Chapter 1 of 3 · 3994 words · ~20 min read

Part 1

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1389= Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

The Truth About the Tobacco Habit

T. Swann Harding

HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS GIRARD, KANSAS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TOBACCO HABIT

A young friend of mine of the trouser-wearing male sex recently developed a pain in his stomach. He decided to wait it out. But it was an indecent as well as an insidious sort of pain and finally persisted so long that he was driven to consult a physician for moral support. The physician said, “Do you smoke?” My friend said “Yes.” The physician said, “That’s it, of course. Quit smoking. Three dollars, please.” My friend went away, quit smoking, and the pain persisted. He returned to the doctor. He was now given a little silver nitrate. He went away, but he came back again. By that time the physician was really angry. He said, “You’ve smoked yourself into a nice stomach ulcer, you have. I’ll have to operate. I hate to but I have to.” Just then buckwheat cakes and sausage made my friend violently ill one day and he deleted them from his diet. The pain left and has not yet played a return engagement. He smokes more than ever now, but he throws away longer butts.

Another friend of mine classifying in the male sex which so far tends to avoid wearing trousers--much--went to a physician. She complained of a rash which she said afflicted her all winter. Fortunately for the physician she smoked energetically. He therefore told her to quit and called the next patient. Since she knew that she smoked in summer as well as in winter she did not quit but, by chance, consulted a scientific nutrition investigator. There was no reason for this; she did it irrationally and by pure inadvertance. But he asked, “Do you eat anything in winter that you do not eat in summer?” And she at first said, “No,” because that is the most natural answer to make under the circumstances. Then later, after a half an hour’s cross-examination, she said, “Yes, oatmeal.” He said, “Try cutting that out for a while.” So she conquered this craving, but continued to smoke, and the rash departed for parts unknown. She had an idiosyncrasy for oatmeal proteins just as some people have for strawberry or egg proteins, and her rash was thus caused.

In a moment of more violent perversity I went not long ago to a lecture advocating ruthless war on tobacco. In spite of the success women have just had in smoking anti-cigarette reformers into comas, the speaker, Daniel H. Kress, M. D., was President of the Anti-Cigarette Alliance. Since he was a regular doctor in active practice I had a right to expect the presentation of a scientific case against tobacco.

This gentleman, who is personally one of the most delightful old souls in the world, actually completed his lecture without ever once citing a scientific authority, without once grounding upon irrefutable scientific fact and without departing widely from the most trivial and childish sort of argument from analogy. Thus he stated that a famous war hero did not smoke. Wilson did not smoke. Hughes does not smoke. The inmates of reform schools all smoke. Smokers are physically and mentally unsafe!

This may all be true for all I can prove to the contrary, but what of it? Many war heroes smoke. Grant certainly did. Small, defective and generally backward children normally spring from parents who underfeed them, who are themselves defective in heredity and who neglect to instruct their children in any essential matters. Can you prove that smoking alone either stunted them or put them in the reform school? You cannot. Criminals are predominantly religious according to their professions of faith. Did Christianity make them criminals? If smokers are mentally unsafe may I fervently declaim--God help research!

You hear it said that the children of smoking mothers are inferior. Are they? How can it be proven? As a matter of fact no scientific experiment could possibly be carried on to prove this, for statistics, being riddled by all sorts of idiosyncrasies and unknowns, are grossly unscientific. To prove it you might have the same mother have two children at separate times by the same father, smoking while she bore one and abstaining for the control child. But that would prove nothing. Each child is a unique individual arising from a unique chromosome mixture. The mother and father would of necessity be older in the one case than in the other. Nourishment and other environmental conditions would inevitably vary. The experiment is impossible. Yet until such an experiment becomes possible we are merely voicing opinions when we say that smoking causes inferior children. The actual cause may be any of a thousand other and extraneous factors.

When you consider how very often tobacco smoking is mentioned therapeutically and how universally it seems to be assumed that it is deleterious to health it is rather disconcerting to discover so little reliable scientific work to confirm this prevalent viewpoint. In fact practically no comprehensive, systematic work has been done by scientific research to prove that smoking is exceedingly harmful to the human system. Like so many other human preconceptions this assumption rests largely upon faith. To the acutely prejudiced non-smokers smoking seems so utterly perverse that it surely must be physically injurious.

A rational esthetic case could be made out against certain women smoking. True, the modern woman so sedulously apes the other sex that to deprive her of her cigarette is simply to deprive her gracelessly of her masculinity. We should never do that. But the spectacle of a really pretty, effeminate woman smoking is nevertheless an esthetic affront. Nothing the average man can do could make him look very much worse than he does naturally so even this slight objection does not apply bisexually.

