Smoking Causes - Cautions - problems

In the seventeenth century, there was even a book authored by a London physician on smoking, Panacea, or the Universal Medicine. The book dedicated a drop of tobacco juice in each ear to cure deafness, a leaf on the head to cure headache, a leaf on a tooth for toothache. And, in the form of ointments, powders, leaves or concoctions, tobacco was suggested as a cure for burns, wounds, cancers, sciatica, diseases of the liver, spleen and womb, worms, colic, warts, corns, and mad dog bites.

The smoking of tobacco in paper wrappers as small cigars or cigarettes began in Spain in the seventeenth century and gradually spread. But the really tremendous spurt in cigarette smoking came during World War 1 with free distribution of cigarettes to soldiers, followed not long after-ward by acceptance of cigarette smoking by women. Even a century ago, Dr.Oliver Wendell Holmes, author, poet, and distinguished physician and Harvard Medical School professor, was writing: "I think tobacco often does a great deal of harm to health.

 I myself gave it up many years ago. I think self-narcotization is a rather ignoble substitute for undisturbed self." Early in this century some reports began to appear in medical journals suggesting an apparent relationship between smoking and specific diseases. In 1927, Dr. F. E. Tylecote in England reported that in virtually every case of lung cancer he had seen or known about, the patient was a regular smoker. But striking evidence of the effects of smoking was yet to come.

THE MODERN INDICTMENT In 1938, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University published a study on smoking and length of life based on findings in 2,094 men who did not use tobacco, 2,814 moderate smokers, and 1,905 heavy smokers, Dr. Pearl concluded that smoking is unquestionably associated with a reduction in length of life. For example, between the years of 30 and 50, the chances of dying are 15 percent greater for a moderate and 98 percent greater for a heavy smoker than for a nonsmoker. 

By 1965, studies of mortality rates of smokers and nonsmokers had extensive enough for Dr. Luther Terry, then Surgeon General, to report that 240,000 men would die that year prematurely from diseases associated with cigarette smoking. About 138,000 of the premature deaths would be from diseases clearly associated with smoking, such as cancer of the lung, larynx, oral cavity, esophagus and bladder, as well as bronchitis, emphysema, and coronary heart disease. Another 102,000 deaths would result from diseases in which the relationship to cigarette smoking, while not so obvious, is nevertheless well indicated. These figures did not include women.