Cigarettes have been analyzed, and the most physicians and chemists
were surprised to find how much opium is put into them. A tobacconist
himself says that "the extent to which drugs are used in cigarettes
is appalling." "Havana flavoring" for this same purpose is sold
everywhere by the thousand barrels. This flavoring is made from the
tonka-bean, which contains a deadly poison. The wrappers, warranted
to be rice paper, are sometimes made of common paper, and sometimes of
the filthy scrapings of ragpickers bleached white with arsenic. What a
thing for human lungs.
The habit burns up good health, good resolutions, good manners, good
memories, good faculties, and often honesty and truthfulness as well.
Cases of epilepsy, insanity and death are frequently reported as
the result of smoking cigarettes, while such physicians as Dr. Lewis
Sayre, Dr. Hammond, and Sir Morell Mackenzie of England, name heart
trouble, blindness, cancer and other diseases as occasioned by it.
Leading physicians of America unanimously condemn cigarette smoking
as "one of the vilest and most destructive evils that ever befell
the youth of any country," declaring that "its direct tendency is a
deterioration of the race."
Look at the pale, wilted complexion of a boy who indulges to excessive
cigarette smoking. It takes no physician to diagnose his case, and
death will surely mark for his own every boy and young man who will
follow up the habit. It is no longer a matter of guess. It is a
scientific fact which the microscope in every case verifies.
[Illustration: _Illustrating the shrunken condition of one of the
Lungs of an excessive smoker_]
[Illustration: INNOCENT YOUTH.]
* * * * *
The Dangerous Vices.
Few persons are aware of the extent to which masturbation or
self-pollution is practiced by the young of both sexes in civilized
society.