Medicine: Pick-Me-Up

"Advertising supplies essential information," said the Mayor of New York last week to the National Advertising Federation. No adman who heard the statement was more pleased than swart, cigaret-smoking William Esty whose Manhattan agency prepares and places the advertising for Camel cigarets. Currently the "essential information" Mr. Esty is using to promote the sale of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s prime product is the untraditional statement that smoking is healthy.

"When you've used up your energy at work or play," read the Esty advertisements, "smoke a Camel and notice how soon you feel your flow of natural energy snap back ... a healthful and delightful release of natural, vibrant energy. . . . Basic discovery from a famous research laboratory."

If Camel advertising tells the truth, then smoking a cigaret is not the equivalent of driving a nail into one's coffin. Nor is cigaret smoking the deadly sin which many a smoker still secretly feels it to be.

Because some readers doubted the unorthodox claims of the Camel advertisement R. J. Reynolds Co. ordered a form answer prepared for rebuttal and explanation. Without telling skeptics more than it thought they should know, the company letter read as follows:

"The best scientific index of a person's energy, at any given time, is an analysis of the blood sugar concentration. . . . As far back as 1929, two eminent scientists in Sweden began a series of studies which have thrown new light on our knowledge of cigarets. They found, after experimenting with Camel cigarets over a considerable period of time, that the smoking of a Camel releases part of the sugar stored in the liver and muscles into the blood and the blood sugar concentration begins to rise rapidly, an average of 15 minutes after smoking. This effect continues for approximately half an hour, when the percentage of blood sugar again goes back to its previous level. However, the smoking of another Camel will again increase the blood sugar concentration. . . .

". . . The work of these Swedish investigators was little known in this country until precisely the same findings were unearthed by two eminent physiologists in a leading American university. . . . They pointed out that the effect from the smoke was not only the same as eating in regard to increase of blood sugar, but also that, the symptoms of a low sugar concentration, fatigue and irritability, were temporarily relieved. . . . This 'lift' can be enjoyed as often as desired. . . ."

The "two eminent scientists in Sweden" referred to by the Reynolds Co. were Erik Lundberg and Stina Thyselius-Lundberg, medical experimentalists of the Royal Caroline Medico-Surgical Institute in Stockholm. They wanted to know whether a diabetic might smoke, and, if so, how much. In the experiments on healthy and diabetic subjects, they used Camel cigarets. As a scientific "control" the Lundbergs also used German denicotinized cigar-cigarets called Bad Toltz. Nicotine either in smoke or as a straight drug, as the Lundbergs found and other investigators already knew, stimulated the adrenal glands. The stimulated adrenals exuded adrenaline which released sugar, which in turn was burned in the form of additional energy.