Do Hobbits get Lung Cancer?

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Tolkien, as an avid pipe-smoker, thought of the habit as a pleasurable pastime, not as a repulsive and immoral means of slowly killing yourself while making everyone in the close proximity suffer horribly too. Apparently and not coincidently Hobbits did likewise.

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Of course he wouldn't think like that - the evidence about the links to smoking and cancer were only starting to emerge in the fifties when the books were out and it wasn't until the late sixties that television advertising was banned in the UK. By which time he may have felt it too late to worry. When Tolkien was a young man tobacco was advertised as having health benefits!

Many many people did smoke in those days so it wasn't really antisocial. I seem to recall that one of the benefits of the Tolkien's house in Branksome was it's veranda where they would smoke companionably of an evening.

My mother gave up smoking around the time Tolkien died and although she happened to be pregnant at the time her reasons were financial rather than medical.