Title : Vanity, All Is Vanity: A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects
Editor : J. J. Cranmer
Release date : July 29, 2006 [eBook #18935]
Language : English
Credits
: Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library)
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The mind has supreme control of the body in sickness and in health. See the Rulings of Nature .
Habit is harder to serve than a king, its taxes are greater, they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, on body mind and pocket. You are bound in her chains and must answer her calls.
The RULINGS OF NATURE we'll send you.
We'll give you the work of the brain.
Cast the glory of heaven about you,
And arise for your Works are inane,
You are dead said the scoffs of the stranger;
A laugh for the cynic and clown.
Go look; from the King to the granger,
See the slaves the Tobacco-leaf bound.
· · · · · · · ·
O'er the graves we have marched in the past time,
Still praying for dews of reform
While raining down showers of poison,
On those we should keep from its harm.
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"Strive; for the grasp of the destroyer is upon you, and if you be not wrenched away, it will palsy you and crush you. Strive for the foe has seized upon your vitals: he holds possession of your Fort and renders your will a thing to be controled instead of a controling power. It chains the intellect and bids defiance to your better judgment. Strive like one who knows he has grappled with Death and the victory must be won or self be lost!"
TOBACCO should never be mentioned except as a poison, one of the most active and fatal of poisons; it is the only herb known to possess two active deadly poisons, Nicotina and Nicotianin : It is really so fatal that doctors seldom administer it, and never internally. For an over dose of Opium, Arsenic, or Strychnine, when taken in time, there is a cure, but for an over dose of tobacco there is none; its effect on the system is Paleness, Nausea, Giddiness, Lessening of the heart's action, Vomiting, Purging, Cold-sweating, and utter Prostration, such as no other poison can induce, then death! Its evils are numerous we will notice a few as follows.
1. It impregnates the whole system with two of the most fatal poisons, Nicotina , and Nicotianin .
2. With either of which the system is subjected to continuous repair, therefore Doctors seldom advise one to quit it. It is too much like taking bread and butter from their babe's mouths.
3. It enslaves a man so that it requires a powerful exertion to break its chains and fetters to regain their freedom.
4. It causes dyspepsia by spitting off the saliva that ought to go to digest the food, aid the digestive system, and to regulate and heal the bowels.
5. When you breathe the smoke it produces asthma and lays the foundation for a train of other fatal diseases.
6. In breathing the two poisons into the lungs, often produces paralysis of the lungs and consumption.
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7. It gradually weakens and destroys the whole nervous system and is the cause of a large majority of cases of Insanity, which can readily be found in all stages, among those who use tobacco.
8. It makes one appear to be ill-bred and extremely distasteful in society.
9. It is said by critics to entirely destroy a certain faculty of the mind.
10. It renders one's breath very repugnant to a companion.
11. It is continually drawing on the pocket for the small change that might be laid up.
12. When taken as snuff it wonderfully impairs and often paralyzing and destroys the Olfactory nerves and deprives one of the sense of smell.
13. It creates a craving for Alcoholic drinks, it prostrates the system to such an extent that nature calls for aid by stimulants, hence the craving for drinks, peppers, mustards, &c., &c.
14. It creates an inordinate desire for excitement such as Noose and Novel reading, and a loathing of Science and Philosophy.
15. The smoke has a wonderful tendency to weaken and impair the eye-sight.
16. Its use is an evil example to the young who look to us for advice and protection from evil.
17. It decomposes and devitalizes the electrovita fluid in the human system.
18. The system of the tobacco users is always in a morbid condition, as proof when you are sick you can't use it; for be it known that two morbid conditions can not exist in the system at the same time; one will drive out the other.
19. The poison is transmitted to the unborn infant, many times impairing its vital organs and causing a pre-mature death: and I once heard a Physician of much learning and practic, Dr. Niles . Say that there never was nor ever could be a healthy child born of parents who were habitual tobacco users. And I apprehend that every doctor of note in the land will witness the same thing.
TOBACCO EATERS! Is the most appropriate name for the users of Tobacco; as much so as the vile disgusting loathsome green worm that swallows the poison leaf into its stomach. For the poison of the quid and the smoke is taken up by the blood vessels and absorbents of the mouth, and carried into the circulation, even in a more virulent form than if introduced by the stomach.
