For centuries, many different cultures have believed smoking could cure a variety of ills from toothache to tuberculosis. It was even touted as a way of preventing bad breath and cancer. If only it were so, but medicine has proved otherwise.
1604 – King James I of England did not like tobacco. He published Counterblaste to Tobacco in which he referred to it as a “filthie noveltie” adding that smoking was a custom “lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine [and] dangerous to the lungs…”
1606 – Scottish Dr. Eleazar Duncon wrote that tobacco “is so hurtful and dangerous to youth that it might have the pernicious nature expressed in the name, and that it were as well known by the name of Youths-bane (a deadly poison) as by the name of tobacco.”
1617 – Dr. William Vaughn writes: "Tobacco that outlandish weede / It spends the braine and spoiles the seede / It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight / It robs a woman of her right..."
1623 – Sir Francis Bacon noticed the addictive quality of tobacco. He wrote: “The use of tobacco is growing greatly and conquers men with a certain secret pleasure, so that those who have once become accustomed thereto can hardly later be restrained therefrom.”
1771 – A Dr. John Hill of London, England delivered the first medical opinion on the dangers of tobacco when he reported that six patients who used snuff excessively had developed “polypusses” or hard, black swellings in the nostrils.
1856 – The medical journal The Lancet questioned 50 doctors about tobacco; they said it caused crime, nervous paralysis, loss of intellectual abilities, and visual impairment.
1920s – Health-care workers in the United Kingdom began to suspect there might be a connection between lung cancer and smoking; but this was only an educated opinion that lacked the scientific rigor of an epidemiological study.
1930 – German researchers in Cologne found a statistical relationship between cancer and smoking.
1938 – Johns Hopkins University researcher Dr. Raymond Pearl in the U.S. reported that smokers do not live as long as non-smokers.
1944 – The American Cancer Society issued a cautious warning about connections between smoking and disease but said there was “no definite evidence exists” linking smoking and lung cancer.
1952 – Reader’s Digest magazine published an article about the dangers of smoking under the title “Cancer by the Carton.”
1954 – The Medical Research Council in the U.K. published a scientific paper based on the work of Sir Richard Doll and Sir Austin Hill that revealed that smoking can cause lung cancer. It was the first time the link had been confirmed. At the time, 80 percent of British adults smoked. Today, that figure is 26 percent.
1964 – The Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther L. Terry, released the report on “Smoking and Health.” The document identified various cancers as being caused by tobacco smoking and said “Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.”
Now, there was no longer any doubt – smoking causes cancer. The industry fought a desperate rearguard action through its Tobacco Industry Research Council. The council cooked up studies to undermine science proving the harm caused by smoking. As Martin O’Malley noted in a 2003 article for CBC, tobacco companies “lied, cheated, harassed, bullied and spin-doctored and PR’d their way over any serious opposition.”
But, with the Surgeon General’s 1964 report the end was near for those who denied that smoking causes cancer.
Sources
- “Doctor’s 400-year-old Letter Strikes Chord with Holyrood Plan to Curb Tobacco Sales.” The Scotsman, September 19, 2009.
- “The Slow Growth of a Movement.” Ronald M. Davis, Tobacco Control, Volume 1, Issue 1, 1992.
- “Cancer by the Carton.” Martin O’Malley, CBC News, November 19, 2003.
- “Personal Health.” Jane E. Brody, New York Times, August 25, 1982.
- “The Tobacco Timeline.” Gene Borio, Tobacco.org
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
