2 ms·

It's uninteresting, because dying in a mine was always obviously recognized as harmful, while smoking was not.

dredmorbius 3y ago
Cigarettes (and other forms of tobacco) were commonly referred to as "coffin nails" by the early 20th century, if not well before. Congressional testimony from 1917: <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Committees_on_Cigarette_Evils/jLbOopPpfrsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22coffin+nails%22+(cigarette%7Ccigar)&pg=RA1-PA31&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Committees_on_Ci...> And discussion (and cartoon) from a fictional treatment, also in 1917, The Academy for Princes by Olaf Morgan Norlie: <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Academy_for_Princes/9x8aAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22coffin+nails%22&pg=PA176&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Academy_for_Princes...> There were formal smoking-cessation programmes in, of all places, Germany of the 1930s, on health grounds. Among other distinctive characteristics of the country at the time, it lacked a substantial domestic tobacco industry, or tobacco-growing colonies, to oppose such policies, as was the case in the US and UK well into the 1980s and 1990s. Formal medical epidemiological determination of a link between smoking and specific diseases wouldn't come about until the 1950s or so, but a substantial factor here was simply the development of modern concepts of disease causation and correlative demonstration of these. Common wisdom acknowledged the connection long before then. Google's Ngram viewer shows many instances of "coffin nails", again, commonly associated with cigarettes, dating to the 1820s: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=coffin%20nails&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=coffin%20nails...>
ksaj 3y ago
Likewise, they inhaled zinc powder because they believed it would protect you from the coal particles you inhaled all day every day at the mine.

Cigarettes (and other forms of tobacco) were commonly referred to as "coffin nails" by the early 20th century, if not well before. Congressional testimony from 1917: <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Committees_on_Cigarette_Evils/jLbOopPpfrsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22coffin+nails%22+(cigarette%7Ccigar)&pg=RA1-PA31&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Select_Committees_on_Ci...> And discussion (and cartoon) from a fictional treatment, also in 1917, The Academy for Princes by Olaf Morgan Norlie: <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Academy_for_Princes/9x8aAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22coffin+nails%22&pg=PA176&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Academy_for_Princes...> There were formal smoking-cessation programmes in, of all places, Germany of the 1930s, on health grounds. Among other distinctive characteristics of the country at the time, it lacked a substantial domestic tobacco industry, or tobacco-growing colonies, to oppose such policies, as was the case in the US and UK well into the 1980s and 1990s. Formal medical epidemiological determination of a link between smoking and specific diseases wouldn't come about until the 1950s or so, but a substantial factor here was simply the development of modern concepts of disease causation and correlative demonstration of these. Common wisdom acknowledged the connection long before then. Google's Ngram viewer shows many instances of "coffin nails", again, commonly associated with cigarettes, dating to the 1820s: <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=coffin%20nails&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=coffin%20nails...>

ksaj 3y ago

Likewise, they inhaled zinc powder because they believed it would protect you from the coal particles you inhaled all day every day at the mine.