Tobacconalia

Extremists either for or against tobacco will derive small aid and comfort from Professor O'Shea's compilation of data on Tobacco and Mental Efficienc*--the most temperate, unbiased and scientific approach to the question yet published. The book is the first of a series of studies projected by the Committee to Study the Tobacco Problem, organized in 1918, a group of 59 physicians, psychologists, physiologists, economists, educators and other leaders interested in the subject. The president is Dr. Alexander Lambert, New York; the treasurer, Prof. Irving Fisher, of Yale. Two of the original members, John Burroughs and Sir William Osier, have died. While the committee contains a number of men widely known for their opposition to tobacco, such as Henry Ford, Hudson Maxim, Dr. Eugene Lyman Fisk, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, it has determined to get at the truth--if it can be obtained-- by rigorous experimental methods, and is willing to stand or fall on the results of its investigations.

The book consists of three parts, devoted to data ) derived from: 1) Observation, Introspection and Biography; 2) School and College Records; 3) Psychological Laboratory. In Part I are recorded the habits of prominent men of the past, tending to the conclusion that great achievements have been made perhaps as frequently by smokers as nonsmokers. For instance, among the former: Washington, Gambetta, Bismarck, Mazzini, Kitchener, Hobbes, Spurgeon, Huxley, Keats, Browning, Kingsley, Wordsworth, Lamb, Carlyle, Emerson, Dickens, Tennyson, Meredith, Stevenson, Howells, et cetera ad infinitum, not to mention the well-known excesses of Grant and Mark Twain. On the other hand: Lincoln, Greeley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Wellington, Balzac, Goethe, Tolstoi, Ruskin, Haeckel, Bacon, Whittier, etc. Obviously, tobacco can have had no beneficial effect other than from habit on the great deeds of the world, for the foundations of civilization were laid, and Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Dante, and many more lived and wrought before Raleigh brought the weed to the Old World. This type of evidence has no scientific value, no statistical basis, and is of interest only as a revelation of personalities and of the fact that no dogmatic statement can be predicated of any individual.

Dr. O'Shea sent a questionnaire to 350 contemporary Americans who are recognized as having attained noteworthy distinction in ten fields. From these, 156 serious replies were received, 80 from smokers, 76 from nonsmokers. Again the results were thoroughly inconclusive. The physicians, psychologists and physical scientists might be presumed to be judicially minded, and the majority of their replies are to the effect that they havj discovered no perceptible influence, harmful or beneficial, on the intellectual powers of themselves or others. There are, of course, exceptions. The quotations are anonymous. The outstanding fact of this survey is that every man in the literary group smokes, and the majority of the literary women. Moreover, most of them consider its effects beneficial, and claim that their literary and imaginative powers are stimulated by it. Fifty-five per cent of the congressmen indulge, 60% of school superintendents, still more of university presidents, and 95% of financiers.

The data from school records presents a much more definite and verifiable conclusion, viz., that the use of tobacco has distinctly harmful effects on the work of immature boys in grammar and high school, and to a lesser extent in college. Whether the effect is physiological or the product of other factors, such as idleness, social distraction, etc., is impossible to determine, but the accumulation of academic records from numerous sources leaves no doubt of the fact.

The core of the book, however, is the scientific study made in the psychological laboratory of the Uni-versity of Wisconsin. Most such investigations are vitiated by faulty methods or factors of interest, suggestion, deprivation, prejudices, etc. Dr. O'Shea and, his colleague, Dr. Clark L. Hull, determined to eliminate these subjective elements, and devised a "control" pipe, containing an electric heating coil. The subjects were given this while blindfolded and were surprised to learn later that they had not been smoking tobacco, but merely drawing in heated air. Seven non-smokers and nine smokers (university students) were tested for three hours on 18 consecutive days, on some of which they smoked actual tobacco before the tests, and on others only the "control." The tests included pulse beat, motor control (absence of tremors), tapping of a telegraph key, muscular fatigue, cancellation of letters for alertness and accuracy, memory span for digits, speed and accuracy in performing addition, reaction time to short, familiar words displayed, and facility in learning to associate symbols and nonsense syllables. To summarize the results, the tobacco smoking tended "to retard and to disturb intellectual processes, but not in a marked degree." There was great variability between persons and from day to day. In a few of the tests (e. g., speed in addition), tobacco increased the average efficiency of the group. In most of them, it decreased the average efficiency slightly, but in no case over 7%, except in muscular control. For all tests, the net average decrease was 5.13%, and more than half of this loss was from two extreme cases of nonsmokers, the non-smokers showing on the whole greater losses than the smokers, which may easily be accounted for by their lack of habituation to the drug.

From the laboratory data, the author concludes that it is impossible to say that tobacco smoking will retard the intellectual processes of any one person, but in a large group it may be predicted that the majority will be slightly retarded. Dr. O'Shea takes pains to point out that the study was limited to minor intellectual processes and gives no answer regarding creative ability, judgment or general physical vitality. Conclusive tests on these matters are still to be devised.

*Tobacco and Mental Efficiency--M. V. O'Shea--Macmillan. ($2.50).