Imatges de pàgina
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reputation has fallen into the other extreme; and that has been rejected as useless, whose powers were not found to be miraculous. But let us rather admit, as a more fair and rational conclusion, that these substances, when they have failed or been injurious, have been applied to unappropriate diseases; that their dose has been either too large or too small; or that there has been some circumstance in the case at their time of exhibition, unpropitious to their use. To ascertain which are the proper cases, what is the proper dose, or which the temporary symptoms that may forbid their use; and how those symptoms are to be removed before they are admissible, becomes the serious duty of the medical practitioner, Neither has it been determined, possibly not much considered, whether, if compounded with each other, in various proportions as well as kinds, a medicine might not be produced, having properties different in degree or quality; and, perhaps, more under controul than either of the separate substances.

These reflections have arisen from reading some observations upon Tobacco in your Journal for November, full of point, and where, possibly, "more is meant than meets the

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But, if I acknowledge the writer's talent, I am not compelled to submit to his conclusion, unless his argument convinces.-He is an enemy to TOBACCO, from having been disappointed, perhaps, in its expected effects, or from some latent prejudice; yet am I not without hope to shew, even to a descendant of Joshua Sylvester, that this plant possesses properties that may be employed with a fair prospect of being successful in the cure of discases.

It has been the fate of the NICOTIANA TABACUM to have credulous and hyperbolical friends; enemies prejudiced, malignant, and unjust. With the one party it was the great Panacea, the curer of every evil, the soother of every care. -With the other, it was a debaser of the human mind, ener vated the body, and was fit only to be used by diabolical

* A book was written by Dr. Giles Everard, (a Dutch Physician, Born at Berg-op-Zoom,) and published in 1583, with the title De herba Panacea, quam alii Tabacum, alii Petum aut Nicotianum vocant, brevis commentariolus, quo admiranda ae prorsus divinæ hujus Peruane stirpis facultates et usus explicantur. Antverpiæ, 16mo. This passed through more than one edition, as will be noticed hereafter; and was formed into an English duodecimo,with the title of Panacea, &c. 1659. This last, phen it has the portrait, in this portrait-mania age, sells for 15s.

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spirits in Pandemonium. Both its friends and enemies were found in every rank of society, from the King to the peasant. Poets, priests, physicians, and moralists, were, by turns, its panegyrists and its defamers.

When the exalted genius of Columbus directed him to a new world, believed, by men of baser intellect, then to have no existence but in his own imagination; the wonders of the vegetable kingdom, both in external form and in peculiar properties, were not the least curious and valuable of his discoveries. The TOBACCO PLANT † grew in Cuba, and must

* That wise monarch, James the Ist, who, gude mon, was hardly quarrelsome on any subject but Tobacco, to which he had a mortal hatred, used to say, in his hours of relaxation, that this plant was the lively image and pattern of hell; (vid. a collection of witty Apothegms, &c. 12mo, 1671) for that it had, by allusion, in it all the parts and vices of the world, whereby hell may be gained: to wit, 1st, it was a smoke ; so are the vanities of this world. 2dly, it delights those who take it; sodo the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave them. 3dly, it maketh men drunken and light in the head; so doth the vanity of the world, men are drunken therewith. 4thly, he that taketh Tobacco saith he cannot leave it, it bewitcheth him; even so the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave them, they are so enchanted for the most part with them. And farther, beside all this: 5thly, it is like hell in the very substance of it, for it is a stinking loathsome thing; and so is hell." This quibbling sophist, concludes with, "Were I to invite the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes; 1st, a pig; 2d, a pole of ling and mustard; 3d, a pipe of Tobacco for digesture." Compared with the royal authour's "COUNTER-BLAST" this is tender mercy.

