THE TRUTH ABOUT CIGARETTES
Harding, T. Swann
The Truth About Cigarettes By T. SWANN HARDING THE FUNNY THING about cigarettes is that they are not what they seem to be to the casual observer. They have metaphysical qualities known only to...
...It is true that the tobacco of which the average cigarette is made may come from several different barrels each containing the weed of a different type...
...Actually Philip Morris was just another American product...
...Finely powdered, it was used as a disinfectant...
...Things would be a lot simpler if they were more discriminating...
...For instance, experts in the Department of Agriculture will tell you that whether one cigarette is better than another is a matter of the smoker's individual taste...
...The "lift" to the cigarette is really a handicap which nature does its best to counteract...
...Every now and then some good churchman sends up a skyrocket about the thousands of innocent little babies who are poisoned by the nicotine in the breast milk of their mothers, for instance...
...He decided that smoking a cigarette seta off a bodily protective mechanism involving the adrenal glands, the circulatory system, the glycogen (a sugar) in the liver, and the nervous system...
...It finally proved that hereditary factors and natural tendencies counted more than smoking in all cases...
...9, 1943, FTC complained in regard to the advertising claims Old Golds made about coming out lowest in nicotine and throat-irritating tars and resin content when tested with seven leading brands...
...During the plague of 1665 Eton scholars were thrashed if they failed to smoke before coming to class rooms...
...5, 1943, Philip Morris & Co...
...Well, suppose we make a quick health survey...
...Other doctors have reported on the effects of smoking on the blood sugar level and the peripheral temperatures of normal human beings, hypersensitives, and sufferers from heart ills...
...Philip Morris In Trouble Advertisers, however, are excellent metaphysicians...
...But the milk production by smoking mothers and the health of their nurslings remains unaffected...
...28, 1942 issue, that nicotine is excreted in both the milk and the urine of cigarette-smoking mothers, there being no exact correlation between the amount of nicotine excreted and the number of cigarettes smoked...
...There was no particular adverse or other effect on heart sufferers and none on the blood sugar level while fasting...
...The FTC insisted that these cigarettes were not toasted, were not smoked by most tobacco experts, were not less "acid" than any other brands, did not offer throat protection, did not contain better and higher priced tobacco than competing brands, did not afford protection against coughing, and were not made from the cream of the tobacco crop, or from lighter, finer tobacco, as claimed in variegated advertisements...
...No wonder modern cigarette advertisers are hipped with the idea that cigarette smoking will cure all ills...
...11, 1939...
...The stomach-emptying time was unaffected by smoking one to four cigarettes per hour, general digestive secretion remaining unaltered, though smoking did have a mild laxative action—not altogether bad for the constipated race of people we imagine ourselves to be...
...Whether it was worth over a million and a quarter dollars to Americans to find out what was told them is debatable...
...31, 1942, was duly denied the following Oct...
...Some, however, fell for the gushing dope...
...8, 1941, the Federal Trade Commission (hereinafter FTC) ordered the company to cease and desist from making false and unwarranted claims about them...
...They are not thus adding to but subtracting from their store...
...26, by the makers of Lucky Strike...
...The bibliography is fascinating, if you care to delve into it...
...You didn't give the body more energy by smoking the cigarette...
...In general, different manufacturers keep their flavors a great secret...
...Nothing to that, said the scientists, and if it did happen, it would be like whipping a tired horse...
...When blindfolded, consumers altogether fail to sense these mysterious metaphysical qualities of cigarettes advertisers yawp about...
...The FTC said differences between the brands were small, that Old Golds were not significantly lower in nicotine than other brands, and that their tar content was insignificantly lower than that of other brands...
...Segal insisted that the use of tobacco sets off a mechanism which, while it can delay the onset of hunger and fatigue, is far from harmless...
...You will have to transfer here...
...Pall Mall also went in for British label palaver...
...Lowering of the peripheral temperature was pronounced, the pulse rate increased, and the blood pressure usually rose with smoking...
...The average breast-fed youngster gets only a half pint to a pint of milk in a 24-hour period...
...31, 1942, the FTC denied that finger stains would surely disappear if you smoked Pall Malls, or that it was scientifically established that this brand causes less finger stain and also protects the throat by filtering all irritants out of the smoke...
...Harry L. Segal, in the American Journal of Medical Sciences for December, 1938, as to whether cigarette smoking makes you tired...
...If the smoke is merely drawn into the mouth and exhaled, 77 per cent of the nicotine is so retained, hence inhaling is not much worse than not inhaling...
...Tobacco was regarded as both a stimulant and a sedative...
