Chapter XIII: Part FOUR: Moral and Mental Effects

If _one sin_ breaks through the door,
It will soon _make room_ for more;
Shut the door against the first,
Then you’ll never meet the worst.

_C. M. Willis, Page 96, Temperance Torchlights._

“Out of six hundred in the State prison at Auburn, N. Y., sent there
for crimes committed through strong drink, five hundred testified
that it was _tobacco_ that led them to _intemperance_.”--_Meta
Lander._

“Smoking and chewing tobacco, by rendering water and other simple
liquids insipid to the taste, dispose very much to the use of ardent
spirits. Hence the practice of smoking cigars has been followed by
the use of brandy and water as a common drink.”--_Dr. Benj. Rush,
Formerly Professor of Chemistry and Theory and Practice of Medicine
in Philadelphia Medical College._

“The use of tobacco among the young is productive of mental and
moral deterioration, while in the older persons, the use of the weed
produces brain diseases and insanity. I have had a large experience
in brain diseases, and am satisfied that smoking is the most noxious
habit. I know of _no other cause or agent_ that so much tends to
bring on functional diseases, and through this, in the end, leads
to _organic diseases of the brain_.”--_Dr. Solly, of St. Thomas
Hospital, of England._

“In all my twenty-five years’ experience as a teacher, I have never
known an exception to the rule, that a boy in taking on the tobacco
habit in any form, immediately begins to deteriorate mentally. If
he takes Cigarettes he will degenerate morally very rapidly, and
physically, too. I am firmly convinced that tobacco in any form
degenerates morally as it relates to growing boys.”--_H. H. Cully,
Principal Glenville High School, Cleveland, Ohio._

“It is more difficult to restore an inebriate who persists in the
use of tobacco. In some cases when tobacco is given up, all desire
for spirits disappear.”--_T. D. Crothers, M. D., Editor Journal of
Inebriety._

“So _inseparable_ are the habits of drinking and smoking, that
in some places the same word expresses both. Thus, the word
‘peend,’ in the Bengalia language, signifies ‘to drink’ and ‘to
smoke.’”--_Clarke._

“The inebriate who uses tobacco, has always a weaker nervous system
than one who does not. Tobacco undoubtedly predisposes to, and
encourages the use of, alcohol. In all cases it has an appreciable
injurious effect upon the nerve-centers.”--_T. D. Crothers, M. D.,
Editor Journal of Inebriety._

_A Nuisance,--The Smoker_

“Signs may threaten, men may warn him,
Babies cry, and women coax,
But he cares not one iota;
For he calmly smokes and smokes.”

TOBACCO AND THE CIGARETTE