Concern about the health effects of tobacco has a long history. As early as 1604 James I wrote A Counterblaste to Tobacco, in which he said that tobacco users were "harming your selves both in persons and goods" ...
Gideon Lincecum, an American naturalist and practitioner of botanical medicine, wrote in the early 19th century on tobacco: "This poisonous plant has been used a great deal as a medicine by the old school faculty, and thousands have been slain by it. ... It is a very dangerous article, and use it as you will, it always diminishes the vital energies in exact proportion to the quantity used - it may be slowly, but it is very sure."[23]
In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking.[24] In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published a formal statistical evidence of a lung cancer-tobacco link, based on a study showing that lung cancer sufferers were likely to be smokers.[25] Lickint also argued that tobacco use was the best way to explain the fact that lung cancer struck men four or five times more often than women (since women smoked much less).[25]
Prior to World War I, lung cancer was considered to be a rare disease, which most physicians would never see during their career.[26][27] With the postwar rise in popularity of cigarette smoking, however, came an epidemic of lung cancer.