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Every doctor will tell you that he is more afraid to give tobacco, even as an enema, than any other poison in the Materia Medica: he never gives it by the stomach. Sometimes, in violent spasmodic colic, or strangulation of the bowels, or spasmodic croup, tobacco is used externally as a poultice, and if you are not very careful, it will kill your patient even in this form. Many a colt and calf has been killed by rubbing them with tobacco juice to kill the lice. Tobacco is death to all kinds of parasitical vermin; it will kill the most venomous reptiles very quick. Many children have been killed by the application of tobacco for lice titter sores &c. Dr. Mussey tells of a woman that rubbed a little tobacco juice on a ring worm, not larger than a 25 cts. on her little girl's face; and if a physician had not been quickly summoned the child would have died. He tells of a father who killed his son by putting tobacco spit on a sore on his head. You would do well to read what various medical men have written on the subject. Every other poison vegetable is content with one poison; but tobacco has two of the most deadly poisons in the vegetable kingdom. This is no scare-crow put up to frighten you Tobacco Eaters; if you don't believe me just examine a vegetable chemistry, and to convince your self more thoroughly, just drop one drop of nicotina or nicotianin on the tongue of a Cat or a Dog, that you don't wish to kill by the tedious method or shooting or drowning, and see what the effect will be. See if Strychnine will do its work so quick.
Doctors: men whose profession is to play with poisons as with so many deadly vipers, stand back and behold its poisoned fangs with horrow, not daring to lay hold on it and use it as a medicine for his sick wife or child. No he shuns it with a deathly horrow! Though himself may be a SLAVE to the slower action of its devitalizing powers on mind and body.
An over dose of tobacco is incureable because of its peculiar effect upon the system. The effect is known by a deathly paleness and sickness, then the air suddenly becomes too warm and oppressive, the patient desires a cool situation, a drink of cold water and a fresh breeze, the strangest of all is at the same time the patient is so stimulated the action of the heart decreases, and to give a stimulant to increase it, it increases its virulence in proportion to the increase of the suffocating and sickening sensation: and to give the medicine to allay that, still decreases the motion of the heart's action. Thus an antidote is instantly transformed into fuel to feed the unquenchable flame that is already devouring the human vitals.
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It is no use in telling you by this time that I talk not about tobacco "like a book," but like one who has been tobacconized. For I have been one of those unfortunate boys who never had an opportunity of learning any thing except from that cross old pedagogue Experience, who invariably compelled me to work out my own problems, often have I in scalding tears of bitter regret.
Tobacco like alcohol gives a temporary stimulus, and to slack off the use of it, it will produce similar effects.
Nicotina and Nicotianin are the proper fathers to the following diseases,—Dispepsia, Water-brash, Cancer, Ramollissement, Impotence, Fatuity, Caries, Consumption, Laryngitis, Cardialgia, Angina Pectoris, Neuralgia, Paralysis, Amaurosis, Deafness, Liver Complaint, Apoplexy, Insanity, Hippochondriasis, "Horrors," "Blues," and so on through the greater part of the Nosological family.
Because you are not killed outright you flatter your self that you are not poisoned, but I tell you that you are, and you are dying by inches or by sixteenths of inches if you please, how ever small the effect on you it has some effect and finally by a continual pressing of that effect it will kill you. Put your ear to the huge locust tree and hear the gentle grating of a bore worm. Thou insignificant worm! What dost thou hope to do with that monster tree? Grate, grate, grate! For years that almost imperceptible grating goes on, while the mighty locust lifts its towering branches in fancied security. Finally, a storm comes and the locust hopes to brave it as he has many others; but, alas, its strength is undermined; Its vitals are eaten away, and it falls,—a victim to the tiny worm. Thus does tobacco, or alcohol, or opium, or any other poison when taken habitually, undermine the system, slowly, imperceptibly,—but surely.
Go into any tobacco factory of cigars, snuff, or plug, and bring out a healthy man if you can.
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Tobacco so destroys the sensations and functions of the mouth that, mild natural drinks, are not tasted; hence one craves strong drinks, something that will goad the deadened nerves into action. It produces a state of exhaustion in the whole system that calls for an artificial stimulus. Alcohol, ever true to its companion, steps in and supplies this artificial stimulus. It is a scientific fact that tobacco is responsible for more drunkards than alcohol. I know from my own experience, that smoking naturally calls for drinking. Walk through your town and look at the signs, and you will see them allied under the same colors, "liquors and cigars," "beer and pipes,"—always. When biddy can furnish but one decanter there you can get 'two cigars for a cent.' When a party of old gout-toed wine-bibers make a supper what do they do? Drink and smoke. When a party of Indians, trappers or soldiers gets to town "to have a blow out," what do they do? Drink and smoke. When "bloods" go out on a 'bender' what do they do? Drink and smoke. When low unprincipled men, thieves, villians, rowdies, rakes, murderers, the filth and offscourings of humanity meet together to carouse or design devilish schemes, what do they do? Drink and smoke.
