The examples of old advertisements depict physicians making health claims that were patently false--for example that there weren't cases of throat irritation from cigarette smoking. As early as the 1920's British and American epidemiological journals were publishing sharp rises in incidence of throat and upper bronchial irritation statistically among smokers.
And the anti-anxiety claims are representative of classic short-term reasoning fallacies. Medical scientist were also publishing papers showing the supposed calming effects of smoking were very short-lived, dissipating quickly once the active compounds worked through users' systems--on the order of minutes to an hour--compelling many to use more and more cigarettes until the anti-anxiety intervention blossomed for most into an addiction.
Other medical evidence was published as early as the '30's about the association between smoking and hypertension, peripheral neuropathy, and, notably, sexual dysfunction (especially in men). Scientists knew cigarettes only appeared to relax people but that the physiological evidence was to the contrary (increased BP, constriction of blood vessels, capillary permeability changes).
Last, smoking for decades before the US government mandated a warning label was also scientifically linked to other disease prevalence besides cancer. Yet doctors were still advising patients to smoke because many of them were just as duped as the general public by the financial interest groups promoting smoking.
Similarly poor reasoning underlies the psychiatric (and clinical psychological) and psychotropic pharmaceutical industries. It's even worse among these because, unlike with nicotine..., mental health "scholars" don't even know what the physical substrates implicated in their pathology models are. Yet nearly everyone bandies about terms like "mentally ill" and "crazy" and "sick" as if these words corresponded to scientific truths.
Sorry for long reply.
