How to Live by Eugene Lyman Fisk (adult books to read txt) π
[Sidenote: Card-playing]
Card-playing and similar games afford wholesome mental recreation for some persons. However, they, too, are liable to be associated with late hours, and other disadvantages even when they do not degenerate into gambling. Card-playing, dancing, and many other popular forms of amusement often border on dissipation.
[Sidenote: Suicidal Amusement]
Amusements which weaken and degrade are not hygienic.
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Investigators who claim to show by experiments the absence of nicotin from tobacco smoke must explain why the palpable effects of smoking, in those who have not established a βtolerance,β are those of nicotin poisoning, and why the symptoms produced by chewing tobacco are identical with those following the smoking of tobacco, which are: mild collapse, pallor of the skin, nausea, sweating, and perhaps vomiting, diarrhea, muscular weakness, faintness, dizziness, and rise in blood pressure followed by lowered blood pressure.
Nicotin is undoubtedly decomposed by burning, but it may become volatilized by heat and a certain amount absorbed before decomposition takes place.
Lehmann,[41] in 1908, found in tobacco smoke the following percentages of the nicotin contained in the tobacco:
Cigaret smoke 82 per cent. Cigar smoke 85 to 97 " "The London Lancet[42] (1912) gives the following figures:
Cigaret smoke 3.75 to 84 per cent. Pipe mixture smoke, smoked as cigarets 79 " " Pipe smoke 77 to 92 " " Cigar smoke 31 to 63 " "The United States Department of Agriculture[43] found in tobacco smoke about 30 per cent. of the nicotin originally present in the tobacco.
Contrary to general opinion, Havana cigars contain less nicotin than the cheaper brands, which augurs ill for the large class of people who cannot afford to smoke higher priced brands. Many of the cheaper grades do, however, show a low percentage of nicotin.
By means of an ingenious apparatus, Zhebrovski,[44] a Russian investigator, compelled rabbits to smoke cigaret tobacco for a period of 6 to 8 hours daily. Some died within a month, and showed changes in the nerve-ganglia of the heart. Others established a tolerance similar to that exhibited by habitual smokers, but upon being killed at the end of five months, degenerative changes similar to those produced by the injection of nicotin were found, viz., hardening of the blood vessels. There is, indeed, no difficulty in producing the characteristic effects of nicotin by administering tobacco smoke, either in man or in animals.[45]
Nicotin causes brief stimulation of brain and spinal cord, followed by depression. There is an increased flow of saliva, followed by a decrease (large doses diminish it at once) and often nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The heart action is at first slowed and the blood pressure increased. Subsequently there is a depression of the circulation, with rapid heart action and lowered blood pressure. In habitual smokers, this preliminary stimulation may not occur. The stimulating effect on the brain is so brief that tobacco can not properly be termed a stimulant. Its effect is narcotic or deadening. Those who fancy that their thoughts flow more readily under the use of tobacco are in the same case with any other habituΓ© whose thoughts can not flow serenely except under his accustomed indulgence. That a sound healthy man, who has never been accustomed to the use of tobacco, can do better mental or physical work with tobacco than without it has never been shown. Indeed, such experiments as have been made on students and others show to the contrary.[46]
The statistics presented by Prof. Fred. J. Pack are of interest in this connection.
In six educational institutions the students competing for places on the football team were grouped as follows:
Institution. NumberCompeting
for Places. Number
Successful. Per Cent.
Successful. Institution A. Smokers 11 2 18.2 Non-smokers 19 11 57.9 Institution B. Smokers 10 4 40 Non-smokers 25 17 68 Institution C. Smokers 28 7 25 Non-Smokers 17 14 82 Institution D. Smokers 28 11 39.3 Non-smokers 15 10 66.6 Institution E. Smokers 10 7 70 Non-smokers 15 12 80 Institution F. Smokers 6 0 0 Non-smokers 26 15 57.7 Scholastic Standing Institution. Smoker. Non-smoker. Institution. Smoker. Non-smoker. A 65.2 69.8 G 74.0 75.0 B 64.7 74.6 H 75.2 79.4 C 78.8 81.1 I 81.6 88.4 D 75.8 77.6 J 78.5 81.3 E 84.6 84.8 K 74.0 84.6 F 69.6 71.3 L 77.3 77.6
The following table shows the relative scholastic standing of smokers and non-smokers:
Numberof Men. Total
Mark. Average
Mark. Smokers 81 6,034 74.5 Non-smokers 101 8,021 79.4
Twelve institutions reporting:
Numberof Men. Highest
Marks. Lowest
Marks. Smokers 81 4 12 Non-smokers 101 11 6 Number
of Men. Highest
Marks. Lowest
Marks. 101 non-smokers furnish 11 6 101 smokers would furnish 5 15 Number
of Men. Total
Conditions
and Failures. Average Smokers 82 70 .853 Non-smokers 98 48 .439
Prof. Packβs conclusions were as follows:
Only half as many smokers as non-smokers are successful in the βtry outsβ for football squads. In the case of able-bodied men smoking is associated with loss of lung capacity amounting to practically 10 per cent. Smoking is invariably associated with low scholarship.There have of course been many notable instances of high scholarship and prodigious mental achievement by heavy smokers. Such exceptions, however, do not affect conclusions derived from the study of average groups.
