Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social. Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling those used for tobacco-smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them, and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for them.

In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in mediæval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside the scope of this book.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

After King William III was settled on the throne the sum of £600,000 was paid to the Dutch from the English exchequer for money advanced in connexion with his Majesty's expedition, and this amount was paid off by tobacco duties. Granger long ago remarked that most of the eminent divines and bishops of the day contributed very practically to the payment of this revolutionary debt by their large consumption of tobacco. He mentions Isaac Barrow, Dr. Barlow of Lincoln, who was as regular in smoking tobacco as at his meals, and had a high opinion of its virtues, Dr. Aldrich, "and other celebrated persons who flourished about this time, and gave much into that practice." One of the best known of these celebrated persons was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury from 1689, and historian of his own times. He had the reputation of being an inveterate smoker, and was caricatured with a long clay stuck through the brim of the shovel hat, on the breadth of which King William once made remark. The bishop replied that the hat was of a shape suited to his dignity, whereupon the King caustically said, "I hope that the hat won't turn your head."

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