Assuring us that there is 'steadily accumulating evidence to show
that smoking greatly increases the risk of developing lung cancer,' the British Medical Journal now cheerfully adds that there is 'also a clear-cut relationship between cigarette smoking and the death rate from disease of the coronary arteries.' It is astonishing that in a leading article on this subject the BMJ does not even mention the arguments build- ing up against the theory that smoking causes lung cancer— arguments even more applicable in the case of diseases of the heart. True, an admission is made that smoking and disease might conceivably both be the product of a third and common cause. But the article does not state the strong grounds for belief that the third and common cause is the state of man's mind. Psychiatry is not yet far enough advanced to be able to describe the intIrplay of mind and body in concrete com- prehensible terms; but the results of even the little research that has been done reveal clearly the remarkable influence of the unconscious mind on the course of illness. For the BMJ to refute the psychiatrists' arguments on this subject would have been legitimate; for it to ignore them is unaccountable.
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