Punch,  34 (1858), 49.

Statistics on Smoking. From Our Own Tobacco-Stopper

Anon

Genre:

News-Commentary, Spoof

Subjects:

Narcotics, Controversy, Medical Treatment, Health, Disease


    Noting the continuation of the 'Tobacco Controversy', provides a spoof summary of an unpublished report by a 'Committee of tobacco-stoppers', which sought evidence from 1500 smokers on whether smoking was harmful and what counted as 'excessive'. The survey found that most smokers think excessive smoking is an impossibility, that politicians take tobacco to stop the 'narcoticism' of their parliamentary speeches, and that medical students only smoke 'medicinally' and think that it provides a 'fumigant protective from infection'. It was also judged a remedy for bronchitis and only one gentleman had injured himself through smoking—by smoking 'underneath the blankets of his bed'.



© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]