Hitherto figures on smoking and athletics have been open to question because comparisons were made between groups that are not of necessity of the same physical and mental type, having no important difference except in the use of tobacco. But Prof. Pack has sought to avoid this objection. As he points out, the football squad is probably as nearly a homogeneous group as it is possible to find. It seems reasonable to account for the inferior physical and mental work of these particular groups of smokers on the theory that in the main the well known toxic effects of tobacco are sufficient to create this difference.
Dr. George J. Fisher,[47] in a series of careful tests found:
Cigaret smoking caused an increase in the heart rate. Cigaret smoking maintained a blood pressure which, under the circumstances of the experiment, would otherwise have dropped. Cigar smoking caused a considerable increase in heart rate and blood pressure. In a number of instances, in the cigar test, the heart was unable to maintain, with a vertical position, the increased blood pressure found in the horizontal position, showing a disturbance of the control of the blood vessels. This latter effect was more pronounced in tests taken on non-smokers. It was also noted that smoking was not conducive to concentration upon the reading, which the men attempted during the tests.Bush,[48] in a series of tests on each of 15 men in several different psychic fields found the following conditions among smoking students immediately after the period of smoking was completed:
A 10Β½ per cent. decrease in mental efficiency. The greatest actual loss was in the field of imagery, 22 per cent. The three greatest losses were in the fields of imagery, perception and association. The greatest loss, in these experiments, occurred with cigarets.Bush ascribed these effects to pyridin, claiming that his experiments failed to reveal nicotin in the tobacco smoke, except in a very small proportion in that of cigarets.
Tests for nicotin in smoke are beset with many difficulties and possible fallacies which have in the past misled investigators into apparently determining that tobacco smoke contained no nicotin, but simply decomposition products.
Pyridin is unquestionably present in tobacco smoke, and is a poisonous substance, although less so than nicotin. It is not found, however, in chewing tobacco, and as the clinical effects of chewing tobacco are apparently identical with those of smoking tobacco, very strong and universally accepted chemical proof of the absence of nicotin from tobacco smoke must be awaited before accepting such a conclusion. (See [41], [42], [43] in bibliography.)
Cigaret smoking is a time waster; that is, it breaks up the power of attention, as few smokers are satisfied with one cigaret and the mere physical act of lighting a fresh cigaret disturbs the continuity of thought and work. Dr. W. J. Mayo[49] calls attention to the fact that according to his observations research scholars who smoke cigarets have not done well.
Only one insurance company, the New England Mutual,[50] has published any experience on tobacco users. This covered a period of 60 years and a body of 180,000 policyholders, as follows:
RATIO OF ACTUAL TO EXPECTED MORTALITY.[Q] Abstainers. Rarely Use. Temperate. Moderate. Tobacco, 59% 71% 84% 93% Alcohol, 57% 72% 84% 125%[Q] The standard here used is the American Experience Table, which is largely an artificial table upon which premiums are based, but which provides for a much higher mortality than the average companies sustain. For example, the actual mortality of the New England Mutual in 1913 was 57 per cent. of the expected.
Fifty-nine per cent. of the expected mortality means that where, according to the premium tables, 100 were expected to die, only 59 actually died.
The general class of risks in this company were of excellent quality, as the figures show. Nevertheless, the abstainers exhibited a far lower mortality than that experienced by the general class.
Dr. Edwin Wells Dwight, who presented the figures, urged caution in their interpretation, suggesting that the low mortality among abstainers, both from alcohol and tobacco, might well be due to a more conservative habit of living. Furthermore, as the abstainers from alcohol were not separated from the abstainers from tobacco in this analysis a perfect comparison can not be made; but our knowledge of the toxic effects of both these narcotics and the preceding statistics of Doctor Pack justify us in assigning to tobacco a positively unfavorable effect.
Experiments on animals with nicotin extracts from tobacco and inhalation of tobacco smoke have produced hardening of the large arteries. Clinical observation by some of the worldβs best authorities indicates that the same conditions are brought about in man by heavy smoking.[51]
Disturbance of the blood pressure, rapid heart action, shortness of breath, palpitation of the heart, pain in the region of the heart, are important effects. Tobacco heart is often lightly spoken of because the abandonment of the habit will often restore the heart to its normal condition, but tobacco heart sometimes causes death, especially under severe physical strain or in the course of acute disease, such as typhoid or pneumonia. Surgeons[52] have noted failure to rally after operation in tobacco users, who are, of course, deprived of their accustomed indulgence immediately before and after operation. It is probable that many such cases pass unrecognized, although the alcoholic is usually supplied the narcotic his system demands.
Cannon, Aub, and Binger[53] have also shown that nicotin stimulates the adrenal glands, small organs adjacent to the kidneys, which secrete a substance that in excess powerfully affects the blood vessels, constricting them and temporarily increasing the blood pressure. This influence may be partly responsible for the change in the blood vessels noted in heavy smokers.
Excessive smoking is often an important factor in causing insomnia.
Blindness or tobacco amblyopia, a form of neuritis, is not an uncommon affection among smokers. There is also often an irritant effect on the mucous membranes of eyes from the direct effect of the smoke.
Catarrhal conditions of the nose, throat and ear have also been noted.
Acid dyspepsia is a common affection among smokers.
Few people realize that so many ingredients in tobacco and tobacco smoke are
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