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199 Notes and News ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF TOBACCO ADDICTION AT a meeting of the Society for the Study of Addiction on Jan. 20 Mr. ZACHARY COPE, F.R.C.S., said that tobacco had already achieved an economic status in 1492, when Columbus discovered it in use among the American Indians. The earliest reference to it mentioned the leaves as being bartered for other commodities. By 1523 a tobacco trade had been established in Portugal. Even the calumet, or pipe of peace, was of economic and political importance. The area in which the red stone was mined for making these pipes became sacred, to enable the manufacture of pipes to continue during war, and afforded sanctuary to refugees. Smoking had become so well established in England by 1560 (nearly all the tobacco coming from the West Indies through Spain) that Queen Elizabeth was able to put a duty of 2d. on each lb. Virginia was first successfully colonised in 1607. No money was allowed to be exported from England thither ; so the colonists adopted the Indian practice of using tobacco as currency. At first they acquired the tobacco from the Indians, but John Rolfe, who married Pocahontas, started to grow his own tobacco ; and soon all the colonists were doing so (manu- facturing their own money) to such an extent that a law was passed that no-one should plant tobacco before he had planted 2 acres of corn. By 1639 Virginia produced 1,500,000 lb. of tobacco annually. This industry had inevitable repercussions on the labour market. When the tobacco farms grew too large for the colonists to manage, they imported indentured apprentices from England ; but this made them have to change each employee every five years, which was inconvenient. So black slaves were imported from West Africa, and the tobacco and slave trades rose and flourished together. About 1800 the cotton trade joined these two and detracted somewhat from the tobacco trade. But in 1849 was discovered the light yellow leaf which became so popular that tobacco production was doubled in ten years, becoming indeed of really tremendous economic importance. Next the American civil war crippled the industry by destroying the tobacco farms and liberating the slaves ; and recovery was slow. Finally came the war of 1939-45, during which the yearly output of tobacco rose from .1,400,000,000 lb. to 2,300.000,000 lb. So much for Virginia. What about England ? It is said that as early as 1614 there were 7000 shops in London at which tobacco could be bought. King James, author of the famous Counterblast to Tobacco, put on an additional tax of 6s. 8d. a lb. This led the English to emulate John Rolfe and grow their own tobacco, especially in Gloucestershire. Naturally this interfered with the Virginian trade, and the planters protested that their livelihood was being taken from them. So tobacco-growing was banned in England. Troops were used to ferret out the plantations, and a special officer was appointed to suppress them. But it took seventy years to stamp out the practice. The trade with Virginia was used / as a cradle for the Royal Navy. By the Navigation Act of 1651 all goods from the colony had to be shipped in either English or colonial ships. A few years later there were 100 vessels engaged in this trade : and on one occasion 300 vessels sailed with the year’s crop of tobacco. At present the annual consumption of tobacco is 5 lb. per caput in the United Kingdom, and 7 lb. in the U.S.A. The tax of 54s. 10d. a lb. in the U.K. now represents an annual tax of £10 per caput of the entire population, or t20 per caput of all adults. The world’s production of tobacco is now 7,000,000,000 lb., or 2 lb. per caput of its population. And the wheel has come full circle as regards the use of tobacco as currency, for everyone knows that 200 cigarettes were equiva- lent to £30-50 in occupied Germany after the war. The difference between the cost price (1.9. 