Judge, 1912-09-14 · page 9 of 24
Judge — September 14, 1912 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous story by James Hay Jr. mocking both pompous physicians and anti-smoking hysteria. A fat doctor delivers an absurdly overwrought diagnosis to a patient who admits smoking cigarettes, invoking pseudo-scientific medical terminology ("medulla oblongata," "taenia hippocampi") to claim cigarettes will kill him within eight months. The satire targets the doctor's pretentious bluffing—he physically abuses the patient during examination, makes vague medical pronouncements, and ultimately cares only about payment. The narrator's deadpan responses ("with all the ease and indifference of a man tripping lightly to the gallows") highlight the doctor's theatrical panic over smoking versus actual medical concern. The page includes unrelated cartoons about Central America and a motorcyclist, typical of Judge's mixed-content format. The satire reflects early 20th-century skepticism toward medical alarmism about cigarettes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE LAST ROWS OF SUMMER. A Cigarette Heart. HE WAS a fat physician, who worked on you with a stethoscope, a stop- watch, and a vocabulary, and it was a safe bet that his brass sign had been made from a cross section of his own head; but when I went against his knowledge of the respiratory system I felt like a weak hitter reaching for a wide out-curve with a sawed-off bat. “Do you smoke?" When he asked me that, he was more polite than a gentleman cracks- man. "Yes"! “Cigarettes?"" “Yes."" That was the blow-off. He became gloomy, tore off two of my shirt buttons getting me undressed, hit mea knockout blow over the heart with the stethoscope, and cracked me on the kneecap with a hammer when I wasn’t looking. Then he turned my eyelids wrong- side out, made me blow smoke through a handkerchief, pulled the racehorse watch on me, felt my pulse so hard that the circu- lation stopped, and made me Tun up and down three flights of stairs, “How much is it?’’ I asked timidly, for I am not a rich man. He did not answer until he had felt my ankles and fin- fered the lobes of my ears. By JAMES HAY, JR much smoke! He said this with a wail and reached over and hit me on the wrist. I jumped slightly. . “You see!’ he cried, with enthusi- asm, ‘The brain and the lungs! Gra- cious heaven! Young man, unless you stop cigarettes at once, you'll be dead inside of eight months! Think of it!’ “Why?’? I inquired, with all the ease and indifference of a man _ tripping lightly to the gallows. “It’s this way. Your medulla oblon- gata is very low in the olivary fasci- culus, which condition is directly—I IN CENTRAL AMERICA, Caracoles ! the army approaches, Let us run for our lives! Pronto !'' Hear them firing! might say criminally—due to the rav- ages of nicotine on the dorsum sella of «the sphenoid. You inhale the smoke? I thought so! That accounts for thesag- ging down of the middle peduncles of the — cerebellum. Tragic! And your thumb is stained yellow. No wonder the cerebrum is seared! You don't remember the color of the carpet in the hall outside? Of course not! More tragic than ever! The mesial plane is shot to pieces and the taenia hippo- campi is as crooked as a gim- let!"’ By this time I had gulped— calmly and dispassionately— three times. “Is the taenia hippocampi— er—quite important to the brain?’’ I asked coldly. “More so than the air you breathe,’’ he assured me, and he sized me up like a financial appraiser. He rang for the nurse and asked if his carriage was ready. It was. He continued, talking rapidly, “*But the brain is nothing, my dear sir, compared with the inroads made on your breathing machinery — what we call the respiratory system. Your pharynx and larynx are of no real value. You might as well give them to your pet dog. You smoke before breakfast? (Continued in advertising section.) “The brain! The brain! Too Motorcyclist —"" Dreary country this. Not a soul in sight !"* comicbooks.com