170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
THE EFFECTS OF SMOKING ON COLLEGE STUDENTS 
By Dr. GEORGE L. MEYLAN 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
HE question of the effects of tobacco upon the smoker has re- 
ceived much attention from moralists, educators, physicians and 
scientists. The literature on the subject is voluminous. Numerous 
investigators have experimented upon animals, mainly to determine 
the effects produced by nicotine. The results of these experiments 
show that nicotine when injected in animals acts as a strong poison, 
causing disturbances of the nervous, circulatory and respiratory func- 
tions. The problem of determining the effects of smoking upon human 
beings presents far greater difficulties than the effects of nicotine in- 
jections on animals. There is very little agreement in the conclusions 
reached by the many physiologists and physicians, who have investi- 
gated this problem. 
Professor Lombard, of the University of Michigan, has shown that 
in from five to ten minutes after beginning to smoke an ordinary cigar 
muscular power began to diminish, and in an hour when the cigar was 
burned, it had fallen to about 25 per cent. of its initial value. The 
total work of the time of depression compared with a similar normal 
period was as 24.2 is to 44.8. 
According to Dr. Woodhead, of Cambridge University : 
Cigarette smoking in the case of boys, partly paralyzes the nerve cells at 
the base of the brain and this interferes with the breathing and heart action. 
The end organs of the motor nerves lose their excitability, next the trunks of 
the nerves and then the spinal cord. In those accustomed to smoking, it has 
a soothing effect upon the nervous system, but often acts as a nervous stimulant 
to mental work, as in reading. In those cases the effect is not due to nicotine 
itself but to the stimulus of the smoke on the sensory nerves of the mouth, 
which reflexly stimulate the vaso-motor system and dilate the vessels of the 
brain. There appears to be less irritation of the brain structure and motor 
nerves than of the sensory nerves, but the power of fine coordination is de- 
cidedly lost. 
Dr. Clouston, the eminent English physician, writes on tobacco as 
follows: 
The use of tobacco has become the rule rather than the exception among 
the grown men of Europe and America and of some parts of Asia. If its use is 
restricted to full-grown men, if only good tobacco is used, not of too great 
strength, and if it is not used to excess, then there are no scientific proofs that 
it has any injurious effects, if there is no idiosynerasy against it. Speaking 
generally, it exercises a soothing influence when the nervous system is in any 
