How enraptured medical men were with the new herb, believing that at last they had discovered the panacea of their happiest dreams, may be learned from Dr. Gardiner’s _Trial of Tobacco_. On the title page of this rare quarto volume, published in London in 1610, the author describes in prolix detail the contents of his book, thus:—‘Wherein his (tobacco’s) worth is most worthily expressed: as in the name, nature, and qualitie of the same hearb—his speciall use in physick, with the right and true use of taking it, as well for the seasons and times, as also the complexions, dispositions, and constitutions of such bodies and persons as are fittest, and to whom it is most profitable to take it.’ He asks: ‘What is a more noble medicine, or readier at hand, than tobacco?’ And he informs the reader that although he is an old man he undertakes the task of compiling the book in order to supply a proper knowledge of the plant so much in use among Englishmen. For the cure of the asthmatical, and such persons as are of a consumptive tendency, he prescribed liberally of _Foliorum Sana Sancta Indorum_ combined with other medicaments unknown to modern therapeutics, and which may be readily accredited with very effectual properties—effectual, one would think, in dispelling the extravagant belief of the learned leeches of those days in tobacco as a ‘soverane remedy.’ How people managed to take such concoctions as Dr. Gardiner prescribed and live is beyond conception: their Spartan-like endurance shines out conspicuously under a treatment which embraces ‘tobacco gruel,’ ‘tobacco wine,’ also, tobacco made up into a kind of soup, or syrup, with sufficient sugar. The patient is recommended to drink the decoction hot, as a medicine good against the plague.