2d. a lb.) of tobacco in the U.S.A. and the selling price (£3 a lb.) in the U.K. is an enormous incentive to smuggling. Mr. Cope did not touch on the allied economics of the timber trade (matches) or of the manufacture of pipes, pouches, cigarette boxes and cases, lighters and the supply of petrol and- flints for them, and advertising. He stated, however, that he had been unable to find a single book, pamphlet, or even paper on the economics of tobacco in the large library of the London School of Economics. It therefore appears that Mr. Cope has launched this subject. FREDERICK BANTING FROM his earliest years Frederick Banting 1 seems to have been something of an enfant terrible, but, thanks perhaps to his Scottish mother and his austere Methodist father, he retained a high ethical code through all the vicissitudes of his too short life. ’His decision to renounce a clerical career and to take up medicine was the turning-point of that life. He was built for physical endurance, or he could not have accom- plished what he did. He was not an easy man to know or to work with, but his relationship with Dr. Best, his junior collaborator in the discovery of insulin, was a happy example of his loyalty to colleagues. He could, on the other hand, be a " good hater," and both sensitive and suspicious. Impatient by temperament, he had a dogged perseverance which was the salvation of his work ; but he was handicapped by lack of training in research, and he could not have made a practical and usable insulin extract without assistance. Fortunately, his faith was unshakable, and in spite of frustration, failures, and delays he pressed on to a success which meant the saving of countless lives. His work on insulin was not complete when war broke out in 1914 and he went away to serve in the Canadian army. He was seriously wounded and it was long before he was persuaded to return to his peace-time task. In 1921 he achieved his aim, and gave insulin to the world. Afterwards he spent some time travelling, and Dr. Stevenson furnishes many happy details of these journeys. Fame had now come and honours were heaped on him by learned societies of many countries. But the storm clouds were again gathering in Europe and in the recent war he worked strenu- ously in the interests of aviation and met his death on an experimental journey in the snowy wastes of Newfoundland. Dr. Stevenson is to he congratulated on a vivid and intimate picture of Banting’s life and work. ‘ A NEW JOURNAL FOR CYPRUS IF Hippocrates could glance through the first issue of the Cyprus Medical Journal he would find plenty to interest him, for many of the articles are printed in Greek, and others are duplicated in Greek and English. The journal has been founded, as Dr. Horace Shelley explains in his first editorial, to supply the medical profession in Cyprus with articles on all branches of their work, and to encourage experienced -.doctors to put their knowledge on paper for the benefit of others. Non-political and non-partisan, the new journal will publish no articles likely to cause political discussion ; but medical articles in Greek, Turkish, or English are invited : " If you have data and material which might prove of value to your colleagues ; if you have silently been pursuing some investigation or research ; if you have a record of some interesting disease, permit your enthusiasm to have play." The first issue includes a note by Sir Arthur Hall on the parkinsonian syndrome seen after epidemic encephalitis lethargica ; and this is given both in English and in Greek. Most of the articles are provided with summaries in the other language. University of Oxford Dr. A. D. Gardner has been appointed regius professor of medicine in succession to Dr. Arthur Ellis, who retires at the end of July. Dr. Gardner, who is 63 years of age, was educated at Oxford University and St. Thomas’s Hospital. He graduated B.M. in 1911, and the following year he took his F.R.c.s. From 1914 to 1917 he held a Radcliffe travelling fellowship and he was awarded the Radcliffe prize for medical research in 1923. Dr. Gardner held the posts of demonstrator in morbid anatomy and research assistant at Thomas’s. In 1915 he was appointed bacteriologist in charge of the M.R.C. Standards Laboratory at Oxford, later becoming director. In 1936 he was elected reader in bacteriology in the university with the personal title of professor, and he is a fellow of University College, Oxford. He is the author of Bacteriology for lledical Students and of Microbes and Ultramicrobes, and in 1929 he contributed the section on the dysentery group of bacilli to the M.R.C. System of Bacteriology. In 1932 he described the cough- droplet method of early diagnosis of whooping-cough, and during the late war, with Chain and Florey, he was a member of the Oxford team working on penicillin as a therapeutic agent. He has also made a special study of leptospirosis, on which he has published important papers. He is a member of the Army Pathology Advisory Committee and of the Oxford regional hospital board. King’s College Hospital On Feb. 1 Mr. Harold Edwards will succeed Mr. Terence Cawthorne as dean of the medical school. 1. Sir Frederick Banting. By LLOYD STEVENSON, M.D. London: Heinemann Medical Books. 1947. Pp. 446. 25s.
