] Is it wrong to smoke?
Statistics taken with care at many American colleges show with apparent
conclusiveness that the use of tobacco is physically and mentally
deleterious to young men. [Footnote: See, e.g., in the Popular Science
Monthly for October, 1912, a summary by Dr. F. J. Pack of an
investigation covering fourteen colleges. Similar investigations have
been made by several others, with generally similar results.] It seems
that smokers lose in lung capacity, are stunted slightly in their
growth, are lessened in their endurance, develop far more than their
proportion of eye and nerve troubles, furnish far less than their
proportion of the athletes who win positions on college teams, furnish
far less than their proportion of scholarship men, and far more than
their proportion of conditions and failures. It is perhaps too early
to be quite sure of these results; but in all probability further
experiment will confirm them, and make it certain that tobacco is
physically harmful as has long been recognized by trainers for athletic
contests. The harm to adults seems to be less marked; perhaps to some
it is inappreciable. And if there is appreciable harm, whether it is
great enough to counterbalance the satisfaction which a confirmed
smoker takes in his cigar or pipe, or any worse than the restlessness
which the sacrifice of it might engender, is one of those delicate
personal problems that one can hardly solve for another.
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