SMOKING AND COLLEGE STUDENTS E70 
way irritable. It tends to calm and continuous thinking, and in many men 
promotes the digestion of food. To those good results there are, however, 
exceptions. It sometimes sets up a very strong desire for its excessive use; 
this often passing into a morbid craving which leads to excess and hurt. Used 
in such excessive quantity tobacco acts injuriously on the heart, weakens 
digestion, and causes congestion of the throat as well as hindering mental 
action. In many people its use tends towards a desire for alcohol as well. 
I have repeatedly seen persons of a nervous temperament where the two excesses 
in tobacco and alcohol were linked together. Tobacco, properly used may, in 
some cases, undoubtedly be made a mental hygienic. 
Dr. Pereria says: 
I am not acquainted with any well-ascertained ill effects resulting from the 
habitual practise of smoking. 
Dr. Richardson writes of tobacco in the London Lancet: 
It is innocent as compared with alcohol; it is in no sense worse than tea. 
In the Fourth Annual Report of the Henry Phipps Institute, 1908, 
Dr. Lawrence F. Flick reports that of 443 male patients treated for 
pulmonary tuberculosis, 72.68 per cent. used tobacco. The result of 
the treatment was favorable in 38.28 per cent. of the patients who used 
tobacco, as against 47.42 among non-users. Unfavorable results oc- 
curred in 61.7 per cent. of the users of tobacco, and in only 52.62 per 
cent. of the non-users. Dr. Flick concludes: 
Here again, as with alcoholism, we have merely evidence as to the influence 
of tobacco on the development and mortality of tuberculosis and not upon im- 
plantation. . . . The statistics here given, if they have any meaning at all, 
would seem to indicate that the use of tobacco by males may be one of the 
explanations why tuberculosis is at present as much more prevalent among 
males than among females. Tobacco undoubtedly depresses the heart and inter- 
feres to some extent with vigorous circulation. It is generally conceded that 
anything which depresses the circulation interferes with nutrition. 
Under the title “ The Effects of Nicotine,” Dr. Jay W. Seaver pub- 
lished an article in the Arena, for February, 1897, in which he gives 
some statistics of the differences in the physical measurements of 
smokers and non-smokers among Yale College students. Unfortunately, 
Dr. Seaver does not give any figures of the actual measurements or the 
number of cases that he observed. He says: 
A tabulation of the records of the students who entered Yale in nine years, 
when all of the young men were examined and measured, shows that the 
smokers averaged fifteen months older than the non-smokers, but that their 
size, except in weight, which was one and four-tenths kilograms more, was 
inferior in height to the extent of seven millimeters (about 4+ inch), and in 
lung capacity to the extent of eighty cubic centimeters. 
In explanation of the difference in age between the smokers and the 
non-smokers, Dr. Seaver says: 
The difference in age in the two groups points to an age limit to parental 
restraint, and raises the inquiry as to what might supplement this influence. 
In regard to the influence of smoking on the increase of physical 
measurements of college students, Dr. Seaver says: 
