Bishop Barnabas (Belyaev)
The history of tobacco smoking is telling. It shows that no tortures, and not even the fear of the death penalty, could make people give up this terrible, truly ruinous habit. At the same time, this history is so recent and so vividly preserved in mankind's memory that all its details can easily be reconstructed. But on the other hand, precisely because of this, it makes an extremely grim impression, for it shows with full clarity the cunning of the demons, with which they quite openly and undisguisedly incite people to be carried away by this poison, although in other cases they usually act secretly, in disguise.
…When Columbus landed on the island of San Salvador on 12 October 1492, he and his companions witnessed an unusual sight: the red-skinned inhabitants of the island were letting out clouds of smoke from their mouths and nostrils. The Indians were holding a religious festival, during which they smoked a special herb, and smoked it until they lost consciousness. In this state they entered into contact with demons and afterwards told what the “great spirit” had announced to them. After the sailors returned home, the same demons that had whispered to the Indians during their ritual smoking whispered to them too, inciting them to acquaint the Europeans with this new “pleasure.” And so, at the secret instigation of the well-disposed demons, a universal fever of tobacco smoking began throughout Europe and even Asia. What did the secular and church authorities not try, to put a stop to this evil — but it all proved useless!
Thus, for example, in 1623 Pope Urban VIII issued a bull threatening with excommunication everyone who smoked tobacco in church; in Turkey in 1625 Amurath IV ordered tobacco smokers to be led through the streets with nooses around their necks, then executed, and their severed heads displayed in public with pipes stuck in their mouths; in 1638, during the campaign against Persia, soldiers caught smoking tobacco faced being hacked with swords, hanged or impaled… In Persia, Shah Abbas ordered smokers to be punished by cutting off their noses and lips, and tobacco merchants to be burned alive together with their goods.
Even in Switzerland, that land of eternal freedom (not, of course, in the Gospel sense), in 1661 the magistrate of Appenzell laid down for trading in tobacco, as a sin forbidden by God Himself, the same measure of punishment as had been fixed for murder…
The harsh measures could not stop the growing craving for the new, previously unknown fruit. Forbidden, it became sweeter still… And so people smoked in secret, going off into the woods for it and hiding in cellars. And so it went on until the authorities themselves gave in.
In Russia, Tsar Michael Feodorovich, by a decree of 1634, ordered the greatest punishment — up to the death penalty — for smoking tobacco (which had first been brought in by the English, and, it must be said, of the very worst quality, which no one in England smoked any more). Alexis Mikhailovich, by the Code of 1649, confirmed his father's order and commanded that all in whose possession tobacco was found should be flogged in the public marketplaces, have their nostrils slit and their noses cut, and after torture be exiled to distant towns, so that those who saw it might lose the desire to smoke tobacco and not become accustomed to it.
The situation changed after the accession of Peter I, who added this too to all his vices: in 1697, granting permission for free trade in tobacco and for smoking, he not only abolished all prohibitions on tobacco, but personally, while in London (1698), concluded a treaty on the tobacco trade with the Marquess of Carmarthen, under which the latter was to pay him twelve thousand pounds sterling in advance and deliver a thousand pounds of tobacco to the treasury every year; the customs duty was fixed at four kopecks a pound. From that time on the matter moved at full speed in the direction set.
But in society there always were, and are, people who tried somehow to weaken this universally spread evil and expose all the harm this habit brings. They found societies, publish journals, print brochures, hold competitions and establish prizes for the best works on the harmfulness of tobacco smoking.
And indeed the harm caused by tobacco (the leaves of Nicotiana tabacum), as science has precisely established, is very great.
Tobacco smoke (besides nicotinic acid) contains hydrogen sulphide, sulphuric acid, lead sulphide, carbon monoxide, carbonic acid and so on. It has been established that under certain conditions all these poisons enter the blood through the air.
“As little as 15 milligrams of nicotine taken with water already produces the first signs of nicotine poisoning,” we read in one well-known Western hygienist, “and a cigar weighing about four grams delivers 7–10 milligrams of nicotine to the body in ½–¾ of an hour… Catarrh of the palate is common in heavy smokers. They often show nervous disorders, neurasthenic symptoms, a rapid heartbeat, excitability, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, poor memory and so on. For weaker people who are not used to tobacco, even one breath of tobacco smoke may be enough to cause a headache, shortness of breath or fainting.
Smoking dulls the appetite and disturbs digestion. The latter is understandable, since smoking causes increased secretion of saliva, which is lost because the smoker at once spits it out. And saliva is necessary for digesting a whole class of nutrients (starch). Besides this, tobacco smoke, when swallowed, irritates the mucous membrane of the stomach.” And how often (for a non-smoker) we may witness such an ugly picture, when a person at dinner has a cigarette in one hand and a spoon or fork in the other, and washes down every mouthful of food with tobacco smoke. True, nicotine does not directly cause a fatal outcome, but it lowers the desire to work, the capacity for work, the power of thought and vital energy. True, there are people who claim that they work and think better when they smoke. The fact is simply that they take the excitement caused by nicotine for a manifestation of strength and, if one may put it so, live not on the interest but by squandering the capital of their own vital strength.
Such are the conclusions of modern science on the harmfulness of tobacco smoking.
