TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10056, 30 May 1910, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

TOBACCO AND DISEASE. Smokers will be delighted to luarn that a French military doctor has discovered, and undertakes lo prove by convincing statistics, that smoking, instead of being bad. is good for the health. Better still, smokers are almost immune from meningitis. Tobacco, therefore, instead of being tabooed by some medical men, ought to be hailed with delighr, and anyone threatened with the terrible brain or spinaJ attack ebould be at once told to take the nicotine cure. The discoverer o! this new scientific fact is Dr. de Kermabon, of the French army. He ha 3 patiently gathered statistics and watched the ravages of cerebro spinal diseases among the young recruits of the French army, and, as their habita, among others that of smoking, are carefully noted in the reports, he was astonished to sea that so few of the habitual smokers were attacked by the disease. The proportion, as established by him,"is one to 20; that is to say, for one case of meningitis among a given number of smokers, there are 20 cases of the disease among an equal number of non-smokers. What will the society againsi the abuse of tobacco say to this? Its chief argument hitherto has been that smoking is especially bad for the young. But Dr, Kermabon could argUß exactly the contrary, and this is what he does. Rather than discourage young men from smoking, they ought to be encouraged, especially if they are liable to a brain or spinal trouble.