Medicine: Bogey's End

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Whether smoking injures the heart, liver or lungs, doctors do not know. Only direct, physiological result of smoking is the contraction of tiny blood vessels of the skin. This circulatory phenomenon has long been considered a direct result of nicotine. But last week at Toronto, Drs. Israel Shulman and Michael G. Mulinos of Columbia apparently laid Bogey Nicotine in his grave when they told members of the American Physiological Society that smoking did no more or no less harm to human beings than deep breathing.

The scientists gave 17 men standard and denicotinized cigarets to smoke. Vasoconstriction (contraction of blood vessels) was the same in the case of either type. The scientists then asked the subjects to take ten deep breaths. To their surprise, they found "no difference in the degree of vasoconstriction between ten deep breaths of air and the inhalations of cigaret smoke."

"Nicotine," concluded the scientists, "is a minor factor [on vasoconstriction]. . Irritation and especially the deep breathing are responsible for peripheral [skin] vasoconstriction from smoking."