Studies on Cigarette Smoke Irritation. II. The Role of Nicotine

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Abstract
Carefully measured amounts of smoke from 5 lots of tobacco ranging from 0.5-2.62% in nicotine content were tested for their edema producing effect on the eye of rabbits. The amt. of edema produced was relatively constant, and independent of the amount of nicotine in the tobacco. Nicotine alkaloid, when dropped into the eye, failed to produce edema. The fact that nicotine does produce irritation was shown by blind fold test in which the avg. smoker had no difficulty in arranging the 5 lots of tobacco in order of increased nicotine content on the basis of increasing irritation to the smoker. It may be that nicotine tends to inhibit its own production of edema.

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