...It was far removed from royal warrants, though a Philip Morris did conduct a tobacco business in London as early as 1846, if that makes the smoke any sweeter...
...They have metaphysical qualities known only to advertisers...
...But, if they are blindfolded, and the cigarette brands are shuffled, they can't tell one from the other, unhappy people...
...High-degree tolerance to nicotine poisoning is developed by long-continued inhaling...
...The 'Lift' Is A Handicap Finally there is the argument started by Dr...
...For, on Jan...
...Cigarette-makers seem incapable of telling the difference Between a cigarette and a health tonic...
...It relieved indigestion when applied as a poultice...
...He concluded therefrom that the use of tobacco decreases average height and weight, lessens life expectancy (as Kaymond Pearl asserted), and increases the metabolic rate...
...However, aimless prevarication in advertising is not confined to any one brand of cigarettes...
...Henry G. Hadley made an extensive review of the literature in the Medical Record for May 21, 1941, and then reported some work of his own...
...For instance, in 1942, according to Printer's Ink for Feb...
...The conclusions are far from obvious...
...Maybe it is bad for some people to mobilize reserve energy by smoking cigarettes...
...Another herd of doctors published a report on the effects of tobacco on the alimentary tract, issue of Mar...
...you simply mobilized some it already had and left it at a dangerously low fatigue level...
...Old man Nicot himself used tobacco leaves to cure his cook's cut finger...
...Finally, nothing was found to indicate that smoking had a beneficial effect on the activities of the alimentary canal in general...
...A small platoon of them said, in the Nov...
...Another complaint, made Aug...
...But the blend, and the flavoring materials used, determine cigarette quality...
...This is as far as this trolley goes...
...Here is quite an argument...
...All that going on produces pathological fatigue in some persons...
...At times the scientists get to heaving "taint so's" at one another and to insisting that certain observations by other scientists are so un-original they were made years ago and discounted even then...
...They found a greater incidence of the disease among smokers than among non-smokers in the younger individuals...
...Yet another gang of physicians studied the statistics of over a thousand cases of well-established coronary disease and compared with a control group of the same size...
...On the other hand there are people who insist that tobacco smoking is very harmful...
...However, that is nothing to worry about...
...Old Golds Catch It Once again, this time on Mar...
...However, a number of them took a lash at the advertising of a certain cigarette which has claimed to give smokers a "lift," to "energize" them, and to aid them in increasing their efforts at the fag end of the day...
...Segal cured six cases of fatigue that had him baffled by telling the patients to quit smoking...
...Perhaps their attitude is a hangover from history...
...Smoking Mothers Various doctors have reported recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association on different aspects of smoking...
...It contains likewise many aromatic flavoring substances—tonka beans, vanilla, licorice, chocolate, maple sugar, rum, alcohol, fruit flavors, essential oils, sugar, resin, tobacco oils, glycerine, and so on...
...In other words, if they can see the package, they can tell what kind of cigarettes they are smoking...
...Anyway Dr...
...Scientists appear to be unaware of these esoteric characteristics...
...Pierce, in the Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine for May 26, 1941, concluded that about a third of the nicotine in smoked tobacco is inhaled and that 90 per cent of this is retained in the smoker's respiratory tract...
...Buyers call for the cigarette with the most appealing flavor and, remember, a cigarette is more than a mere blend of various tobaccos...
...Pall Malls And Luckies Possibly it is worth more than a million and a quarter dollars to some people to find out a lot of things that are not so, but not of my money...
...Smoking affected the secretion of bile and of the pancreas little if at all...
...On Aug...
...Tobacco even came to be regarded as an antidote for the poison in arrow tips though tobacco formed an ingredient of the poison...
...Nothing was found to indicate that ulcer patients should not smoke...
...spent $1,352,582 to extol the peculiar virtues of their cigarettes in advertising in various media...
...They have for years sensed the peculiar, esoteric metaphysical qualities of cigarettes and have used money lavishly (which consumers supplied in the long run) to tell the buying public about them...
...The difficulties of cigarette manufacturers seem to be related to those of an old man in my home town...
...If it were able to take a quart at a feeding, which is impossible, it might also imbibe enough nicotine to make a toxic dose...
...They used both chronic smokers and non-smokers as subject of investigation...
...The kids either developed a high tolerance or simply ignored the nicotine in their milk even when ma smoked like a wet wood fire...
...The company had sought, by a display of something like the British royal arms and the use of such doggy Englishisms as "London W," "Ltd.," and "English," to make purchasers believe these were British cigarettes...
...Probably three-quarters of the cigarette smokers have known all along that this was rot, and simply smoked brands that pleased them...
...He was congenitally unable to tell liquor from food...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 43
