The early history of tobacco / [Charles Singer].

  • Singer, Charles, 1876-1960.
Date:
1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The early history of tobacco / [Charles Singer]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was still in a great rage against him, .... and now sent to have him brought to these savages [“ the dog-faeed tribe ” of Kalmucks] that they might devour him; but he was not to be found, having hid himself.’ * The incident has been regarded as an instance of patriarchal humour.f This interpretation, however, ill accords with what is known of Nicon; and Mitra at least (whose decision may be accepted as authoritative) does not seem to have regarded the matter in this light. We are, however, passing the limits of the early history of the drug. It had now begun to leave the domain of Materia Medica, or rather it was entering that higher branch of Therapeutics, which concerns itself more with the ordering of men’s lives than with the prescription of bottles of physic. In this branch of medicine ‘ Tabaci folia’ will continue to take an important place. Until quite recent times, however, preparations of tobacco were still used in medicine as local applications for the relief of pain, especially in cases of hernia and after operations. For such purposes it has now been replaced by Belladonna and allied drugs. To one other medicinal use of tobacco, not quite extinct in modern times, we may here briefly refer. The herb was popularly ^ employed as a disinfectant against such diseases as were supposed to be air-borne. The fumes of the burning leaves were mainly used, but Pepys tells of a second method. On June 7, 1665, when the plague at Loudon was approaching its height, the old gossip describes how ‘ much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and “ Lord, have mercy upon us ! ” writ there .... It put me into an ill conception of myself and ‘The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, written by his attendant archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, in Arabic.’ Translated by F. C. Belfour. London Oriental Translation Committee, 1879, vol. i, p. 42o! ere will also be found an account of the contemporary table customs of this cannibal tribe. The events related took place at some date between T.ritk iftSIO n lAiTO in his ‘Lectures on the History of the t So the late Dean Stanley Eastern Church,’ 1861, lecture .xl. t And not only popularly. Isbrand van Diemerbrock, perhaps the best medical writer on the plague of the 17th century, and one of the best of any age, considered that he owed his life to the disinfectant qualities of the tobacco smoked by him during an epidemic.