PIPES FOR WOMEN.

NZ Truth, Issue 890, 16 December 1922, Page 14

PIPES FOR WOMEN.

At a recent inquest at Marylebone, the medical onlcer who gave evidence said the deceased woman (over sixty years of age) had died of heart failure after a heavy meal, the heart having been weakened by excessive cigarette smoking. The doctor adxied that cheap cigarettes were particularly harmful on account of the - large amount of paper used m their manufacture, and that it was a great pity that women did not take to smoking pipes. There have been hot a few medical men who have been interviewed since that pronouncement, and have agreed with him. They say that physiologically there ls no more rason why women should not smoke than there is why men should not. If they smoke, then pipes are very much better than cigarettes, which are harmful, not so much for the amount of nicotine, but more for the pyroline and 'the practice of inhaling which is almost universal among cigarette smokers. Every year the cases of nervous breakdown attributable to cigarette smoking increase. These cases are almost unknown among pipe Bmokors. One doctor was particularly scathing. He said that pipe smoking was healthy smoking, far more soothing, leading to reflection, decision and calm judgment —I "qualities modern woman lacks and all women stand m need of." There Is no doubt a tendency among women who really And solace m smoking, not the flapper typo who smoke out of bravado, to desert the clgarotte for the pipe, at any rate m the privacy of their home. Many tobacconists aro making: a speciality of supplying the needs of such women, both m the matter of tobacco and also m the matter of pipes, man3 r dainty models of which arc now to be found m West End shops. One cannot predict that women will smoke pipes m public, but then m any case the number of men who do so is lessening now-a-day^. And there can be no reason why they should not enjoy the fireside, the book, the slippers and the pipe any less than their brothers or husbands. — "Truth's" London Correspondent.