Tobacco and Mental Efficiency is a 1923 book by University of Wisconsin professor M.V. O’Shea. It was published as part of the work done by The Committee to Study the Tobacco Problem. This committee was formed to seek out the truth about the beneficial effects or dangers of tobacco. The Prefatory Note in the book notes that they are after the actual truth, and that the committee contains both smokers and non-smokers, and people with a variety of opinions. Put simply: “If its (tobacco’s) benefits are greater than its cost, they must be very great indeed. If less, then we ought to know what the loss is.”1

O’Shea begins his book by surveying the literature and opinions of prominent people who are for and against tobacco. He surveyed successful people in a variety of fields and published their anonymous answers about whether they used tobacco and what effects they thought tobacco had on them and their work. It’s a fascinating view into the opinions of the time.

In the second section, O’Shea reviews the school records of superintendents and principals to see how smokers and non-smokers compare. The image below is an example of school data from Superintendent H.D. Hervey of Malden, Massachusetts, published in 1907:

School Performance of Smokers vs. Non-Smokers

In every investigation into school and college data and work performance, smoking was associated with worse output and performance than non-smoking. O’Shea concludes, after reviewing the data of 2,000 students, “smoking exerted a detrimental influence upon the scholarship of a large proportion but not all of the pupils whose records were examined”2 and “It can be seen that tobacco exerts a depressing influence upon school work, the depressing influence increasing according as the amount of tobacco consumed increases.” (M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 157))

The third section of the book is where things get really wild for the modern reader. O’Shea did experiments to determine if tobacco had positive or negative impact on the mental abilities of college students. In order to remove the bias of a person thinking they’re smoking or not, the experimenters devised a fake pipe that would warm up and produce smoke that tasted like tobacco smoke. But because it looked different, subjects had to be blindfolded while they were smoking. It’s worth quoting this section at some length to see how the experiment was done:

“As a control on suggestion through the visual factors, the subject was blindfolded. He was told taht the purpose of the blindfold was to eliminate the visual factors, and to test the saying that blind men rarely enjoy smoking. The device worked out by Dr. Hull to afford the subject all the sensations of smoking but without the use of tobacco consisted of a common pipe, containing an electric heating apparatus in the form of a coil. This was surrounded by asbestos and placed in an aluminum cylinder, which, in turn, was fixed in the bowl of the pipe.

Thus the sensations which the subject derived from the contact of his lips with the stem were the same as those derived from the use of a real pipe. The heating was easily controlled by an electric arrangement, so that the temperature of the air, as drawn through the control pipe, was about the same as that of ordinary smoke. The taste of the air drawn through the control pipe was interpreted by the subject, as a rule, to be the same as the taste of tobacco.”3

Subjects reported that they thought they were smoking. The control worked. So let’s see what data came from their experiments:

  • Pulse rates were slightly higher on days when subjects smoked tobacco vs. days when they used the control pipe4
  • Use of tobacco reduced the steadiness of hands and increased tremor5
  • There was a slight decrease in memory and perception on days when tobacco was used6
  • Some subjects did better performing addition when using tobacco and others did worse7
  • There was a small but negligible gain in reading reaction time when using tobacco8
  • And more – they’re worth the read!

O’Shea’s overall conclusions after experiments were that for adults, “tobacco tends to retard and to disturb intellectual processes, but not in a marked degree”9 and that its effects vary in different people. He was not able to measure things like creativity and judgement, which advocates of tobacco said were improved by its use. He also concluded that, “tobacco is a detriment to scholarship in the high school.”10 As we are all aware by now, children should not use tobacco products.

This book is an interesting dive into the science, attitudes, and norms surrounding tobacco in the early 1920s. It predates the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health that provided overwhelming evidence that tobacco causes significant harm to the body. Any writing on the health effects of tobacco prior to the 1964 report can be fascinating, but should not be taken as the current understanding of tobacco’s health effects.

Tobacco and Mental Efficiency is in the public domain and can be read for free on Google Books.

  1. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. vii [↩]
  2. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 155 [↩]
  3. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pgs. 179 & 180 [↩]
  4. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 193 [↩]
  5. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 196 [↩]
  6. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 207 [↩]
  7. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 211 [↩]
  8. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 214 [↩]
  9. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 220 [↩]
  10. M.V. O’Shea, Tobacco and Mental Efficiency, 1923, pg. 231 [↩]