Stránka:book 1912.djvu/355

Health and Woodland Medicine 323 "Doctor Wright, of London, showed that nicotin lowers the tuberculo-opsonic index of the blood; that is, it lowers the power of resistance of the body against tuberculosis. He cited the case of a young man who was a great smoker and whose tuberculo- opsonic index was zero instead of 100. The yoimg man was suffering from tuberculosis and died within a few weeks. "Post-mortem examination made at the Phipps Institute showed that smokers are twice as subject to tuberculosis as non-smokers, " These are only a few of the thousand facts, the writer goes on, that might be cited on his side of the question. Nothing in them shows that there is any distinction between the child and the adult, and the fact that the effects are often less apparent in the latter is due, we are told, solely to the fact that they possess greater vital resistance than children. Finally, he remarks : "We would remind the editor to review the study of phys- iologic chemistry and pathology, and consult a few up-to-date standard works on the practice of medicine in relation to the cause of B right's disease, arteriosclerosis, angina pectoris and other maladies involving the heart and blood-vessels, the death- rate from which has kept even pace along with the increase of tobacco during the last thirty or forty years. " SEX MATTERS Some of our best authorities tell us that more than half of our diseases, mental and physical, come from ignorance and consequent abuse of our sexual powers. We have long known and realized vaguely that virtue and strength are synonymous; that the Puritan fathers, for example, notwithstanding their narrowness and their unlovely lives, were upon the whole a people of pure life, who reaped their reward in their wonderful mental, moral, and physical strength, not entirely gone to-day. All men realize the desirability of virtue; and hitherto we have attempted to keep our young people virtuous by keeping them ignorant. Most thinking men to-day admit