THE EVILS OF SMOKING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 177, 5 November 1910, Page 10

THE EVILS OF SMOKING

SOME SHUDDERS FOR STRONG SMOKERS. Doctors are divided as to whether smoking is, iu itself, good or bad, but they are unanimous as to the awful things that lie in wait for you if you smoke too much. One of the most curious effects of oversmoking is one that affect the e\ es. When turning his eyes from one scene to another, tlie man suffering from this defect is apt to confuse the two images. When attempting to cross a street at a busy crossing, for instance, a motor and a hansom may seem to him to be occupying the same space. Aud a man who 'sees traffic only as a confused jumble is in a dangerous condition. THE CANCER, ERROR. The excessive smoking of tobacco seems, in some mysterious way, to make the retina of the eye retain the picture of an object long after the eye lias ceased to look at that object. The old belief that excessive smoking brings on cancer on the lip has been exploded long ago. Smoking does not cause cancer at all. If, however, there is already a tendency to that disease, smoking may bring it to a head on the lip. As most men who smoke too much know, over-indulgence in tobacco, if continued for long, may cause a serious weakening of the memory. The soothing effect, too, produced by moderate smoking, gives place to irritability. One grows disinclined for mental exertion of any sort. And that inability to work is accompanied i. - a curious restlessness. One wants to work, but cannot. The gums of the heavy smoker otten turn pale. The throat is so much overworked that it grows weak, and renders its unfortunate owner unusually subject to colds and coughs. All heavy smokers have heard of, and dread, smoker's heart. But few people seem to know exactly what this is. It is not painful in the slightest. What excessive smoking does is to slow the beating of tUe heart, and to make it less regular. In fact, the heart often drops one beat in four or five. Almost all great smokeri have this irregular action of the heart. If your heart seems to stop for a second now and then you have it, too. A great variety of color-blindness is the lot of many men who smoke too much. He finds great difficulty in distinguishing between a sixpence and a half-sovereign. This sometimes comes on quite suddenly. However, there is one great consolation for this, as lor almost all the other evil results of over-indulgence in the weed. A sudden drop in the weekly consumption of tobacco renders the eyesight normal again. NERVES AND THE MAN. Noises in the ear are another frequent result of over-smoking. If one is foolish enough not to take warning 'by them they may grow to partial deafness. Again, the man who smokes too much Jias usually rather shaky nerves. The muscles, too, are distinctly weaker and laxer than they should be. It it no wonder that smoking is forbidden to athletes in training and to working nvatehmakers. Heavy smoking of cirgarettes darkens the teeth and fingers. The smoking of pipes, however, has, for some unexplained reason, no effect on the teeth whatever. As for the fingers, if you smoke too many pipes, and you always use the one finger as a stopper, you will permanently sear your finger-tip. Nothing will cure that. But there is one consolation for the misguided sufferer. His .pet vice shows that he is the possessor of sound lungs. No man whose lungs are not perfectly healthy ever feels any inclination to smoke to excess.