I am aware an opinion has prevailed, that Tobacco grew in Asia, and was even smoked, long before the discovery of America. Professor Beckmann, of Gottingen, whose laborious researches into every species of literature, but especially those connected with physical science, and the invention of arts, are so well known and appreciated, says, (Introduction to Technology) the celebrated naturalist and traveller, Pallas, informed him, "that in Asia, and especially in China, the use of Tobacco for smoking was more antient than the discovery of the new world. Among the Chinese, and among the Mongul tribes, who had the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking is so universal, and has become so indispensible a luxury; the Tobacco-purse affixed to their belt, so necessary an article of dress; the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have taken the model of theirs, so original; and, lastly, the preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into the pipe, so peculiar; that we cannot possibly derive all this from America by way of Europe; especially as India, where the habit of smoking Tobacco is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China. May we not expect to find traces of this custom, in the first account of the voyages of the Portuguese and Dutch to China?" That celebrated traveller and philosopher ULLOA, observes (Voyage to South America, Vol. I. 139) "that

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have been early known to Columbus and his companions. In 1492, possibly, they were acquainted with it. Four years after this Romanus Pane, a Spanish monk, whom Columbus, on his second departure from America, had left in that country, published the first account of Tobacco,* with which he became acquainted in St. Domingo. But until there is better evidence than at present appears, it must be considered, that this account of Romanus Pane, and his publication on Tobacco, deserves little credit.

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Hernandez de Toledo sent this plant into Spain and Portugal, in 1559, when Jean Nicot,t was ambassador at the court of Lisbon, from Francis the Ild. and he transmitted, or carried, either the seed or the plant, to Catherine de Medicis. It was then considered, as one of the wonders of the new world; a proper present for a Queen; and was helieved to possess extraordinary virtues. This is, proba bly, the first authentic record of the introduction of this potent plant into Europe; a plant which was afterward to be

it is not probable the Europeans learned the use of Tobacco from Ame rica; for as it is very ancient in the Eastern countries, it is natural to suppose, that the knowledge of it came to Europe from those regions, by the means of the intercourse carried on with them by the commercial states of the Mediterranean sea. No where, not even in those parts of America where the Tobacco plant grows wild, is the use of it, and that only for smoking, either general or very frequent." After all, possibly, the Tobacco of Asia, the smoking of which is so antient a custom, is not the Nicotiana Tabacum, but the N. fruticosa, which nearly resembles it, and grows in China and Cochinchina, is cultivated every where in those countries, has its proper vernacular names, and is re garded as indigenous. In 1699, according to the Hortus Kewensis, N. fruticosa was cultivated here by the Duchess of Beaufort. If the practice of smoking Tobacco came from the East into Europe, why is there no account of it before the discovery of America?

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* I acknowledge my ignorance of Romanus Pane, the Spanish monk, and of his account of Tobacco; and am indebted to Schlozeres' Brief zwechsel, for the anecdote. Perhaps some of your learned correspon dents may hunt this first writer on the Tobacco plant from his obscurity. If they are successful, it will show how early after the discovery of America, we became acquainted with this narcotic.

Nicot, whose name is now only preserved from oblivion by hav ing been given to an American weed, was a notary in the town of Nismes, in Languedoc; but having the good fortune to be introduced at Court, he became a favourite with Henry II. and Francis II. He was made a master of Requests, and was ambassador to Portugal, in 1559, 1560, and 1561. He died at Paris in May, 1600. His having first brought Tobacco into France, has occasioned his name to be inserted by Eloy, in the "Dictionnaire Historique de la Medecine."

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come the theme of poets, and the admiration of physicians : to be condemned by popes, and execrated by moralists.

The reputation of Tobacco, from this period, gradually spread throughout the European states. In 1565, Conrad Gesner, the Pliny of Germany, became acquainted with it; and it was found in many gardens. In 1570, according to Lobelius (Hort. Kewensis) it was cultivated in England: though Sir Richard Baker (Chronicle, p. 400. Edit. 1696,) asserts, it was brought hither from the West Indies by Ralph Lane, in the 28th year of Elizabeth, 1586. On this subject, Lobelius is better authority than this credulous chronicler. Baker's account, probably, applies to the smoking of Tobacco, and not to its first introduction. And this is still rendered more likely, by the English having, in 1585, first seen tobacco-pipes made of clay, among the native Indians of Virginia; which was about that time discovered by Richard Greenfield. It appears that the English, soon after this, perhaps in 1586, manufactured the first clay tobaccopipes in Europe. The Dutch, notwithstanding their dull preeminence in the art of using this narcotic, still smoked out of conical tubes, composed of palm leaves plaited together.

