Fact check: Tobacco was not known to be harmful in the past.
A nineteenth century article from Scientific American says otherwise.
Apart from the fact checks in this blog, I am also writing a historical science fiction novel at the moment set partly in nineteenth century colonial Victoria. During the research for this novel I sometimes come across interesting, counterintuitive historical facts. Today I stumbled across this article about tobacco, which debunks the modern idea that tobacco was only thought to be harmful in the late twentieth century, when a causative link between tobacco and lung cancer and emphysema was discovered. This article appeared in 1880 in the Herald, a Melbourne newspaper, but was originally published in Scientific American.
TOBACCO.
In a recent essay before this society (T. B. Golding at the Madison County Medical Society), I considered the action of alcohol within the human system, and on this occasion I am pleased to respond to your courteous invitation with observations on the action of tobacco. These agents might be profitably presented as almost identical in action, and shown to be largely accessory to each other's sins, but the temperance is waived for the physiological phrase of the argument. From tobacco's origin, its introduction, its composition, its cost, the extent of its consumption, and the processes of its preparation, I purposely pass, to deal more directly with it in its physiological relations to the functions and forces of human life. Eminent authority in every country and in every department of science, concurs in classing tobacco among the narcotic poisons, than which none are more deadly; indeed, like Aaron's rod, it has secure within itself the most magical and worst of all it rivals, Nicotia, sulphurated hydrogen, hydrocyanic acid! What a den of deadliest poisons, all having their habita in this colossal curie, termed tobacco. A poison is declared to be “anything whose natural action is capable of producing a morbid, noxious and dangerous effect upon the organisation of anything endowed with life.” Thus we perceive the definition is the perfect picture, of tobacco's action. Acquainted with this agent for over two hundred years, medical science, speaking with the tongue of every science, declares tobacco wholly in-nutritious, and further still, declares it nauseous; not only that, but noxious; and further yet, a repository of deadliest poisons. From this dictum there is no appeal; in its truth medical men are forced, by their culture, to concur. But even then they dandle with Delilah till shorn of strength, and science must still be summoned and held aloft for the healing of the nation. If tobacco is a poison, it ought to act as such, and it may be safely affirmed it has no other action — no other use in medicine, than to depress vitality. Thus it nauseates, it paralyses the nerve centres, producing relaxation of the muscular system, and produces such dreadful prostration that medical literature is full of warning, and abounds with reported cases of fatal poisoning by this agent. When medical science was in her cradle, and chloroform in the embrace of chaos; ere anaesthetics had come, as the olive leaf dove, to the ark of Æsculapius, surgeons soothed their suffering patients with powerful potations of tobacco, and thus they utterly prostrated the vital powers, relaxed the muscular system, and then proceeded to reduce laxations! How direful must have been a patient's difficulty, if half so dreadful and distressing as the remedy. It may be affirmed and demonstrated of tobacco, what is strikingly exceptional, namely, that it alone of all the vegetable kingdom discharges two active principles, one an alkaloid, and the other oil, and both the deadliest of poisons. It has been urged in support of fashionable poisons, that because multitudes use them, therefore they can't be especially dangerous; but professional science and experience teaches that there isn't an agent in the entire armory of toxicology, but the human system, by continued use, may at length be brought to tolerate it.
— Scientific American.
(sourced from the Herald, Melbourne Victoria Sat 20 Mar 1880)
CHANGE LOG
11:45 am 16th April - corrected some instances of ‘tho’ to ‘the’, and added the painting at the bottom.