TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS. 93 



have only to keep our eyes open, as we walk the streets of 

 any of our cities, to see that the tendency is toward that 

 consummation ; if further evidence than that thus obtain- 

 able is w^anted, we have only to consult the records of the 

 United States Navy, to learn that "the most prominent 

 cause of rejection of candidates for apprenticeship is 

 irritable heart, caused in most cases primarily by tobacco." 

 Do such things look as though there were absolutely no 

 danger? Do they not rather point to the conclusion that 

 the tobacco-habit is making seriously rapid headway 

 amiong us by means of heredity as at least one of, it 

 may be, many causes. 



\Yq are well aware that other views are taken than those 

 that we have thus far expressed. We know that medical 

 journals have lately claimed that the use of tobacco is 

 upon the whole rather beneficial than otherwise ; that it is 

 pleaded, in extenuation of the many heavy indictments 

 drawn against it, that it produces no organic lesions which 

 the scalpel of the post fnortem examiner can detect ; that 

 the damage produced is rather functional than structural ; 

 that it works badly with only a minority of the many who 

 use it ; and that, if it be once given up, all bad effects dis- 

 appear, — if not immediately, certainly very soon after its 

 discontinuance. We know, moreover, all that is claimed 

 for it on the score of its wide-spread use, and on the 

 ground of the testimony in its favor by the many who 

 employ it ; but we note that all physiologists — with, so 

 far as we know not a single exception — condemn its use 

 by those who have not yet attained their growth. 



The late Professor Parke — himself, if we mistake not, a 

 smoker — says : " I think we must decidedly admit injury 

 from excess ; from moderate use I can see no harm, 



