112 TOBACCO AND ITS EFFECTS, 



effects of tobacco upon the system are less easily observed 

 and more insidious than is usually supposed. I am sure 

 that the habit is incompatible with great and long con- 

 tinued intellectual activity ; and since we physicians as a 

 class know its harm physiologically, it appears to me that 

 it is our duty to discourage a habit that is not conducive to 

 health, and that we are criminal if we give countenance to 

 a habit which is known to engender nervous troubles of a 

 very serious kind. Professional men and students should 

 be made more fully aware than they sometimes are of the 

 tendency of the habit and its results." 



" During the last ten or fifteen years the consumption 

 of tobacco has so increased, especially among young 

 people, that we can hardly hope to comprehend its influ- 

 ence. It is my belief that its use among the young 

 cannot be too strongly condemned ; very few students 

 who make a free use of tobacco stand at the head of 

 their classes." 



" It is not often that one great catastrophe overthrows 

 the mental health of the student ; it is the constant 

 recurrence of unfavorable circumstances or acts, the 

 gradual accumulation of adverse surroundings, the steady 

 disregard of healthful conditions, which heap misfortune 

 upon the individual ; the often repeated disregard of the 

 common laws of hygiene, deviations from estabhshed 

 principles, the thousand and one little things which tend 

 to depress vitality and produce disease, — all these are the 

 operating causes ; and prominent among them stands the 

 increasing use of tobacco among the younger students at 

 the present time." 



" Nervous prostration, and a strong tendency to the use 

 of stimulants and narcotics, as alcohol and opium, are 



