September 8: Smoking and Heart Disease

On this date in 1961, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the findings of research by Drs. David M. Spain and Daniel J. Nathan linking heavy smoking to heart disease. In a study of 3,000 men, they found that two-packs-per-day smokers under 51 years old had double the chance of having coronary heart disease than non-smokers their age, and that heavy smokers had a greater chance of suffering heart attacks than light smokers. Only a four-sentence article appeared in the New York Times on page 3. Minnesota would become the first state to ban smoking in public spaces, in 1975. Dr. Spain, who was director of pathology at Brookdale Hospital Center in Brooklyn and clinical professor of pathology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, also performed autopsies on the bodies of Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, two of three civil rights workers whose bodies were found near Philadelphia, Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Dr. Spain concluded that contrary to police reports, Chaney had suffered “an extremely severe beating with either a blunt instrument or a chain” while Schwerner was shot to death. Spain died in 1993 at 79. Dr. Nathan lived until 2006.
“People always come up to me and say that my smoking is bothering them . . .Well, it’s killing me!” —Wendy Liebman