TOBACCO SMOKING AS A HABIT.

Waikato Argus, Volume III, Issue 221, 11 December 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

TOBACCO SMOKING AS A HABIT.

The question as to whether smoking is or is not a bad habit has always been a vexed one. Advocates for and against have had no difficulty in adducing the evidence of experts in support of their contention. A»ked for his opinion on the matter, Dr A. K. Schofield replies that excess in smoking is worse thsn excess in alcohol, tea, coffeo. or many other foods and beverages. No doubt tea and coffee contain alkaloidal poisons, no doubt alcohol is a diffusive irritaut aud paralyser of tho various organs and functious of tho body ; but none of them approaches nicotine and its fellow alkaloid, the fiftieth part of a drop of which would ciuse sudden death. Indeed, continues Dr Schofield, no poison on earth can be compared to tobacco poison but prussic acid. Were it nut for the remarkable fact that it is decomposed by heat into two less baleful poisons, no one could smoke tobacco and live. In a pipe it is changed into ono form, and in cigars into another, the latter the le.«8 hurtful, but both infinitely safer than nicotine itself. The worst way of using tobacco is chewing it; thj next is oigarette smoking slightly mitigated if a holder is used ; the next is cigir smoking. Safer again is the pipe ; and safest, tho Turkish water pipe, or hookah. Like tea, the cheaper the tobacco is, tho more nauseous, but the less injurious. High priced cigais may bo a delight but they contain more tobacco leaf. Dr Norman Kerr contributes similar testimony. He says it would be impossible for him, without disloyalty to science <uid to truth, to denounce the smoking of tobacco as always injurious. There are occasions, .such as in the trenches during military operations, when worn out with exposure and fatigue, or when exhausted by slow starvation with no food in prospect, when a pipe or cigar will be a welcome and valuable friend indeed, resting the weary limbs, cheering the fainting heart, allaying the gnawing hunger of the empty stomach. Tobacco is somewhat of a disinfectant. If he had to see patients in a yellow fever ward, long as it was since he last smoked, ho should smok<>. again as a prophylactic against this dire disease. Tobacco smoke, on being passod through tho interior of hollow bulbs lined with gelatine containing disease germs, had destroyed tho microbes of cholera and pneumonia. Further, when many a father, utterly worn out and irritable with the worries of the day, is ready to find fault with everything, from the prattingof the childrenl to the cooking of the dinner, if his wife is wise enough to persuade him to smoke, the bear becomes a lamb, and peace is assured.