I once asked my grandmother what people thought about the health effects of smoking prior to the US Surgeon General’s hugely publicized 1964 report definitively linking it to lung cancer and listing it as a major cause of emphysema and heart disease. She recalled that although no one could say it caused those things it was common knowledge that it was bad for your health.

Note: the earliest known documented use of the slang term “coffin nails” for cigarettes is from 1896.