Abstract
AT a meeting of the Society for the Study of Inebriety and Drug Addiction on April 12, a paper on the cigarette habit was read by Dr. J. D. Rolleston, who dealt with its history, economics, pharmacology, and clinical aspects. Cigarette smoking appears to have originated in South America, where it was reported by travellers and missionaries in the eighteenth century, and thence to have been introduced to Spain, where it was described by Casanova in a visit to Madrid in 1767. The cigarette was afterwards introduced into France and Italy, but it was not until after the Crimean war (1856), when French and English officers acquired it from their Turkish allies, that the cigarette habit became diffused over Europe. Germany, where the cigar was more popular, was among the last European countries to adopt the cigarette; it did not become firmly established in England until the ‘eighties. There has been a great increase of cigarette smoking since the War, especially among women, in all European countries and the United States. Dr. Rolleston pointed out that the cigarette differs from other preparations of tobacco in its nicotine content being lower than that of the cigar or pipe, whereas the amount of carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke is comparatively high. Furfurol, which is usually absent in the smoke of the pipe and cigar and present in only very small amounts in that of the Turkish cigarette, is found in comparatively large quantities in the smoke of the cheaper kinds of Virginia cigarettes and is liable to give rise to symptoms of intoxication. Medical opinion is still divided as to the part played by tobacco in general and the cigarette in particular in the causation of certain diseases, such as angina pectoris and cancer in various situations, and the risk of laryngeal involvement in smoking by tuberculous patients. General unanimity, however, seems to prevail as to the injurious effects of smoking by the young or by the subjects of cardiac neurosis or peptic iilcer.
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The Cigarette Habit. Nature 129, 609–610 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129609c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129609c0