Smoking : a sure sign of England's future decline / by Thomas Reynolds.

  • Reynolds, Thomas.
Date:
[1873?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Smoking : a sure sign of England's future decline / by Thomas Reynolds. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/8 (page 8)
    An interview may not inappropriately here be introduced between the writer and Dr. Henry Brown, Physician to the Manchester Infirmary That gentleman, after spending an evening at his own residence with other members of the faculty to discuss the custom of smoking, made an appointment with the writer to meet him with his patients at the Infirmary. Among the applicants came a youth of eighteen with his father. “ Here,” said Dr. Brown, “ is a youth “ suffering from some of the effects which you attribute to smoking, “ but this youth has never smoked, chewed, or taken snuff. What will “you say to this ? His father has done this for him. His father! “ Yes, his father. Ask him a few questions. How long have you been “ a smoker ? Some twenty-five years! Yes, Dr. Brown, added the “ writer and by his appearance I should say an ounce a day many times.” “ Have you ever smoked an ounce of tobacco in a day ? “ Yes, very “ often!” On this confession Dr. Brown whispered,—“ This is the iniquity of the father visited on his son !” Having ascertained where the youth resided, he was called upon, and a younger brother was labouring also under a mortal disease. Their mother, as healthy a looking woman as any in Manchester, and the father, a naturally well-built man, but poisoned with tobacco, and the penalty, sick and dying children. Dr. Kichardson, to whom we are indebted for much valuable result from his investigations, makes the following formidable asseveration,— “ If both sexes of our young people were to smoke as those of our own sex do without an influx of population from other countries the race woidd die out!” Let every lover of his country and his kind ponder this affir¬ mation and deduce from it the fact which we inculcate, viz., England’s future decline through smoking ! It is manifestly through the non-addiction of females, to smoking as a rule, that our species is conserved. That through smoking, as manifestly is there “ A sly, treacherous miner, working in the dark,” and undermining that physical and reproductive energy which once impaired impairs inperpetuity and transmittally! Finally, according to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, the average height of Englishmen some seventy years ago was five feet ten inches, and of Englishwomen five feet six inches, but at the present time it is doubtful whether the average height of our own sex would be within five inches of the former height, of the other sex, born within the last twenty-five years, there is a much greater disproportion, which is not difficult to explain. This exposition will doubtless cause much searching inquiry, and bittter reflection. A Minister of reb'gion says, “ When I was a young man I knew nothing about the conseq1 jnces of smoking upon posterity. All my children are sufferers througn my habits.” Every young man should be told that smoking is incompatible with healthy progeny. That unhealthy progeny is a great cause of parental sorrow and constant anxiety If a young man or a young woman saw an estate, which would have been his or hers, but for a reckless parent’s extravagance, that would be as nothing compared with beginning life with a fe-ble constitution !