All new subscribers to the GOSPEL MONITOR on and after March the first 1881, if they request it, will receive one copy of the "RULINGS of NATURE" free.
THE GOSPEL MONITOR is a monthly publication devoted to religion, logic, and science, 50 cts. a year. It is the only religious paper not walled in by creeds, and the only one whose columns are always open to its opponents, whether Infidel, Christian, or Idolator, It stands upon its own merit and asks for the criticisms and communications of the ablest writers.
We will defend the Right at all risks, and expose the Wrong at our own risk. Read the Monitor.
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Go to our jails and penitentiaries and you will find their inmates, almost to a man, tobacco-eaters and alcohol drinkers. As the chameleon takes its color from the object it is attached to, so does the mind of man, from the body it is attached to. No wonder, then, that a brain poisoned, will suggest poisoned thoughts, criminal thoughts and acts. O that preachers might know this, or, knowing it, might act on it in their efforts to regenerate man's moral nature. Let them commence at the root of evil to remove it. Evil, like a Cancer, while the root remains the canker grows worse. Mind and body is united in every effort, if the main spring is weakened so is the stroke. "A bitter fountain can not send forth a pleasant stream."
When we undertake to reform a man the first thing is to see that the brain is healthy; not poisoned and diseased. For an unhealthy organ can not perform healthy functions. You might as well try to improve the sense of smell with the nose stuffed full of snuff, as to try to improve the moral sense while it is poisoned with the essence of snuff. Try to change a man's heart that is palpitating with poison and lusting for more! If you wish to be a successful soul doctor, you must commence at the seat of all moral diseases; a poisoned and disordered mind. Take the poison out of him first, and keep it out for at least thirty days, until the brain can begin to have its natural healthy action, and then he will arise and walk in dry places seeking rest.
We affirm, and shall prove in the course of our lecture, that tobacco obtudes and destroys the moral as well as every other sense of the human intellect. Proof. When you see a habitual tobacco user in the company of his friends you will see him either squirting his poison fluid over his friend's hearth, house, floor, and stove, and breathing his loathsome poisonous breath into the face of his friend, or pouring his poison smoke into the eyes, nose, and lungs of all present. When all present are coughing strangling and almost out of breath; they say please don't smoke any more in the house. Then comes the oft' repeated "Excuse me I did not think." Can a moral man so far intrude upon the health, happiness and peace, even of a race of cannibals? "I did not think," is an acknowledgment that his thinking faculties are not in order. That is what we know.
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Now, it is no use to tell me that a man who can't think, what he is doing in small moral and social points of good breeding, with which he is every day familiar. How much less qualified is he for deep moral and intellectual reasoning which he is entirely unacquainted with?
Furthermore. If he does think, his refined and gentle humane feelings are so benumbed as to cause him not to care, it shows his spiritual nature is too much deadened to teach the spirit of a pure and undefiled religion which teach kindness love and attention to all men.
A poisoned body, especially when chronic, deadens the nerves and clogs the intellect, darkens the mind, smokes and blackens the soul to such an extent he can neither teach or understand as a man ought to do by nature.
What think you of a preacher of Christ with a cud in his mouth squirting poison at the souls he is trying to save? Is the thing possible? Talk of distilling the essence of Christianity through a poison worm of tobacco! O, thou tobacco-eating hypocrite! Can a body that is defiled with poison and polluted with the sin of self-abuse be a fit dwelling place for the Holy Ghost? How can a man who stinks like a rank tobacco-pipe, call himself a fit vessel to stand before the Lord to represent God and the Souls of men, to proclaim the word of God while his tongue is reeking in deadly poison and his brain befuddled with its influence? O, thou worse than Baalam! Would that every ass might rebuke thee.
It is a common thing for temperance lecturers to denounce alcohol on the strength of tobacco, that is, lecture with a cud in their mouths. Now this is mean. There should be honor among thieves. Don't laugh at and taunt your brother, wallowing there in the mud, while your own mouth is full of a thousand times filthier filth. Don't grow poetical on the "drunkard's aspen hand," when your own poisoned nerves will quiver worse than his if you should abstain from your quid three hours. You have yet to learn that tobacco produces delirium tremens, which you so much love to picture to the drunkard, with all the glowing colors of pandemonium.
