May young England smoke? : a modern question, medically and socially considered.

Date:
[Between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: May young England smoke? : a modern question, medically and socially considered. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    assertion may seem, is none the less certain in its injurious influence. It is capable of producing many of the worst evils usually ascribed to alcohol and opium, the main features of its action being essentially the same. 5. —With the general extension of the use of tobacco there has been a rapid increase of the practice of smoking among the young. Not only growing youths and young men, but even boys of tender age, have acquired the habit. Thoughtful persons look with alarm at children of six or seven years of age puffing the poisonous smoke, or chewing the noxious leaf, with the air of veterans. Smokers of riper years are peculiarly disgusted with the spectacle. Physicians assert that on the young and undeveloped frame the action of narcotics is mischievous in the extreme ; resulting in a stunted and blighted manhood, and constant liability to disease of the most serious nature. With the body enfeebled, the powers of the mind impaired, and the morale destroyed, a proneness to evil associations is engendered, and thus in many cases the way is prepared for a vicious career. 6. —In every properly constituted human being there is a capacity for the development of a pure and noble and beneficent manhood, capable of enjoying intensest and most exalted pleasure, and of ministering to such pleasure in others ; as well as a capacity, through perverted faculty, of extreme misery. A right estimate of the value of a single heart for joy or misery, for usefulness or mischief, would lead to earnest desire for the best possible influence on the rising generation of Englishmen, that they may grow up to be not a curse but a blessing, to themselves and others. 7. —Time and money are now being employed more freely than ever on the education of the young. But school influence will be of little avail, unless our youths are trained in habits of virtue and manly self-denial. In the following pages we have to trace the effects of tobacco in combating the labours of the educator, and in neutralizing the refining and elevating influences he brings to bear.