Adapted from Wikipedia
Buerger's disease was first reported by Felix von Winiwarter in 1879 in Austria. It wasn't until 1908 that the disease was given its first accurate pathological description, by Leo Buerger at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Buerger called it "presenile spontaneous gangrene" after studying amputations in 11 patients.
It is strongly associated with use of tobacco products, primarily from smoking.
As to the structure of cigarette at that time, tobacco was simply wrapped by a piece of paper.
In 1925, inventor Boris Aivaz patented the process of making a cigarette filter from crepe paper. Aivaz produced the first cigarette filter from 1927, but uptake was low due to a lack of the machinery required to produce cigarettes with the filtered tip.
From 1935, a British company began to develop a machine that made cigarettes incorporating the tipped filter. Since filtered cigarettes were considered "safer", by the 1960s, they dominated the market.