The Young Man's GuideAlcott, William A. (William Andrus)
General
The Young Man's Guide
Alcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Conduct of life; Young men
'This plague, like the Egyptian plague of frogs, is felt every where,
and in every thing. It poisons the streets, the clubs, and the
coffee-houses;--furniture, clothes, equipage, persons, are redolent of
the abomination. It makes even the dulness of the newspapers doubly
narcotic: every eatable and drinkable, all that can be seen, felt,
heard or understood, is saturated with tobacco;--the very air we
breathe is but a conveyance for this poison into the lungs; and every
man, woman, and child, rapidly acquires the complexion of a boiled
chicken. From the hour of their waking, if nine-tenths of their
population can be said to awake at all, to the hour of their lying
down, the pipe is never out of their mouths. One mighty fumigation
reigns, and human nature is smoked dry by tens of thousands of square
miles. The German physiologists compute, that of 20 deaths, between
eighteen and thirty-five years, 10 originate in the waste of the
constitution by smoking.'
This is indeed a horrid picture; but when it is considered that the
best estimates which can be made concur in showing that tobacco, to the
amount of $16,000,000, is consumed in the United States annually, and
that by far the greater part of this is in smoking cigars, there is
certainly room for gloomy apprehensions. What though we do not use the
dirty pipe of the Dutch and Germans? If we only use the _tobacco_, the
mischief is effectually accomplished. Perhaps it were even better that
we should lay out a part of our money for pipes, than to spend the
whole for tobacco.
Smoking is indecent, filthy, and rude, and to many individuals highly
offensive. When first introduced into Europe, in the 16th century, its
use was prohibited under very severe penalties, which in some countries
amounted even to cutting off the nose. And how much better is the
practice of voluntarily burning up our noses, by making a chimney of
them? I am happy, however, in being able to state, that this
unpardonable practice is now abandoned in many of the fashionable
societies in Europe.
There is one remarkable fact to be observed in speaking on this
subject. No parent ever teaches his child the use of tobacco, or even
encourages it, except by his example. Thus the smoker virtually
condemns himself in the very 'thing which he alloweth.' It is not
precisely so in the case of spirits; for many parents directly
encourage the use of that.
Tobacco is one of the most powerful poisons in nature. Even the
physician, some of whose medicines are so active that a few grains, or
a few drops, will destroy life at once, finds tobacco too powerful for
his use; and in those cases where it is most clearly required, only
makes it a last resort. Its daily use, in any form, deranges, and
sometimes destroys the stomach and nerves, produces weakness, low
spirits, dyspepsy, vertigo, and many other complaints. These are its
more immediate effects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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