It now quickly made its way over the European continent. In 1575, a figure of the plant, given by André Thevet,§ in his Cosmographia, (and which, perhaps, was the first) made it more known, at least to those who entered into the botany of that time. In 1610, smoking tobacco was known and practised at Constantinople. But it seems, there, to have

* Epistola Medicinales, fol. 79, Nov. 5, 1565. He had then only learnt from Thevet, that it was used in America for smoking.

Another account says, that Sir Francis Drake made tobacco known to the English in 1586. Panacea, p. 3.

Clusius says, that the English returning from Virginia brought from thence tobacco-pipes made of clay, and since that time" the use of drinking (smoking) tobacco hath so much prevailed all England over, especially among the courtiers, that they have caused many such pipes to be made to drink tobacco with." Panacea. Clusius had been twice in England, was intimate with Sydney and Drake; and from the latter he procured many materials for his Exotica, printed at Antwerp in 1601. It cannot be doubted therefore, when he speaks of the prevalence of smoking in England, that he gives it on his personal knowledge.

Thevet (who was in that expedition, which, anno 1555, Nicolaus Durandus Villagagnonus made to Brazil) in his book called Antartick France, boasts, that he was the finder, and the first man that brought the seed of Tobacco into old France. Panacea, p.6,

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been considered as a new-fangled and foreign luxury; and something disreputable was attached to this mode of using it.* The progress of the cultivation and use of this plant throughout the German states, and in the Swiss cantons, is minutely traced in the work of Prof. Beckmann, before cited. In 1620, some Englishmen instructed the inhabitants of Zittau to smoke; and in the same year Konigsmann, a merchant, brought the first Tobacco plant from England to Strasburg. Two Jews attempted its cultivation in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, in 1676. In 1677 great quantities were grown in the Palati nate, and in Hessia. Vicarius, an Austrian Physician, is said, in 1689, to have improved the common tobacco-pipe, by adding to it a tube which contained sponge, through which the smoke percolated; and was made grateful by an abstraction of a portion of its calorique, or rendered odoriferous by being impregnated with some perfume in its passage.Smoking was a practice so novel in the canton of Appenzel, in 1653, that children ran after those who used a pipe in the streets. In short, Tobacco excited, wherever it came, the feelings, the passions, and the interests of mankind, in a most extraordinary degree. It gave alarm to both church and state. Religion and morality were thought to be endangered by its use; and the welfare, even the existence of society, was threatened by its cultivation. +

It is related by Beckmann, that a Turk, who had been found smoking, was conducted through the streets of Constantinople, with a pipe ransfixed through his nose. The Turks were late before they learned to cultivate the plant themselves; and continued a long time to pur chase a refuse Tobacco (Mundungus) of the English. Now a very choice and expensive kind (Ellsham) is imported into this country from Turkey.

*Was this Jean Jacques Vicarius, a doctor in philosophy and medicine in the University of Fribourg in the Brisgau, and a Member of the Imperial Academy, (Academia Natura Curiosorum) in 1697, under the academical name, Anaximander, who was also a man of great ingenuity, and the author of several works on medical subjects!

The extent to which the passion for Tobacco went, will afford a reasonable ground for the apprehensions that pressed upon the guardians of religion, morals, and the general welfare of nations. One of its early apologists says, "Seamen will be supplied with it for their long voyages; soldiers cannot want it when they keep guards all night, or are upon other hard duties in cold and tempestuous weather; farmers, ploughmen, porters, and almost all labouring men plead for it, saying they find great refreshment by it, and would as soon part with their necessary food as with Tobacco. The nobility and gentry, who find no fault with it, but that it is too common amongst the vulgar, do ordinarily make it the complement of their entertainments, and oftimes all their entertainment beside is a complement. Scholars use it much, and many grave and

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