50 Years Ago

The Tobacco Manufacturers' Standing Committee has as a declared aim the assistance of research into questions concerned with the relationship between smoking and health. That this object is being fulfilled is evident from its report for the year ended May 31, 1960, which summarizes investigations carried out during the year under the auspices of the Committee or with its financial support ... Fractions of cigarette smoke condensate prepared in the laboratories of the Committee have been found by several workers to have carcinogenic or tumour-promoting properties, but as the report points out, these results, obtained by application of smoke fractions to animal tissues, are not necessarily reliable guides to the possible response of human lung tissue to tobacco smoke.

From Nature 11 February 1961

100 Years Ago

The terrible intensity of the outbreak of pneumonic plague now raging in Manchuria, and the presence of plague-infested animals within our own borders, have called forth recently a number of communications on plague in the daily press. A special correspondent in The Times, in two well-informed articles ... summarises the situation, and gives an admirable sketch of the principal facts concerning the modes of spread of plague. Dr. L. W. Sambon has also contributed two letters on the subject ... He remarks, for example, that in his belief transmission from man to man is probably more frequent than from rat to man. If Dr. Sambon bases this statement upon personal experience of epidemics of bubonic plague, it must be said that his observations are directly opposed to the experience of many competent plague workers.

From Nature 9 February 1911