense of propriety, the 

 faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong, was lost. 

 The father of one of thenf who looked upon Iris son only 

 as an aggravated case of bad boy, told me that he.. himself 

 had been smoking. -ever' since his 10th year and it never had 

 affected him. Iiureality, being only 45 years old, he was 

 a wreck, physically and mentally, though he came of 

 healthy stock, tie could not or would not comprehend 



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