Welcome to a virtual tour of the historical collections of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Today we are featuring materials exploring research and education about tobacco.
These collections document how people have used, perceived, studied, and managed tobacco. They document the research and recommendations of scientists, medical professionals, and public health officials about smoking and tobacco use. These collections also reveal stories about personal responsibility and the intersection of individual and public health.
NLM staff have selected these highlights from the collections for you to explore. We welcome questions! Use the comment feature below to share your thoughts.
NLM Digital Collections is the National Library of Medicine's free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, and still and moving images.
Images from the History of Medicine (IHM), within NLM Digital Collections, is a digitized set of historical images selected from the collection. Here are a few images related to tobacco and health:
Explore tobacco-related images in NLM Digital Collections under these search terms:
Smoking| Smoking Prevention| Tobacco Industry| Tobacco Smoke Pollution
You can also explore public domain images from the NLM prints and photographs collection on Flickr.
The National Library of Medicine has digitized many books containing a wide variety of historical information about tobacco, from cultivation to public health policy.
The moving image collection contains numerous titles produced in the 1960s, as awareness of tobacco's impact grew. One film notable for its mixing of celebrity with public health and science, with a dose of teenage camp thrown in, is Getting Through (1967). The film opens with Burt Lancaster, a widely known actor of the era, using a rope to scale a rock face. He's on the set of his latest movie, and the action and soundtrack are dramatic. Once off set, Lancaster takes up a different topic: smoking. He visits a coal mine and hears from a doctor there, then talks with Surgeon General Luther Terry about the 1964 government report that definitively linked cigarette smoking and tobacco to cancer. Lancaster and Terry discuss how the report was developed and the information it contains. The message: public health is serious, and serious people are working to protect it. Their incontrovertible conclusion: tobacco and smoking are dangerous. "It's written in a flat federal way, but still it's a shock to read," says Lancaster.
Other films in the collection related to tobacco and health include:
This group of materials consists of digitized archive documents and videos created by NLM, such as technical notes, bibliographies, reports, and lectures. NLM has an extensive collection of publications and productions on the topic of tobacco.
The National Library of Medicine curates stories about the social and cultural history of science and medicine that enhance awareness of and appreciation for the collections and health information resources of the National Library of Medicine. This work encourages enthusiasm for history and nurtures young professionals in the fields of history, the health professions, and biomedical sciences.
Explore scholarship at NLM around the history of medical understandings of tobacco.
Pick Your Poison: Intoxicating Pleasures & Medical Prescriptions -- Throughout the history of America, people have used mind altering drugs, like tobacco. While some of those drugs are socially acceptable, others are outlawed because of their toxic, and intoxicating, characteristics. These classifications have shifted at different times in history, and will continue to change. Pick Your Poison: Intoxicating Pleasures and Medical Prescriptions explores the factors that have shaped the changing definitions of some of our most potent drugs, including a section on tobacco.
Visual Culture and Public Health -- Public health has a long and distinguished visual record. From seventeenth-century engravings to the latest digital images, visual representations have played a critical role in educating the public about modern health crises. But what purposes do these images serve beyond their immediate role in disease prevention and health education? What do they tell us about the history of health care, or attitudes toward our bodies, or the world that we live in? This collection includes a section dedicated to the history of anti-smoking campaigns.
Reports of the Surgeon General -- In a health care system chiefly directed towards treating disease and surgical intervention, the Surgeon General has pursued a complementary strategy: disease prevention and health promotion. Appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, the Surgeon General -- whose title means chief surgeon -- is the federal government's principal spokesperson on matters of public health. This collection includes a section dedicated to the Surgeon General's 1964 Report on Smoking and Health.
Finding aids are the main access point and research support tool provided for the Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Prints and Photographs, and Films and Videos collections. These aids offer detailed descriptions of large aggregations of materials. Many of the collections contain content related to surgery, education, research, policy, and advocacy around matters of tobacco including:
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health -- both globally and personally. The PubMed database contains more than 35 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here are some search topics related to tobacco and health:
MedlinePlus is a health information portal from NLM, that provides access to current, accurate health information and references from trusted sources about a wide array of health topics, including:
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the lead federal agency supporting scientific research on drug use and addiction -- including smoking. NIDA's mission is to advance science on drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual and public health through strategically supporting and conducting basic, clinical, and epidemiological research on drug use and ensuring the effective translation, implementation, and dissemination of scientific research findings.
Read the NIDA Research Report on Tobacco, Nicotine, and E-Cigarettes
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) provides global leadership for a research, training, and education program to promote the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, and blood disorders -- including disorders related to the consumption of tobacco products -- and to enhance the health of all individuals so that they can live longer and more fulfilling lives.
Explore the NHLBI Health Topic Smoking and Your Heart
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the federal government's principal agency for cancer research. As the single largest funder of cancer research in the world, NCI manages a broad range of scientific, training, and information dissemination activities that reach across the entire country, meeting the needs of all demographics and treating all forms of cancer -- including those caused by tobacco use.
Explore the NCI resource Smokefree.gov