< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
171
SMOKING AND COLLEGE STUDENTS
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 occurred 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 implantation. . . . 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 interferes 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 published 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 J 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:

    This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.