The Truth About the Tobacco Habit

In 1929, the link between smoking and disease had not yet been scientifically proven. T. Swann Harding wrote this book convinced he was debunking a moral panic. The result is a time capsule of a moment when tobacco's dangers were still genuinely contested, full of sardonic attacks on anti-smoking 'fanatics' and physician anecdotes about patients blamed for ailments that had nothing to do with cigarettes. Harding's tone is bemused and breezy, less a serious medical treatise than a contrarian's entertainment, arguing that much of what passes for anti-tobacco science is anecdote dressed up as evidence. Reading it now feels like watching someone argue passionately about something history has since settled definitively. The discomfort of the reader who knows what Harding couldn't makes this more than a period piece. It's a window into how confidence and certainty can age very poorly, and a reminder that 'the truth' about anything is always situated in a moment.