But we have wandered, and I am of course at fault, having set out laudably to lead our thought procession. In my search of the scientific literature the nearest thing to an authority I came across was perhaps Sir Humphrey Rolleston, Baronet, K. C. B.; F. R. C. P. and M. D. of Cambridge, England, physician to King George V in his late 1928 illness. He discusses “The Medical Aspects of Tobacco” in such staid British medical journals as _The Lancet_ and _The Practitioner_. He reviews every possible lesion that might spring from tobacco smoking, and they are many--quite as many indeed as may spring from over eating artichokes or drinking three gallons of well-water daily. He sets himself flatly against animal experimentation in this matter because this cannot possibly take idiosyncrasies into account, and reminds us that humans are both highly individualized and exceedingly complex.

Rolleston then remarks that cigarettes are less invidious than pipes or cigars because cigarette smoke is more air diluted. He finds a wide diversity of opinion as to the harmfulness of tobacco; he doubts that it ever affects the nervous system greatly and believes that coffee and tea usually produce the heart symptoms attributed to smoking and that a latent venereal disease accounts for much smoker’s cancer. He doubts also that dilation of the esophagus, dilation of the stomach, acid stomach and nervous dyspepsia are often due to tobacco while he commends the mildly laxative properties of a pipe after breakfast.

Finally our baronet says, and the medical journal sustains him editorially, that in view of the universality of the habit of tobacco smoking the rarity of the organic lesions that can be traced out as undoubtedly due to that habit, beyond all question, is little less than surprising. This, I should say, is the woodpile Ethiopian. It is one thing for a physician to lean back and say cut down on tobacco, coffee, fried stuff and pastry. It is quite another for him to prove scientifically that these indulgences have undeniably caused the patient’s present low physical estate.

D. T. Barry, F. R. C. S. and M. D. of the Physiological Department, University College, Cork, is not very far off when he writes: “The physiological effects of tobacco, as our present knowledge reveals them, are not sufficiently deleterious to counter-balance the benign influence of the drug in other respects. It may be abused, of course, but so may food, and this latter form of abuse is, in my opinion, responsible for greater evils than those resulting from the abuse of tobacco.”

In this connection another authority, Armstrong-Jones, remarks that tobacco smoking in moderation is not injurious to adults but is a valuable sedative. It contributes to calm thought and efficient mental functioning. Worst of all he casually remarks that cigarette smoking, preferably without a holder, is the least injurious form of tobacco indulgence. Even allowing for the fact that the gentleman has seen some of the less comely holders I have witnessed in my time, his statements give pause.

Of course Earp’s well-known studies at Antioch College, Ohio, did indicate that non-smokers showed an intellectual superiority over smokers, but whether these things were cause and effect or mere harmless concomitants who knows? Many very eminent intellectual giants smoked excessively. Perhaps they would have achieved absolute omnipotence or omniscience had they been non-smokers. Again, who knows?

It is significant that Earp’s non-smokers showed no physical superiority over his smokers; that is, it is interesting when you remember that the American university is an institution of athletic training wherein some intellectual education is offered to the feeble-bodied as a consolation prize. Intelligence tests are not affected by smoking, the non-smokers ranking just as high after smoking as before they had ever touched the vile weed. Finally, the correlation between the length of a student’s indulgence in tobacco and his scholarship is so negligible as to indicate that there can be no chronic cumulative poisoning from tobacco.

Laymen do not realize how difficult it is to trace a diseased condition to a specific cause even when bacteria abound, as is not the case in smoking. For instance certain bacteria so closely resemble each other that even experts are hard put to tell them apart. Diphtheria germs possess such a dead ringer. Real diphtheria cultures were once sent out to clinical laboratories along with other cultures containing no diphtheria germs, but germs so closely resembling them that the laboratories involved returned all sorts of results. Some reported that the actual diphtheria cultures contained no diptheria germs at all; others that some of the germs simulating diphtheria in appearance were positively the real thing. So a tooth or a tonsil may contain a germ so similar to those found at the seat of secondary infection that they are indistinguishable, yet the germ may be harmless in one case and virulent in the other.

Certainly it is unlikely that we carry virulent germs about in teeth and tonsils for long years. For one thing they get acclimated to us and can change their murderous habits. For another we get used to them. This organism of ours is an hospitable sort of thing. The body tends to adjust in neighborly fashion to germs upon long acquaintance, or familiarity breeds contempt, just as it adjusts to morphine, to opium, to over-eating, to the corrosive harness oils now sold as bootleg whiskey and to tobacco, of course. Perhaps long acquaintance ripens into real friendship and mutual aid.

Nicotine is the active agent in tobacco. Mendenhall tells us that tobacco sometimes stimulates and sometimes depresses the bodily sensory mechanism, depending largely upon the state of fatigue prevalent at the moment. When stimulation occurs the effect is precisely that of a certain portion of high potential rest, for in this case, says our authority, tobacco has rested us artificially.

