A dissertation on the use and abuse of tobacco : Wherein the advantages and disadvantages attending the consumption of that entertaining weed, are particularly considered. Humbly addressed to all the tobacco-consumers in Great-Britain and Ireland, but especially to those among religious people .... / By Adam Clarke.

  • Clarke, Adam, approximately 1762-1832.
Date:
1798
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on the use and abuse of tobacco : Wherein the advantages and disadvantages attending the consumption of that entertaining weed, are particularly considered. Humbly addressed to all the tobacco-consumers in Great-Britain and Ireland, but especially to those among religious people .... / By Adam Clarke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    frwe inhabitants of Great Britain have greatly exceeded the frivolous French in the ufe ot this elegant and entertaining weed. When fuch an amazing confumption of this article, in only two kingdoms,-is confidered, it will not appear lui- prizing that a plant, which was formerly only a wild production of North or South America fhould have been fo extenfively cultivated ; lee- ing not only the inhabitants of Great Britain and France, but of Europe in general, have acquired the extravagant habit of ufing fuch prodigious quantities of it, either in the form ot powder, as a fternuiatory ; by the pipe, in the way of /«<- miration.-, or in livijl, as a mafticatory. And this habit, ft range to tell, notwithftanding its fltock- ino- indelicacy and naftinefs, continues to en- Gave in the moil difgraceful manner, the higher, lower, and middle ranks of life. Tht Church , and the State have conjoined to JanRify and legalize the ufe of it, from the time of the Grand Prior, on the one part ; and Queen Catharine de Medicis on the other, to the prefent day. MEDICAL PROPERTIES, real and fuppojed. Certainly fome uncommon benefits muft refult from the ufe of it, otherwife it could not, one would fuppofe, be continued in defiance of every fentiment of cleanlinefs and delicacy.—It ap¬ pears that herbs of the moil foetid fmell, and un- favory tafte, were confidered by the ancients as corroborants and reftoratives. The Poet Virgil introduces a country woman named Theftylis pounding garlic and fome other matters, which F B 4 he