The Social History of SmokingApperson, George Latimer
History
The Social History of Smoking
Apperson, George Latimer
Smoking
Deacon, as the title of his book just quoted shows, was very fond of
alliteration, and one sentence of his diatribe may be quoted. He
warned his readers that tobacco-smoke was "very pernicious unto their
bodies, too profluvious for many of their purses, and most pestiferous
to the publike State." Much may be forgiven, however, to the
introducer of so charming a term of abuse as "profluvious." Deacon's
book takes the form of a dialogue, and after nearly 200 pages of
argument, in which the unfortunate herb gets no mercy, one of the
interlocutors, a trader in tobacco, is so convinced of the iniquity of
his trade, and of his own parlous state if he continue therein, that
he declares that the two hundred pounds' worth of this "beastly
tobacco" which he owns, shall "presently packe to the fire," or else
be sent "swimming down the Thames."
Many good folk would seem to have associated smoking with idling. In
the rules of the Grammar School at Chigwell, Essex, which was founded
in 1629, it is prescribed that "the Master must be a man of sound
religion, neither a Papist nor a Puritan, of a grave behaviour, and
sober and honest conversation, no tippler or haunter of alehouses, no
puffer of tobacco." A worthy Derbyshire man named Campbell, in his
will dated 20 October 1616, left all his household goods to his son,
"on this condition that yf at any time hereafter, any of his brothers
or sisters shall fynd him takeing of tobacco, that then he or she so
fynding him, shall have the said goods"--a testamentary arrangement
which suggests to the fancy some amusing strategic evasions and
manœuvres on the part of the conditional legatee and his watchful
relations.
A converse view of smoking may be seen in Izaak Walton's "Life" of Sir
Henry Wotton, who died in 1639. Walton says that Wotton obtained
relief to some extent from asthma by leaving off smoking which he had
practised "somewhat immoderately"--"_as many thoughtful men do_." The
italics are mine.
Tobacco, as has been said, was praised as well as abused
extravagantly. Much absurdity was written in glorification of the
medicinal and therapeutic properties of tobacco, but a more sensible
note was struck by some lauders of the weed. Marston wrote in 1607:
_Musicke, tobacco, sacke and sleepe,
The tide of sorrow backward keep._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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