A rational esthetic case could be made out against certain women smoking. True, the modern woman so sedulously apes the other sex that to deprive her of her cigarette is simply to deprive her gracelessly of her masculinity. We should never do that. But the spectacle of a really pretty, effeminate woman smoking is nevertheless an esthetic affront. Nothing the average man can do could make him look very much worse than he does naturally so even this slight objection does not apply bisexually. But we have wandered, and I am of course at fault, having set out laudably to lead our thought procession. In my search of the scientific literature the nearest thing to an authority I came across was perhaps Sir Humphrey Rolleston, Baronet, K. C. B.; F. R. C. P. and M. D. of Cambridge, England, physician to King George V in his late 1928 illness. He discusses “The Medical Aspects of Tobacco” in such staid British medical journals as _The Lancet_ and _The Practitioner_. He reviews every possible lesion that might spring from tobacco smoking, and they are many--quite as many indeed as may spring from over eating artichokes or drinking three gallons of well-water daily. He sets himself flatly against animal experimentation in this matter because this cannot possibly take idiosyncrasies into account, and reminds us that humans are both highly individualized and exceedingly complex. Rolleston then remarks that cigarettes are less invidious than pipes or cigars because cigarette smoke is more air diluted. He finds a wide diversity of opinion as to the harmfulness of tobacco; he doubts that it ever affects the nervous system greatly and believes that coffee and tea usually produce the heart symptoms attributed to smoking and that a latent venereal disease accounts for much smoker’s cancer. He doubts also that dilation of the esophagus, dilation of the stomach, acid stomach and nervous dyspepsia are often due to tobacco while he commends the mildly laxative properties of a pipe after breakfast. Finally our baronet says, and the medical journal sustains him editorially, that in view of the universality of the habit of tobacco smoking the rarity of the organic lesions that can be traced out as undoubtedly due to that habit, beyond all question, is little less than surprising. This, I should say, is the woodpile Ethiopian. It is one thing for a physician to lean back and say cut down on tobacco, coffee, fried stuff and pastry. It is quite another for him to prove scientifically that these indulgences have undeniably caused the patient’s present low physical estate.