things, of the great advance in
general intelligence and knowledge of hygienic law.

A person, or the public in general, may practice an injurious habit,
and yet more than counteract its influence by opposing beneficial
practices.

Horace Greeley said, "Show me a drunkard who does not use tobacco, and
I will show you a white blackbird." In this country, where dietetic
drinking habits are not common in the family, the weakening of moral
fiber by indulgence in tobacco is usually the introduction into the
round of vicious indulgences, and thus directly or indirectly affects
health. Smoking induces dryness of the mucous membrane of the mouth
and consequent thirst. The partially paralyzed nerve terminals want
something more stimulating than water to afford relief. Furthermore,
blunted appetite induces deficient nutrition, and consequently there
is a call for some "pick-me-up;" hence we find that the use of tobacco
tends to the habitual use of alcoholic beverages, and there are very
few habitual users of alcohol who escape without structural injuries
to the body as well as perversion of its functions. Decrease of vital
activity in all the tissues of the body marks the use of tobacco. The
tendency is toward functional paralysis, though occasional signs of
stimulative irritation are to be noticed, especially in the
respiratory passages. The interference with intellectual activity is
marked. It is said that during a period of fifty years no tobacco user
stood at the head of his class in Harvard. The accumulated testimony
of investigating observers is conclusive that, other things being
equal, users of tobacco, in schools of all grades, never do so well in
their studies as non-users.

One head of a public school said he could always tell when a boy
commenced to use tobacco by the record of his recitations. Professor
Oliver, of the Annapolis Academy, said he could indicate the boy who
used tobacco by his absolute inability to draw a clean, straight line.
The deleterious effects of tobacco have become so clearly apparent
that we find its sale to minors is prohibited in France, Germany, and
various sections of this country. It is somewhat a question if, at the
present time, the race is not doing itself more injury by its use of
tobacco than it is with alcohol, because of its more universal use,
particularly by youth, and because of the respectability of the habit,
which comes of its use by a certain intelligent part of the race,