Welcome to the book Death in Cellophane (1937), by Charles L. Van Noppen. To go to the "Table of Contents" immediately, click here.
Tobacco pushers and their accessories conceal the breadth of tobacco effects, the enormity of the tobacco holocaust, and the long record of documentation.
The concealment process is called the "tobacco taboo." Other pertinent words are "censorship" and "disinformation."
This site is one in a series of exposés on the subject.
This one has the text of an early exposé (1937) of tobacco dangers. It cites facts you don't normally ever see, due to the "tobacco taboo."
The phrase "tobacco taboo" is the term for the pro-tobacco censorship policy—to not report most facts about tobacco.
As you will see, the information about the danger was already quite extensive by 1937, twenty seven years before the famous 1964 Surgeon General Report. Be prepared.

Death in Cellophane,
by Charles L. Van Noppen
(Greensboro, North Carolina: 1937)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Co-operative Movement6
An Explanation7
The Clarion Call9
An Epitome10
Forward13
An Open Letter17
What Will You Have—Health?19
Moral Sense—Cigarettes20
The Tobacco Habit23
Tobacco Most Widespread27
Is the Cigarette Destroying28
Smoking More Harmful to Women
28
How the Cigarette Affects Schoolboys
31
Poisons Found in a Cigarette
31
Maternal Health and Tobacco33
Literature
36
Individual Cases
37
Group Cases
37
Tobacco Smoke Poisons Air
38
Tobacco Smoke Killed Canary
38
Innocent Children Suffer
38
Your Weakest Link39
How Nicotine Affects the Nerves
40
How Nicotine Affects the Stomach
40
How Nicotine Affects the Heart
41
How Nicotine Affects the Brain and Eye
41
How Nicotine Affects the Liver
42
Do You Become Immune to Nicotine
42
Tobacco Smoke Is Vapor44
Effect Analogous to Narcotic Drugs
44
Analysis of Cigarette Smoke
45
Chained To The Tobacco Habit 46
United States Dispensatory Scores Tobacco
 46
Powerful Poisons of Tobacco
47
Damaged Goods of Tobacco User
48
Frauds Exposed50
They Aid Digestion
50

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They Are Easy on the Throat
50
They Satisfy
50
Does Tobacco Do These Things
50
Twenty Thousand Doctors54
Testimonials Faked
54
Opera Star—Martinelli
55
Tobacco Advertisers Challenged
56
Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Some Senators57
Character Witnesses59
These Endorsed—What Price?
60
Socialites—What Price?
60
These Condemn
61
Have You A Tobacco Heart62
When Catarrh Is Incurable
63
The Overworked Engine64
Testimony of Physicians
65
What Newspapers Report
66
Declining Birth Rate67
American Birth Rate Slides Lower
68
Tobacco's Influence on Birth Rate
68
Tobacco and Prospective Parenthood
68
The Record of Only One State
69
Barren Soil (Poem)
69
Longevity and Tobacco70
If Tombstones Told the Truth72
Soldiers Did Not Demand75
Bitter Regret of Soldier's Mother
75
Tobacco A Problem76
Tobacco Users Refused
77
500,000 Have Cancer78
Cancer—Pleasure—Dope
79
College Diplomas80
Untermeyer and His Children
80
Look Homeward Angels
81
Sexualism and Tobacco
81
The Confessional82
Comparisons and Workers83
What Will Workers Do
83
Public Relations—Reciprocity
84
Insurance—Tobacco
85

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Tobacco Must Go86
Southern Baptist Convention
87
Supreme Court Verdict
87
The Keeley Institute
88
Defending and Excusing
88
A Prophecy89
The Cigarette Treatment91
Expert Opinions93
Discovering A Lunatic (Poem)95
Forest and Other Fires
95
He Smokes (Poem)
96
Her Ash Tray Breath (Poem)97
Why Smoke Anyway97
Death In Cellophane98
The Female of the Species More Deadly99
Bob Hoffman100
153 Billion Cigarettes
101
Impotence—Sterility
101
Behind the Billboards102
Judas Nicotine103
Help Save the Seed Corn104

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[Warn the children! tell them the truths about tobacco.]

TOBACCO MUST GO

Rev. T. J. Ogburn, in his book—"Tobacco Must Go": "There is no other evil on earth like tobacco, so respectable and yet so contemptible; so hated and yet so popular; so despised and yet so feared; so silently condemned and yet so publicly approved in habit and by the silence which gives consent.

"Men smoke not for their health; not for personal cleanliness; not for mental, moral or spiritual improvement; not for industrial efficiency nor business economy; not to recommend themselves; not as an example to women and children; not to distinguish themselves from the lowest moral characters that disgrace humanity; not for the glory of God or the uplift of mankind; not to fit themselves the better for the life to come; not for the comfort of others, not even for their own real pleasure.

"Men smoke for nicotine's effect upon their feelings. Nicotine produces mental or emotional drunkenness. It affects primarily the mental and moral nerve centers and later more unpleasantly the harder muscle cells.

