Background The 1939 article “Tobacco consumption and lung carcinoma” by Mueller has been praised for its quality and its originality but is still not available in English. Methods Summary of the 29-page long paper and translation of part of its investigative section. Re-analysis of the clinical and smoking characteristics of the lung cancer cases. Comparison with pre-1945 case–control studies and a similar but prior tobacco and cancer report. Results The article primarily consists of a detailed description of the smoking, clinical and occupational characteristics of 96, mostly dead, lung cancer cases. Occupation and the flu are discussed for the cases only. The paper makes unexplained assumptions about the smoking habits of 20 cases and is silent about the sampling, recruitment and interview modes of the “healthy” subjects, supposed to reflect “normal tobacco consumption.” The dearth of methodological information distinguishes this paper from case–control studies published before 1939. Major selection and differential misclassification cannot be ruled out. Conclusion Access to the 1939 Mueller article is provided for non-German speakers. The quality of the group comparison was modest and it did not add qualitatively new knowledge compared to a report published 8 years earlier.