Congrès international contre l'abus du tabac / by C.R. Drysdale.

  • Charles Robert Drysdale
Date:
1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Congrès international contre l'abus du tabac / by C.R. Drysdale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Congres International Contre I'ahus du Tabac. By C. R Drysdale, Esq., M,D., Senior Physician Metropolitan Hospital, London. A Paper read to tlie Congress by Dr. C. E. Drysdale, contained a list of the diseases which either his own experience or that of other Medical men has made attributable to the use of Tobacco. He referred to the injury done to workers in ill ventilated Tobacco factories by the odours of the Tobacco, especially hurtful in the case of young boys and girls, and dangerous above all to the life of the infants tended by mothers who are operatives in the factories. He then spoke of the injury done to the heart’s action by smoking, and to the frequency with which smokers and chewers become affected with weakness of vision and even were made blind by the power of nicotine. The use of Tobacco was very deadening to the intellect, and in Schools and Universities it had been found that those youths who took the highest places in competition work were but very little addicted to Tobacco. In Switzerland, indeed, from a knowledge of this fact, the use of Tobacco was prohibited to youths under the age of 15. Dyspepsia and loss of memory were frequently due to the habit of smoking. He was glad to hear that Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas had not smoked, for the habit was greatly on the increase among literary men, to the great destruction of their own health and powers of clear exposition. In a communication by M. Marambat entitled Tobacco and Crime, the results of an enquiry authorised by the Ministre de l’lnterieure, that gentleman found that of 603 children and young people within the age of 16, convicted of crimes, 485 or nearly three-fourths, were convicted for theft, and of these 233 were consumers of Tobacco. There were in all 306 smokers among these youthful criminals and of these two-thirds were arrested for theft. Among adult criminals 87 per cent, were found to use Tobacco and only 13 not to use it. M. Marambat asserts that the expense for assistance to the poor and for Lunatic Asylums in different parts of France was considerably greater in those parts where much Tobacco was consumed than in those where less was used. Thus, m 8 Departments where each person on an average was found to consume more than, a Idlogramme of Tobacco there was a payment of 229 francs, and in 28, when only 190 grammes were consumed the payment for the above objects was only 41 francs. Hence the use of Tobacco is probably one cause of indigence.