As Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week just ended yesterday, I am a little late to the party. However, while I was looking up information about smoking, I visited their website to discover an eye-opening section profiling historical and famous people throughout history who suffered from cancer as a result of smoking. Sigmund Freud, considered by many to be the most important historical figure in the areas of psychology and psychiatry for his theories on the subconscious, was so addicted to nicotine, that he hid a cancerous growth in his mouth for years because he did not want to be admonished for his smoking habit.

In the few times Freud did manage to quit smoking, he wrote to a friend, "I have not smoked for seven weeks since the day of your injunction. At first I felt, as expected, outrageously bad ... with mild depression, as well as the horrible misery of abstinence. These wore off but left me completely incapable of working, a beaten man. After seven weeks I began smoking again ... Since the first few cigars, I was able to work and was the master of my mood; before that life was unbearable." Despite experiencing the last fifteen years of his life as a series of painfully dangerous surgeries, and the replacement of most of his jaw, Freud smoked until the day of his death.

Producer and film director Bruce Paltrow, husband to actress Blythe Danner, and father to actress Gwyneth Paltrow, is said to have been much beloved by his family and friends. In 1999, Paltrow was diagnosed with throat cancer. Two years later, while celebrating his daughter's birthday with her in Rome,  he lost his life to cancer. He is said to have suffered greatly, and could not swallow, as a result of radiation treatment. Danner shared, "He became a secret advisor to other cancer sufferers in the months before he lost his life. He would speak to patients across the country about what to expect. He became a vary good campaigner for stopping smoking. When he saw friends smoking, he would show them his big scar and say --you want to look like this in 20 years?"  Nicotine is a powerful drug, with few drugs having the same addictive effects on the user as nicotine. The best advice and education that can be given is to never start smoking -- and if you do smoke -- try your best to quit.

Other stories of famous people featured on the foundation website are: Jack Klugman, Aaron Spelling, Alan King, Ben Gazarra, Humphrey Bogart, George Harrison, Eddie Van Halen, Babe Ruth and Ulysses S. Grant -- and more.