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SMOKING
(Adapted from an article published in the Royal
Society of Health Journal„ September/October, 1964)
Since 1950 anti smoking propaganda has become a
feature of health educational activities, which were
intensified following publication of the Report of the
Royal College of Physicians of London in 1962
Tobacco first came to England in Elizabethan times
and since those days many voices have been raised in
condemnation of the smoking habit. But nothing could
retard the increasing consumption of tobacco. Army
officers brought in the cigar after 1815. The cigarette
made its appearance in the 1850's. The habit was
acquired by soldiers in the Crimea, who rolled tobacco in
pieces of newspaper. A returned soldier named Cloag who
lived at Peckham, started making tubes of tobacco in
yellow paper with cane mouthpieces. He later employed
100 workers and in 1884 introduced cigarette cards. Hand
rolled cigarettes were replaced in 1891 by the machinemade
variety and a new industry came into being.
In 1902 each male in this country was consuming on an
average, one pound of tobacco in a year; 60 years later
this had increased tenfold. Women, who acquired the
habit later, smoked a pound each in 1922, they now smoke
four times as much.
More than once, during the present century, doctors
have drawn attention to the dangers to health of smoking-
Studies were made in London in 1948, in America in 1941,
and by a German physician who, in 1923, associated the
increase in cancer of the lung with the rise in the
amount of cigarette smoking.
Much information has now been gathered about the
smoking habits of persons in different age and sex groups
from 10 years upwards, and among those in different walks
of life. The results have not been uniform, even in
relation to members of comparable group which is not
surprising when full and accurate information is not easy
to obtain. However, a general picture has been built up
which leaves no doubt as to the magnitude of the preventive
task.