Thursday, January 27, 2011

1893 Handsome Gift

Oh, the things I've come across while cataloguing the microfilm digital pictures I've taken of various issues of the local papers for Fowlerville . . . here's an interesting one from 1893:

An Iowa youth smoked a thousand dozen of a popular brand of cigarettes and sent the empty boxes to the manufacturers, having been told he would receive a handsome present in return. This is the reply he received: 'Send us another thousand and we will send you a coffin.'

So, if this is correct, cigarette manufacturers, even as early as 1893, were already pretty certain the health consequences of smoking were dire, at best.

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