Smoking - health hazard

[becca1707]

When did it first become evident that smoking was a health hazard?

[Thunderchild]

most certainly by the end of the 60's as my grandad worked at the docs in London they came in with a lung in a jar (in alcohol I presume) to show what happened to it as it belonged to a now dead smoker. dad remembers him smoking so he must on been 12 - 18 so that would make it like 1962-1968 but possibly even a bit earlier

[chasbo]

Certainly not in the early 60's - A cigarette called Craven A was advertised as "soothing to the throat".!!!? I too was shown a lung from a heavy smoker, it looked like it was made of coke,( the fuel, not the drug! )

[Kay]

It definately was in the 60's. I remember everyone in work reading the news about it. I would have been about 17 at that time and a smoker. Being younger, I did'nt take much notice of it but the older workers all promised each other to give up the fags,some lasted all of 2 days:-).

[maxi29]

It was earlier than the 60s.

The first large-scale medical study that confirmed that smoking was bad for health was carried out by Richard Doll in the late 1940s and published in the British Medical Journal in 1950. This was backed up by a government-sponsored survey in 1954 which confirmed the findings and resulted in the government issuing advice against smoking in that year,

However, in 1858, The Lancet had published a report that smoking was injurious to health but this was not widely acted upon.

However, you could say that it was James 1 (and VI) who first suggested it with his Counterblast to Tobacco in which he said that smoking was "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."

[WaldoMcFroog]

A Doctor Adler first postulated a strong link between smoking and lung cancer in 1912.

Check this link for a detailed timeline:

http://www.tobacco.org/resources/history/Tobacco_History20-1.html