Smoking

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31114, 18 July 1966, Page 10

Smoking

Sir, —In the British Medical Journal of May 21, 1966, Dr. J. G. Scadding, M.D., F.R.C.P., Professor of Medicine, Institute of Diseases of the Chest, Brompton Hospital, London, states on Page 1283: “In conclusion it should be emphasised that chronic bronchitis is largely a preventable disease. If the inhabitants of this country could be persuaded to refrain from the self-damaging and anti-social habit of cigarette-smoking, and to bring such pressure to bear on their legislators and those responsible for implementing legislation that they breathed harmless air, the problem of chronic bronchitis would diminish greatly, perhaps almost to vanishing point.” In my opinion, the time has arrived to tell the people that, in the main, both chronic bronchitis and cancer of the lung are self-inflicted, Also, the relationship between cigarette-smoking and some abnormalities of the heart and blood-vessels is too common to be just coincidental.— Yours, etc., GENERAL PRACTITIONER. July 17, 1966.