A good deal of excitement was produced lately in an Ohio village, when
an old and reverend deacon in the church, a model in good words and
works, was attacked with what appeared to be delirium tremens. The
attack was renewed again and again, and finally the deacon died.
The disease really was, as stated by the physicians, similar to
_mania-a-potu,_ but had been produced by the excessive use of tobacco,
which had slowly but thoroughly penetrated his nervous system.
The superintendent of the Pennsylvania Insane Hospital, in his last
annual report, states that he has carefully tabulated for many years the
causes of insanity in his patients, and finds intemperance the highest
on the list. First, intemperance in the use of liquor, secondly, of
tobacco, and thirdly, of opium and chloral.
"The earlier in life," he says, "that boys begin to use tobacco, the
more strongly marked are its effects upon the nerves and brain.
"Statistics obtained from European schools show that lads whose standing
had been good in their classes before they began to smoke or chew, were
invariably found, after they became addicted to either habit, to fall
below the school average."
If young men would at least refrain from the use of tobacco until after
the age of twenty-five, they would probably never acquire the habit of
using it; or, if they did, it would not gain so secure or deadly a hold
upon them, because their constitutions would be better able to resist
it.
There is no temptation to young girls in tobacco, but the use of
narcotics, anodynes, "drops" and chloral, to which many woman are
becoming addicted, is even more perilous to body and mind.
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