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Dr. Mussey says he was acquainted with a gentleman in Vermont who conscientiously abstained from all intoxicating drinks and yet died of delirium tremens. Dr. Lauren and many other medical writers speak of similar cases within their knowledge. Many of our best physicians concur the opinion in that many of the cases of delirium tremens imputed to alcohol are mostly due to the use of tobacco.
You ought never listen to a self styled temperance-man who lectures a drinker, with his mouth full of tobacco juice. The drinker if he uses no tobacco is the most temperate man of the two. It is a gross insult to an audience to eject on them alcoholic vituperation and nicotianic expectoration at the same time. That audience should say; first go reform thy-self thou intemperate SLAVE of poison!
We have no room for the introduction of proof of our assertions on the evils of tobacco. But if you wish to have an abundance of evidence that tobacco produces the diseases which we herein mention you will just please to consult Dr. Lizars, he will furnish you with cases and proof. Read Dr. Mussey's 'Essay on Tobacco,' published by the American Tract Society. And here let me ask all who have the good of humanity at heart, to place this lecture in the hands of every one of your tobacconized neighbors. The circulation of anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol tracts will do more good than all other tracts besides. For those are the root and foundation of almost every disorder of mind and body, even upon those who never used it: for it is written: "I will visit the sins and iniquities of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation," of them that violate the laws of nature and their own being.
A wise man hath said look not on the wine when it is red. But a wiser than he hath decreed that they only who seek after wisdom shall find it, that fools shall be afflicted because of their transgressions, and that whosoever refuseth instruction shall destroy his own soul.
He that is capable of reflection must perceive that whatever disorders the nerves disorders the brain and the mind, also the morals, then it corrupts society, possibly for generations to come. You must also perceive that Life and Death, Health and Disease, are alike transmitted with the germ of the unborn being. That a diseased and poisoned body can not transmit a healthy germ. You see that the seed of an apple that grew on a hollow tree will never produce a sound tree. Then why expect an affected and poisoned body and mind, to produce those that are active and strong?
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It is not on the external condition in which you find your self placed, but on the part which you are to act, that your welfare or unhappiness, your honor or dishonor, your health or diseases depends. When beginning to act that part, what can be of greater interest to you, than to throw off the poison chains of mental slavery, keeping both mind and body free from such abject servitude. Freedom of mind and body insures health, long life and happiness. When the whole of the machinery, mental and physical, is clean, its strength and elasticity is so much better, its retentiveness is much more vivid and comprehensive that one is mostly spared the pain of irretrievable errors.
If instead of exerting reflection in so critical a moment you deliver yourselves up to levity, sloth and slavery of habit and poison, what can you expect to follow? Will wisdom tread the path of folly? Can you thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves unspotted from the world, or call yourselves the children of a pure God? O thou spiritual blind guide! Where are you leading the people to by precept and example? You have led and allowed the nations to walk into the ditch.
Habit is harder to serve than a king, and its taxes are greater, for they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, on body, mind and pocket. You are bound in her chains and must answer her calls.
O man of sorrow, whose life is interwoven with the ills of the earth! Could I but speak to you in the language of the truth or had I but room to draw the picture as it is, I think your reason would revolt at its use, and break its chains, bidding defiance to the deadly grasp of its seditious habits.
——When you become satisfied that tobacco is injurious to you. If you have not courage to divorce the habit at once and had rather steal away from its grasp unconsciously and without the desire for tobacco, or the use of medicine, just send 50 cts. in money or stamps to the office of the Gospel Monitor. Hannibal, Mo. And we will send you the RULINGS OF NATURE. A printed formula showing how nature in that case restores her own equilibrium, and throws off the former poison and prevents the craving of a fresh supply. In clubs of 20 or more, we will send them for 25 cts. each. The rule is short and easily understood.
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The mind of man is the motive power of the body. There is great sympathy existing between the mind and body, whatever affects the body must of necessity affect the mind; versus. Whatever affects the mind is sure to affect the body. The body is the house that the man lives in, if the house is damaged in any way the man proper which is the mind; through sympathy is sure to suffer from such injuries.
The power of the mind over the body both in disease and in health, is utterly beyond all the modern scientific conceptions. The mind has so long been clogged and hindered by narcotics and over stimulants, that it yet remains in its infancy. Every hindrance prevents the growth and development of the mind. The body may soon attain to its greatest development, but the mind never reaches its perfection in this sphere.