Certain work seems to prove quite clearly that tobacco slows down the gastric motility as well as pepsin and rennin secretion. At least it produced such results on certain individuals, although the majority of mankind may be immune for all we know. This would slow down digestion, but it takes considerable smoking to accomplish such a result even with the susceptible, and one cigarette after a meal, even a cigar, would scarcely be sufficient. It has also been stated in scientific journals that tobacco _may_ play an etiologic role in gastric neurosis, in gastritis, in ulcer and cancer of the stomach and, likewise, in mouth or throat carcinoma.

But, putting your mind rigidly to the task, can you readily think of anything from hot soup to worry that has not at some time by some person been accused of causing these conditions? Why is this? Holding a clay pipe in the mouth may cause mouth cancer; holding an ordinary pipe might; continuously holding a roughened stick there might also, with tobacco never involved. How do these anti-tobacco ideas arise?

Why are we told that so many things cause ulcer, cancer, kidney trouble, heart lesions or high blood pressure? Why are there so many theories of evolution or of creation, or of salvation for that matter? Why are there so many and such diverse theories of economic and political betterment? Why are there such varied schools of treatment often imposing diametrically opposed procedures to combat the very same maladies? Why do men differ so widely in their hypotheses about government, religion, tobacco, women? Simply because nobody as yet knows anything positively definite about these matters, and just so long as this condition of inspired ignorance persists, so long will infinitely varied opinions be inevitable.

In chemistry, in physics and in bacteriology, for instance, we do possess certain definite knowledge and we can rightfully cite certain facts. In sociology, in politics and in economics, we possess certain dogmas or beliefs and we can pardonably express certain theories or opinions--so long as we candidly admit their opinionative status. But when we get beyond a certain definite point in any science, even in physics and chemistry, we begin to hypothecate just like an economic determinist or an anti-vivisectionist or a religious fundamentalist, people who are habitually beyond this point of separating fact from belief anyway. We begin to express our opinions vociferously, to dress them up in moral overcoats, and to justify them just because we do lack certain scientific knowledge.

Thus we can go to the scientific work and find an investigator saying that very large quantities of tobacco smoke will paralyze the gastric contractile power. All right. But this very same investigator also sagely adds that small amounts of the smoke will actually stimulate this very gastric contractility and urge along digestion. Or we can go to the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, the highest current medical authority in the United States. We find a query by some doctor on cigarette smoking and we read the reply. Authority completely absolves cigarette papers from blame for poison. It adds that any cigarette smoker is safer from harm than a tobacco smoker of any other sort. For one thing he actually smokes less tobacco. If he nervously smokes many cigarettes he throws away longer and longer unused portions and thus keeps his consumption at about the same figure.

_The Laryngoscope_ should be an authority on throat conditions as it is the publication of throat specialists. We find in here a statement to the effect that from a medical or laryngeal point of view there is no reason why anybody should give up tobacco or alcohol if it does them no very apparent harm. This is because the use of both in moderation by millions proves the harmlessness of the habit which is, in fact, often actually beneficial.

You can go further than that. If you want to be really mean you can find an authority to state that visual acuity is increased by smoking. When non-smokers smoked for they first time they saw better than they did before smoking. The sight of habitual smokers was unaffected by an additional smoke. They had already smoked themselves into the best possible eye-sight. This may be unreliable testimony. Far be it from me to judge it. The point is that it is quite as reliable as any of the testimony advanced against the tobacco habit.

In short we are here in a region where exact scientific investigation has not yet established reliable criteria of judgment. We cannot cite irrefutable facts. We can only express opinions and opinions are usually grounded in prejudice. Physicians tend normally to prohibit, but they rarely prohibit judiciously because, under our present chaotic medical system, they cannot afford to make a sound, thorough-going clinical examination of every patient and must regard medicine as an art--_i. e._, fall back upon empiricism.

As for prejudice, it amounts to little. Cromwell and his Puritans smoked excessively. About 1840 women smoked outrageous stogies and cumbersome pipes so shamelessly that men were alarmed and vigorous caricatures satirized them in the periodicals of the day. Early in the Victorian era smoking was all but a lost art. Today it is again in ascendency, yet human depravity has remained at about one level throughout.

In an editorial upon the subject during 1925 _The Journal of the American Medical Association_ especially emphasized the fact that variations in human susceptibility and tolerance were factors as yet little understood. Extreme caution in generalization was wisely advised on such subjects as the harm inherent in tobacco smoking, and the reader was admonished that over-indulgence in turnips or parsnips, or even in water, would turn out a great deal worse than he might anticipate on immature consideration.

This factor of human individualization is rightly coming to the front in medical literature today. Advances in biological chemistry constantly attest the fact that each human individual is unique chemically. What Smith can do with impunity Jones can only do with a prospect of sudden death. This is not a superficial matter, but one deep seated in the cellular structure of the human body, a thing going back through ages of inheritance via the complex and ill-understood chromosome. More and more it is being realized that routine diets, prescriptions and prohibitions will not do in all cases--in fact are actually unsafe and dangerous in many.

