“Among the men addicted to cigarettes are to be found those who detest it the most…” Sacramento Union, 1895

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According to the Sacramento Union on Feb. 6, 1896, some of the best physicians in New York were warning that “the boy who became a confirmed cigarette smoker at age of ten was reasonably sure to have bad health and a shortened life.”

Cigarette smoke, doctors explained, left a deposit of nicotine, volatile oil of tobacco and oil of paper on the lung.  That same toxic deposit was then taken up by the circulation and distributed through the body, where it “inevitably befouls the blood, weakens the circulation, impairs the digestion, stunts the growth and brings on a condition of general ill-health.” The mind, experts added, was just as injured as the body in the process.

These stark warnings were believed by at least U.S. 25,000 school-boys who joined the Anti-cigarette League formed in 1894 *. These boys signed a pledge promising to abstain from smoking until they were 21 years old.

Unfortunately, the movement to curb smoking was, as a whole, unsuccessful.

*Note: Wikipedia credits Lucy Page Gaston for launching the Anti-Cigarette League of America in 1899 but the movement was going strong by 1894.