A dissertation on the use and abuse of tobacco / by Adam Clarke.

  • Clarke, Adam, approximately 1762-1832.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on the use and abuse of tobacco / by Adam Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of Great Britain may know to whom they are indebted for so valu- able a gift; and their benefactor receive the honours due to hb name! But if what I have written do not satisfy, I must confess, I have no further light into the history of “other times,’' to deter- mine the point, and therefore willingly refer the farther elucidation of the subject to the chronologists'and antiquaries. The vegetable kingdom has probably never produced an article termed medicinal, the use of which has heen so rapidly and univer- sally extended. 'Sir Robert Harcourt says, “In 1610 the tobacco that was imported into this country amounted to about 60,000 pounds sterling,” and adds, “ I dare presume to say, and hope to prove within a few months, that this commodity only, so much sought after and desired, will bring as great a profit to the under- takers as ever the Spaniards gained by the best and richest silver mine in all their Indies.” Purchas. Vol. iv., p. 1277. Though this was spoken more than 200 years ago, the following short statement will show how correct the conjecture of this Traveller was: In 1750, the English, sa}'s Mr. De Bomare, imported from Mar}'land and Virginia upwards of 100,000 hogsheads of tobacco; nearly one half of which was consumed by themselves, and most of the remaining part exported to France; from which the British Government drew an annual revenue of 9,200,000 French livres, about £38-3,333 : 6 : 8 sterling.* Hence it appears that the grave inhabitants of Great Britain, have greatly exceeded the frivolous French in the use of this elegant and entertaining weed. In 1796, tobacco imported into this kingdom amounted to 23,608,775 pounds weight. Of this 11,490,446 pounds were de- * Since the American war the culture of this herb has decreased con- siderably in Virginia, the proprietors of the laud finding it more profitable to devote the ground to the production of corn. The French F.ncyclo- pedists give the following reasons for it: “the culture of tobacco impo- verislies the land, it reduces both men and animals to a miserable state of subsistence—it is very perplexing and laborious—in a word, it has every kind of inconvenience connected with it.”—Encyclop. Methodique, Econo- mic polit., tom. iv. pp. G51, 052. It is to be hoped that the culture of this pernicious herb will soon give way to something more advantageous to mankind. The American farmers begin to turn their attention to subjects more certain in their growth, and more productive to tlie husbandman. Mr. J. B. Bordley, in his “ Essays on Husbandry and Rural Affairs,” lately printed at Philadelphia, writes thus: If the ground be good and well prepare.d, no crop is more certain than hemp, sown in time, and when the soil is moist. But how uncertain is the tobacco crop? Failure of plants from frost, drought, or fly; want of seasonable weather for planting; destruction by the ground-worm, w-eb- worm, horn-worm; buttoning low for want of rain; curling or frenching, from too much rain; house-burning or funking, while curing, frost before housed; heating, in bulk or in the hogshead; inspection, cutting, &c. Cultivating tobacco cleans, but exposes the soil to exhalation and washing away. It shelters the ground only about a month; but hemp shades it from May till about the first of August. A planter gaining twenty hogs- heads of tobacco from twenty acres of ground, value 800 dollars, might expect 12,000 or 10,000 lbs. of hemp from the same ground, value 1000 or 1200 dollars. But if the income from the hemp should be a fourth less than from the tobacco-crop, yet I would, ou several accounts, prefer tho culture of hemp.”