"Man's use of tobacco is a sad perversion of his highest functions to ignoble ends."

It is a nerve enslavement that plays no exceptions and gradually involves the entire human system. Once enslaved, the enslavement is for the rest of life, because few have the will power to quit.

The increasing number of deaths because of heart troubles is largely due to the use of tobacco; likewise the depleted strength more often than not, prevents recovery from the many ills that affect mankind.

Where whiskey is slaying its thousands, nicotine is. slaying its tens of thousands, but by such an indirect way that cancer or lung trouble or stomach trouble or heart trouble or kidney trouble are credited with the demise. A terrible price to pay for a worse than useless habit and vice.

Prof. Irving Fisher: "Tobacco and the Human Body": "We see then that tobacco is injurious to the human body. It injures the heart, it disturbs the blood pressure, it poisons the nerves, it hurts the eyes, it lessens resistance to tuberculosis

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[Millions curse their slavery! Non-smokers have no regrets.]

and other diseases, its use sometimes induces cancer, it often leads to the use of alcohol, it reduces muscular power and accuracy, it impairs working efficiency, earning power and athletic power, it stunts the growth of the young, it probably shortens life, it probably reduces fertility, it probably reduces appreciably the vigor of the offspring of the heavy smoker.

"In short, tobacco acts as a narcotic poison, like opium and like alcohol, though usually in a less degree.

"Because of individual variations, the line separating "excessive" from "moderate" is an elusive boundary, and there is always a tendency toward increasing the use; "moderate" use seldom stays moderate. From every indication, it behooves the man who wishes to keep physically fit to omit tobacco from his daily schedule."

The Southern Baptist Convention—New Orleans, May 14-37: In opposing a resolution against tobacco, one of the young ministers said "Let's stop talking about trivialities."

It is sufficient to say that that young man is still wrapped in the swaddling cloths of infantile imbecility and apparently has not yet learned how to see and how to think, when he speaks of smoking as something "trivial."

The resolution, finally adopted, read:
"It is the sense of the convention that the prevalence of smoking among Christian people, especially among preachers, church leaders and denominational workers, is not only detrimental to the health of those who participate, but is hurtful to the cause of Christ in that it weakens the messages and lowers the influence of those who are charged with the preservation and spread of the gospel."

Supreme Court Verdict

The Supreme Court of Tennessee, in a decision declaring constitutional the law of that State which forbids the sale or giving of cigarettes to minors, among other things, said:
"We think cigarettes are not legitimate articles of commerce, because they are wholly noxious arid deleterious to health. Their use is always harmful, never beneficial. They possess no virtue, but are inherently bad, and bad only. They find no true

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[Warn the children! Tell them the truths about tobacco.]

commendation or merit or usefulness in any sphere. On the contrary, they are widely condemned as pernicious altogether. Beyond question, their every tendency is toward the impairment of physical health and mental vigor."

The Keeley Institute

" . . . Regarding the use of tobacco, we wish to advise that nearly all of our patients are addicted to the use of the cigarette. They are required to give up the use of the cigarette because of the fact that we know it is impossible to obtain results if the patient is allowed to continue the use of the cigarette, and they are advised to keep away from the use of the cigarette after completing the treatment."

Defending and Excusing

"Those who attempt to defend tobacco from the statements of physicians that nicotine in the system brings on a number of diseases, in many instances make some such statement as the following from a tobacco journal: "Surely, if fatalities due to the use of tobacco were as frequent as the enemies of tobacco assume, it would be recorded in the official mortuary records of the great cities, but such is far from the case. Vital statistics will be searched in vain for any such evidence."

"This is dodging the responsibility and the facts. It is hard to believe that an intelligent person would write such a defense with any hope that thinking people would not see the fallacy of it at a glance. Smoking may bring on tuberculosis by the injury done the lungs in inhaling, but when the victim dies, the cause of death is given as 'tuberculosis,' and not what caused the tuberculosis, hence tobacco escapes the blame.

"The same is true of heart trouble, kidney trouble, nervous diseases, hardening of the arteries, and a long train of other diseases, all of which may be brought on by the use of tobacco. And yet, when the end comes, the cause of death is listed according to the disease, and not what caused the disease."

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[In interim, pending completion of this site,
you can obtain this book via your local library.]

Other Books on Tobacco Effects
Here in This Reprint Series
The Mysteries of Tobacco
by Rev. Benjamin I. Lane (1845)
Tobacco: Its History, Nature and Effects
by Dr. Joel Shew (1849)
The Use and Abuse of Tobacco
by Dr. John Lizars (1859)
Tobacco and Its Effects: Report
to the Wisconsin Board of Health
by G. F. Witter, M.D. (1881)
The Use of Tobacco,
by Prof. John I. D. Hinds, Ph.D. (1882)
Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse,
by Rev. John B. Wight (1889)
The Case Against the Little White Slaver,
by Henry Ford (1914)
The Tobacco Taboo,
by Charles M. Fillmore (1930)
What You Should Know About Tobacco,
by Frank L. Wood, M.D. (1944)
Click Here for More Titles

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