Pick Your Poison

Cautions to young persons concerning health: in a public lecture delivered at the close of the medical course in the chapel at Cambridge, November 20, 1804: containing the general doctrine of dyspepsia and chronic diseases, shewing the evil tendency of the use of tobacco upon young persons, more especially the pernicious effects of smoking cigars: with observations on the use of ardent and vinous spirits

In a lecture given to Harvard Medical School students, noted professor and physician Benjamin Waterhouse encourages young people to avoid tobacco and alcohol as a moral imperative and to continue a legacy of healthful practices set forth by the forefathers of the country. Waterhouse connects abstinence from tobacco and alcohol abuse to virtuousness, as was a common anti-tobacco narrative, and paints habitual tobacco users as “slaves” to their vice.