Evolution of knowledge of the smoking epidemic

Abstract

Abstract The use of tobacco for pleasure was discouraged by Church and State and it was not until the end of the sixteenth century that it came to be smoked widely in Europe, at first in pipes in Britain, where it was popularized by Sir Walter Raleigh. Here it became so common that by 1614 there are estimated to have been some 7000 retail outlets in London alone (Laufer 1924). Attempts to ban its use for recreational purposes were made in Austria, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, India, and Japan, but prohibition was invariably flouted and control by taxation came to be preferred. This eventually proved to be such an important source of revenue that, in 1851, Cardinal Antonelli, Secretary to the Papal States, ordered that the dissemination of anti-tobacco literature was to be punished by imprisonment (Corti 1931).