Did you know that RCSI Library holds over one hundred and fifty years of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in its archives? One hundred and sixty four to be precise; with holdings from 1853 to the present day. Early BMJ Volumes at RCSI Library As you would expect a number of groundbreaking articles have been published in the journal. In this post, RCSI Heritage Collections takes a look at a series of seminal articles published in the BMJ which helped demonstrate the link between tobacco consumption and lung cancer. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was a massive increase in the consumption of tobacco thanks largely to modern manufacturing methods which enabled their mass production [1] . At the same time there was a sharp rise in Lung Cancer – some suspected this was a result of increased tobacco consumption while others believed it was due to improved diagnosis or air pollution [2] . A major milestone in the linking of smoking and lung cancer was the publication