Cancer By The Carton

More than 60 years ago, Reader’s Digest ran articles alerting millions of readers to the link between smoking and lung cancer. They became arguably the most important pieces of consumer-health journalism ever published

- Roy Norr

For three decades the medical controversy over the part played by smoking in the rise of bronchiogenic carcinoma, better known as cancer of the lung, has largely been kept from public notice. More than 26 years ago the late Dr James Ewing, distinguished pathologist and leading spirit in the organization of the American Association for Cancer Research (now the American Cancer Society), pleaded for a public educational campaign.

“One may hardly aim to eliminate the tobacco habit,” he wrote in his famous essay on cancer prevention, “but cancer propaganda should emphasize the danger signs that go with it.” No one questions that tobacco smoke irritates the mucous lining of the mouth, nose and throat, or that it aggravates hoarseness, coughing, chronic bronchitis and tonsillitis. It is accepted without argument that smoking is forbidden in cases of gastric and duodenal ulcers; that it interferes with normal digestion; that it contracts the blood vessels, increases the heart rate, raises the blood pressure. In many involvements of heart disease, the first order from the doctor is to cut out smoking immediately.