• Question: Why were cigarettes previously thought to have been healthy? What other examples are there of things people previously thought were healthy but now we know aren't?

    Asked by anon-244767 on 30 Apr 2020.
    • Photo: Olivia Edwards

      Olivia Edwards answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      Great question! It’s hard to understand how things like smoking were ever considered to be good for you, but the main reason why this is was because there was little evidence against it at the time!

      When people are trying to sell a product, they often (especially in the past) would tell people how good it was for you just so they could sell more – even if they had no idea if this was true!
      Cigarette companies used to be extra sneaky and hire physicians (doctors) – or even just actors pretending to be physicians – to promote cigarettes and convince people they were healthy!

      Another reason why it was considered healthy was due to its widespread popularity, and myths that it could do things like cure headaches and even protect you from infection. Some people even used tobacco (the main component of cigarettes) as toothpaste!

      Some other surprising examples include using tapeworms (long worms which can live inside your gut – eek!) as a way for people to lose weight. Definitely not a good idea! But when there are adverts in newspapers promoting them, its harder to ignore!

      In the less distant past, you can see some similar trends still happening today, although perhaps less extreme. For example, there are many foods and drinks which are considered to be healthy e.g. fruit juice, but actually are extremely high in sugar, and we are told to drink in smaller amounts now. 🙂

    • Photo: Alex Holmes

      Alex Holmes answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      This is such an interesting question! Ages and ages ago when these products were first being made and sold to people there wasn’t much understanding of how the products worked, there wasn’t official safety testing and there weren’t the kind of laws that stop people from lying in adverts that there are now. So if you wanted to get people to want to buy your product you could say all sorts of positive sounding things, even if there wasn’t any evidence behind it.

      This mostly started with “health tonics” that were basically mixtures of all sorts of chemicals and alcohols and ingredients that could “cure” anything from coughs to babies crying to illnesses. Mostly these tonics didn’t do these jobs at all, but you just needed to tell people they did and people would buy it. Have you heard of the placebo effect? This is where people are told a medicine or tablet will work so when they take it they feel the effect even though the medicine or tablet is a fake – it’s often used when we test the safety of medicines. So potentially some of these people experienced the placebo effect and then would tell their friends this tonic actually worked.

      What other examples are there? Well here’s some interesting ones: the drug cocaine was originally believed to be an addiction free and safe alternative to opium, radium (a radioactive compound) was put in toothpastes, there’s lots of controversy over sugar vs fat causing obesity and which is “bad”, thalidomide was a medicine that was thought to help with morning sickness when someone is pregnant but then ended up causing problems to the baby.

      Luckily this happens very rarely now because we have so many tests (called clinical trials) to check that things work and that they’re safe.

    • Photo: Alena Pance

      Alena Pance answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      I don’t know if cigarettes were ever considered healthy, but they certainly became a touch of glamour and sophistication as part of a cosmopolitan image helped along by movies and rapidly spreading among people. Cigarettes became most popular during the wars, when they were sent to the soldiers on the front line. It was very difficult to convince people, even doctors, or the damage caused by cigarettes and the link with lung cancer and the tobacco companies invested huge sums of money to campain against the health warnings about cigarettes. But medical research and experimental evidence won in the end, saving lives by preventing lung cancer.

      There are many examples of things that are really dangerous but were thought healthy at the time of their discovery. In many cases this is related to the mysterious or fascinating properties of the compounds. Mercury for example, with its shiny sleakiness, was used for all sorts of medical applications until it was proven how poisonous it really is. Radium caused a sensation when Marie Sklodowska Curie discovered it because it glows, so it was used in cosmetics as well as all sorts of creams and ointments and also in industry to make paints and clock dials, etc. The danger of this highly radioactive element became evident eventually claiming the live of Marie Curie herself, who died of cancer.

      The lesson might be ‘ beware of novelty, never succumb to fashion and always use common sense’…. well and a bit of knowledge of science and biology that can help understanding whether some of the myths can be true or not also helps enormously!

    • Photo: David Yuan

      David Yuan answered on 30 Apr 2020:

      Yes, people misunderstand things. That’s how we all learn and become smarter. Here is an example. Doctors used to think that bleeding was an extremely useful way to cure many diseases. Now we know that it is absolutely a terrible idea. In some surgeries, doctors have to do the opposite, putting blood into patients in order to save them.

    • Photo: James Beswick

      James Beswick answered on 7 May 2020:

      I’m a bit late to the party on this one – but my favourite example is that cough syrup used to contain ingredients including chloroform, alcohol, cannabis, morphine and… heroin. Clearly now we know how bad an idea this was. Nevertheless, people who drank the cough syrup didn’t complain about their tickly cough anymore!!!

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