Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/29

Rh make us live forever—and with two ways to construct it: By scientific work on magnetic vortex flows, utilizing exdisintegrance to "pack" ordinary metal with energy ash—or, by sending men out into space itself in space ships!

Scientists—rocket men—listen to me! This is all true! Work at it; I have neither the ability nor the money. I have given you the formula. I have done my part. Do yours, for God's sake, while I still live!

Harte Manville.

THE END 

Five Pointed Star Solid.svg

HE cigarette, in the process of burning, gives rise to between twenty-eight and thirty-two different poisonous substances, depending upon the preparation of the tobacco and the type of paper used.

As an example, acrolein deserves a seat in the front row. This is a substance derived from glycerine by dehydration in the burning process. Acrolein is one of the most irritating common substances known. The smoke from lard spilled on a redhot cook-stove contains much of this powerful irritant, and causes the recipient to cough and sneeze and weep.

Ammonia, formed in the breakdown of amino acids, while not acutely poisonous in low concentration is constantly altering the condition of the mucous membranes lining the nasal and bronchial passages. It promotes the culturing of germs of various kinds in those membranes.

Carbon monoxide is formed by the incomplete combustion pertaining in the burning of a cigarette. It is probably the main poisonous constituent bringing about the feeling of loginess that arises when one smokes "too much." Monoxide is particularly poisonous to the nerve and brain cells, and to the red corpuscles. In cigarettes employing diethylene glycol instead of glycerine as the moistening agent there is about three or four times as much carbon monoxide formed than ordinarily, depending upon the amount of glycol used. Such cigarettes also yield oxalic acid (a calcium precipitant) by dehydration of the glycol, which is also a poison of recognized stature.

Nicotine is generally considered to be a much more innocuous substance than formerly, although it does have some circulatory effects. The deadly poisonous form of nicotine, which is the sulfate, is not derived from the cigarette in any appreciable amount.

The tarry substances which are formed—phenols, cresols and other aromatic compounds—are probably the worst of the offenders, because of their insidious action upon body chemistry. All the different poisons inhabiting cigarette smoke have not been positively identified, but at least one of this particular group (the aromatic, or benzene-ring compounds), known as benzpyrin, has been proved a potent initiator of cancerous processes in experimental animals. The smaller the animal, however, the more susceptible it is to cancer. Nevertheless, a few doctors blame this agent for a part of the increase of the disease.

No habit which has not been acquired is any more worth sidestepping than is that of tobacco-using. No habit already acquired is more worth abandoning.—John McCabe Moore.