The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the WorldCooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
History
The Seven Sisters of Sleep: Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World
Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Drug abuse; Narcotics; Psychotropic drugs; Psychotropic plants; Tobacco use
From England the practice of smoking was carried to the Continent.
Dutch students were first taught the art of smoking at the University
of Leyden by students from England; hence the greatest smokers in
Europe derived their knowledge of the use of the pipe from the English.
Lilly, in his autobiography, informs us that when committed to the
guard-room in Whitehall, he thought himself in regions far below, where
Orpheus sang, and Pluto reigned, for “some were sleeping, others
swearing, others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of the room were
two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes.” Good friend Lilly, what wouldst
thou have thought of a visit to a Studenten Kneipe, where a crowd of
students, amid fumes dense as a London fog in November, scream and
growl the well-known song—
“And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the Fox tobacco?
And smokes the leathery Fox tobacco?
Sa! Sa!
Fox tobacco.
And smokes the Fox tobacco.
“Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a pipe!
Then let him fill a leathery pipe;
Sa! Sa!
Leathery pipe.
Then let him fill a pipe!”
And then perhaps—but let the reader enquire for himself of some
descendant from the ancestors of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, the
worthy head of the long-pipe faction. In 1601, tobacco was carried to
Java, whence it spread over the East. It was also conveyed to Turkey
and Arabia in the beginning of this century. El-Is-hákee states that
the custom of smoking tobacco began to be common in Egypt between the
years of the flight, 1010 and 1012 (A.D. 1601-1603). And from Persian
writers on _Materia medica_, it appears to have been introduced into
India in A.H. 1014 (A.D. 1605), towards the end of the reign of
Jelaladeen Akbar Padshaw. From India, tobacco probably found its way
to the Malayan Peninsula and China; although Pallas, Loureiro, and
Rumphius think that tobacco was known in China before the discovery of
the New World, and that the Chinese tobacco plant is indigenous to
that country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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