"Smoking and Longevity Statistically Associated with Impairment of Life Duration" (1938)

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2706

Raymond Pearl brought to the readers of Science in 1938 what seems to be the first scientific study¹ on the effects of smoking tobacco on longevity, announcing that “smoking of tobacco was statistically associated with an impairment of life duration” The work has been described as a classic in epidemiology:

• "Despite his often provocative pronouncements, the proof that Pearl provided that smokers are prematurely killed by the effects of tobacco must be recognized as one of his most important achievements in epidemiology. In fact, Pearl’s 1938 article in Science describing the premature death of smokers was the first significant piece of data on the link between tobacco and longevity."--Goldman, I L, “Raymond Pearl, smoking and longevity”, in Genetics, 11/2002, Volume 162, Issue 3 https://www.genetics.org/content/162/3/997

Pearl certainly had a way with turning a long and tumbling and turgid phrase—you can almost see him crafty his long wide-tired sentences and chuckling through them, gravity of the subject or not.

He starts the paper off with a rather longish statement about the vast majority of human beings consuming things that they really don't need to consume, and that some of these controllable non-essentials may cause them some harm:

“In the customary way of life man has long been habituated to the routine usage of various substance and materials not psychologically necessary to continued existence: he writes. “Tea, coffee, tobacco, opium and the betel nut are statistically among the more conspicuous of such materials...all of them contain substances of considerable pharmacologic potency if exhibited in appropriate dosage”. Pearl states that even with heavier usage of these products that the long-term negative effects of usage does not outweigh the benefits of use “in the opinion of vast number of human beings”.

• “Purely hedonistic elements in behavior, which are present in lower animals as well as in man, have a real importance...there are undoubtedly great numbers of human beings who would continue the habitual use of a particular material they liked, even though it were absolutely and beyond any question or argument proved to be somewhat deleterious to them”.

He doesn't say anything about people being addicted to any of these things.

In the next page or so he describes the study and the numbers (though we don't learn in this paper what the difference is between his “heavy” and “moderate” smoker categories), establishing with a strongly accusatory graph that there is a bulbous result in shortened lifespan for heavy smokers aged 30-70-ish.

He concludes in this short two-page paper that after the subjects in his study turned 70 that “individuals in the damaged groups...are such tough and resistant specimens that thereafter tobacco does them no further measurable harm as a group”. There's nothing here about the “why” or “how” of death, just that it occurs.

So there it is, the first measure of tobacco use and shortened lifespan. This was the first step in the long climb to the very public introduction of the killing nature of the tobacco habit, which entered its modern phase in 1964 after considerable battles with those in the business of producing the deathsticks.

1964 was 55 years ago and fortunately great strides in research and education have been made. The tobacco menace has been extinguished now that we've learned beyond all question the great horrors it brings, everyone worldwide knowing that smoking tobacco will kill you, and in very nasty ways. Humans have learned something, and this is one extremely preventable mode of death that we've managed to eliminate.

Oh, wait a minute...

Notes:

1. Raymond Pearl, "Tobacco Smoking and Longevity",  Science, vol 87, no. 2253, March 4, 1938, pp 216-217.