Age and experience fortifies and strengthens the mind, they give it greatness and power; every influence possible should be brought to bear upon the intellect to improve the mind and advance it.—The ages past have been more to hinder and to cramp the intellect, to hinder reason and progress than to favor it. But it must be understood now that mind is capable of getting and bringing information from the ulter-etherial worlds. Or of mind conversing with mind, even in separate continents.—Without Telephone, Telegraph, or Witch-craft . (Spiritualism.)
For training up a strong, healthy, powerful intellect read the RULINGS OF NATURE. Only to be had at the office of the Gospel Monitor . Hannibal, Mo. Price 50 cts.
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Know this and be assured quite well,
All evil comes when man hath fell.
Fell from purity, in grief,
To eat the vile tobacco leaf.
Know this my friend, a poisoned brain,
Can not a poisoned thought refrain.
A heart that beats with poisoned pulse;
Will any moral mind convulse.
Alcohol and Tobacco food,
To feed the mind with, is not good.
It causes one when e're he speaks,
To imitate the weeds and snakes.
And thus his poison he'll impart
From mind to mind from heart to heart.
When your mind is clean and pure,
More hardships you can then endure;
Then see the manly moral tone
Of an intellect full grown.
J. J. Cranmer .
AGENTS WANTED TO SELL THE RULINGS OF NATURE, it is a printed formula teaching the power of the active healthy mind over the body in sickness and in health; it teaches how to train up your mind even to supernal powers. This is backed up by every medical writer, by every science, by every casual observer; and last but not the least: it is the ultima thule of the ever blessed Bible, the word of the Lord.
It teaches how to quit the use of tobacco without the desire for using it, and no medicines used. Nature Rules if allowed her own way.—Our design is only to benefit the human family, therefore we give ☞ our agents all the profits. Agents will address the GOSPEL MONITOR . Hannibal Mo. Those wishing to order the Rulings of Nature (which is 50 cts,) direct from the office; will send the 50 cts. for the Gospel Monitor one year, and receive the Rulings of Nature free.
The borders surrounding each page and the divider illustrations are emphatically decorative in the original, and have been approximated in the text version.
This pamphlet was apparently printed as cheaply as possible and suffers from a combination of poor typesetting and even poorer printing.
The following is a list (in order of appearance) of corrections made to the original text, with the corrections indicated by square brackets:
knows, moove [moves,] acts
hing [thing] to be
It is realy [really] so fatal
its affect [effect] on the system
their babe's mouth's [mouths].
Insantiy [Insanity], which can readily
craving for Alcohoic [Alcoholic] drinks,
stimulents [stimulants], hence the craving
times imparing [impairing] its vital
if you don't believ [believe] me just examine
may may [removed duplicate word] be a SLAVE
warm and opprssive [oppressive],
the the [removed duplicate word] action of the heart
to give a stimulent [stimulant]
virulence in proprtion [proportion] to the
of the sufficating [suffocating]
and sickning [sickening] sensation:
medicine to alay [allay] that,
the unquinchable [unquenchable] flame
almost impreceptible [imperceptible] grating
is underminded [undermined]; Its vitals are
craves strong drnks [drinks],
decanter there yon [you]
or Idolitor [Idolator],
upon itst [its] own merit
criticisms and comunications [communications]
the abelest [ablest] wrtters [writers].
preacheras [preachers] might know
act on it in there [their] efforts
bitter fountan [fountain]
might as wel [well] try
to be a sucessful [successful] soul
seat of all moral dseases [diseases];
me I didnot [did not] think."
"I didnot [did not] think,"
shows his spirtual [spiritual] nature
poison and poluted [polluted]
place for ihe [the]
the opinino [opinion] in that
shall be aflicted [afflicted] because
must preceive [perceive] that whatever
possibly for generation [generations]
also preceive [perceive] that
why expect an effected [affected] and poisoned
When begining [beginning] to act
poison chains ofmental [of mental] slavery,
longlife [long life] and happiness.
pain of irretrieveable [irretrievable] errors.
walk into to [into (removed duplicate word)] the ditch.
and breake [break] its chains
grasp unconsiously [unconsciously] and
fresh suply [supply].
The rule is short and easy [easily] understood.
The mind of man is the motiv [motive] power
whatever effects [affects] the body
must of necessity effect [affect] the mind;
effects [affects] the mind is sure to effect [affect] the body.
over stimulents [stimulants], that it yet remains
Every hinderence [hindrance] prevents
mind, they gives [give] it greatness
should be brought to bare [bear] upon
For trainning [training] up
thus his poison hel'l [he'll] impart
therfore [therefore] we give