For all we definitely know today with positive assurance we cannot deny the proposition that tobacco smoking is probably beneficial to many people. Not long ago everybody was urged to go in for bran because we all sadly needed roughage. Bran would cure constipation and a thousand routine diets spattered the press. It was all very well, except that constipation persisted. Today it is realized that nervous and psychic factors have much more to do with constipation than diet and the parade has set in that direction now. In fact some authorities declare that these rough diets have actually had fatal consequences in certain instances where a smooth diet was required.

But medical science really does not know sufficient about the positive, absolutely undeniable effects of tobacco smoking upon human beings to parade in any direction as yet without painful danger of finding itself hopelessly bogged in error at some date in the near future.

DEBUNKING “DENICOTINIZED” TOBACCO

Some years ago it was quite evident that the cigarette was doomed. Groups of well desiccated females, assisted by large droves of impotent he-virgins, met together, assailed the “filthy weed,” and determined to abolish it by vituperation if not by legislation. Tobacco manufacturers began to feel vague worries, some States passed anti-cigarette laws and righteousness seemed about to triumph. Then came the war!

War is a great release. We all live pretty prosaic lives. Social conventions are harsh and unless we live in Philadelphia or Chicago it is not considered courteous, much less expedient, to go out and rob, kill and commit arson. War delights in that it releases these crude desires which seem to be suppressed and lying potentially in wait in the most sedate of us. Men were released to rob, murder and commit arson and they did it with a vim and vigor which belies the idea that we are becoming a decadent and anemic race.

At the same time war had its disadvantages. A chap needed stimulation. He needed whiskey; he needed women; he needed cigarettes. He got them all and the dear, good Christian souls applied themselves so whole-heartedly to the good work of providing needful stimulation that natural smiles began to sprout on technical virgins, liquor ceased to draw the sex line and cigarettes were actually dispensed by the hands of Christian ladies and gentlemen. The tobacco industry was saved.

After the war women decided to continue doing what they had done during the war. They decided to retain “This Freedom.” Men decided they should not retain it. The Christians decided they should not retain it. It was against ethics, morals and law. The women retained their freedom and added to it. Among other things they smoked cigarettes so indefatigably that a consumption which had commenced to decline hopped to a point of unprecedented size.

Women are like that. Men are more civilized, have more modern bodies, are younger in an evolutionary sense and respect this nonsense called law. Women are much older physiologically--phylogenetically for that matter, if you really like long words. They adopt primitive means to accomplish their ends and primitive means are always effective. When they wanted to smoke they smoked and that was that.

At the same time, however, it is vaguely interesting to many people to know whether smoking is injurious. All sorts of ills have been laid to its door. But there is this to be said in its favor. In very many people smoking is undoubtedly the percussion cap which sets in motion a train of conditioned reflexes and enables them to work efficiently.

Watson has worked on these conditioned reflexes. Let the young baby have a rat. It is not afraid and will play with it happily. But some day produce a blinding flash of light or a loud noise just as you give it the rat and you have imbedded a conditioned reflex which may last its life. It will always fear rats. Watson holds that education should address itself to the job of making our conditioned reflexes of such nature that they are helpful rather than a hindrance.

Thus a certain man cannot think unless he plays with the keys in his pocket. That is the original stimulus which sets his benign conditioned reflexes in motion. Another smokes in order to think deeply. A third smokes and finds that it is laxative. Perhaps these men cannot either think or avoid constipation unless they smoke, and the probable reason is that the act of smoking is an original stimulus which automatically sets in motion a long series of conditioned reflexes of a benign character.

Yet there are people who do not want to run any risks. They want to avoid nicotine. Perhaps it is as well that they should. They therefore buy cigarettes or cigars or tobacco which have been “denicotinized.” To what extent do they succeed in avoiding the poison then? The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 295, a prosaic scientific-looking thing, pretty well explodes the bunk of these tobaccos and it calls a spade a spade. More power to the research agencies of the U. S. A. which dare be so outspoken. A brief analysis of the results shown seems in order.

Tobaccos were analyzed for nicotine and the percentage given is in all cases on a dry basis. First tested were several common brands of cigarettes. They ran as follows in nicotine. Take your pick hereafter when you buy--

Cigarette. Percent Nicotine. Egyptian Deities 1.28 Pall Mall 1.38 Philip Morris 1.40 Lucky Strike 1.88 Camel 2.21 Old Gold 2.17 Capstan Navy Cut 2.30 Chesterfield 2.53 Piedmont 2.89

Since not even physicians have had any idea how much nicotine common brands of cigarettes carried this alone is important. Now how did the “denicotinized” cigarettes line up? They ran as follows: