SIR: Recently on TV and in the local and national news there has been a lot of information about how tobacco companies knew of the dangers of lung damage, or cancer, by tobacco smoke.
When I was a young man in 1942, we had an employee who died with lung cancer. A Bolton doctor, Dr Reid (he had a surgery on Wigan Road in the 1940s) told my uncle that a lot of people who smoked died with lung cancer, so he obviously knew about this. He was continually on to my uncle to stop smoking, or, as he said: "It will kill you in the end, Teddy".
Now considering that my uncle was being informed of this in 1942, it must have meant that Dr Reid was quite a smart doctor and had 'been putting two and two together for some time.
Thomas A Melia
Danesbury Road, Bolton
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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