Eisenhower's Ability to "Sneer" a Powerful Motivator

By the time Dwight David Eisenhower was first elected president in 1952, he was already 62 years old. Despite this, he had had a relatively unremarkable health history. A 1923 appendectomy left him with a predilection to develop lesions between the lining of the abdominal cavity and the scar. In 1949, his doctor told him to cut down on his four-pack-a-day smoking habit. Eisenhower, after just a few days of limiting his cigarettes, quit cold turkey and never smoked again. He attributed his suc...

 The Link Between Smoking and Cancer

The risk of developing carcinoma of the lung increases steadily as the amount smoked increases. If the risk among non-smokers is taken as unity and the resulting ratios in the three age groups in which a large number of patients were interviewed (ages 45 to 74) are averaged, the relative risks become 6, 19, 26, 49, and 65 when the number of cigarettes smoked a day are 3, 10, 20, 35, and, say, 60—that is, the mid-points of each smoking group. In other words, on the admittedly speculative ass...

 Eisenhower and the Ability to Snear

While he was at Key West, Eisenhower had been told by [his doctor] that he would have to cut down from four packs of cigarettes per day to one. After a few days of limiting his smoking, Eisenhower decided that counting cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all, and he quit. He never had another cigarette in his life, a fact that amazed the gang, his other friends, the reporters who covered his activities, and the public. Eisenhower was frequently asked how he did it; he replied that it ...