Smoking and the Emphysema Patient

Abstract

"Suppose that an indvidual does not inhale, and that little or no smoke enters the lungs. What then is the harm of cigaret smoking to patients with pulmonary emphysema and other diseases that have been ascribed to absorption of nicotine, carbon monoxide, and tars?" So asked Dr. Alvin Barach of New York in a disgression from his subject of pulmonary emphysema therapy, during a talk before the American College of Chest Physicians in Atlantic City. "It seems to me," he added, "that methods of nonirritant smoking deserve study." Barach explained his nonirritant technique thus: The patient draws a puff of smoke into the mouth, closes the lips, inhales deeply through the nose, and finally expels the smoke retained in the mouth, along with the air previously inhaled, from the mouth. The technique, he said, "provides considerable satisfaction and is more esthetic in appearance than the "usual" method of drawing the