Читать книгу Old Age Deferred - Arnold Lorand - Страница 9

Table of Contents

If excessive smoking is deleterious to man, in the woman moderate smoking may cause serious alterations. We must not forget that the tissues of women are more delicate and tender than those of men, and especially young women can in this respect be put in the same class with children. The woman is not so well protected against the influence of poisons such as nicotine as the man, for in her some of those glands whose duty is to destroy such poisons, as, for instance, the thyroid, are kept in much greater activity on account of the frequent changes in the ovaries with each menstruation, pregnancy, the climacteric, etc., and with their consequent repercussion upon the thyroid gland, with which the ovaries are closely related. If to this comes such extra work by the daily introduction of poisonous substances, although even in small quantities, the gland may the more readily lose its efficiency. After my own observations which I made upon my patients in Carlsbad coming from eastern countries in Europe, I know that smoking women present a much older aspect, if they have indulged in this habit to a large extent and for years. They soon fade, the cheeks are pale, as a rule, and sunk in. The general nutrition suffers, there is loss of appetite, frequently a catarrh of the stomach and very often pains in the stomach; indeed there is often neurasthenia with sleeplessness. With more excessive smoking there will appear all the symptoms which are common to the chronic nicotine poisoning of men.

I am not prepared to maintain that, after the dinner, a cigarette or sometimes two are dangerous to adult women. The aspect of a lady smoking a cigarette after dinner surely cannot be called attractive, and it certainly does hurt the æsthetic feelings of a normal man to see a woman smoking one big cigar after another. It looks too masculine in a woman, as I have observed in a ladies’ club in Copenhagen, where most of the women sat with big cigars in their mouths. Such habits take away all charm even from the finest looking women, and as a normal woman is attracted by all that is manly in man and is repelled by an effeminate man, we men dislike masculine women, just as we dislike a woman having a mustache and whiskers. If I were a married man, I know I would not like to kiss my wife if she strongly smelled of tobacco, just as it would be repulsive to kiss a man; the smell of strong tobacco creating involuntarily the sensation of associating with a man. Until recently women have presented far less frequently the symptoms of arteriosclerosis than men, excessive smoking being rare with them. But as the effects of smoking are more deleterious to them, naturally arteriosclerosis will arise much sooner in them, and as through the hardening of the arteries the nutrition of the tissues suffer, the nourishing blood not rendering them in sufficient amount—necessarily such persons will begin to look old at a comparatively early period of life.