Or Panachea, or Polygony,
She found and brought it to her patient dear,
Who all this while lay bleeding out his heart-blood near.
In a similar vein William Lyly, Queen Elizabeth’s court-poet, speaks of the weed in his play entitled The Woman in the Moone. Pandora, having wounded a lover with a spear, urges her attendant to gather
… Balm and cooling violets,
And of our holy herb nicotian,
And bring withal pure honey from the hive,
To heal the wound of my unhappy hand.
Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, and a host of other playwrights and pamphleteers found in the new indulgence a source of endless amusement, and belaboured ‘Tobacconists’ with rare sallies of wit and humour.
Authors learned in the materia medica of those days tell of wonderful cures wrought by this Sana Sancta Indorum. In a booklet bearing the rather droll title of Dyet’s Dry Dinner (1599) Henry Buttes informs the reader that ‘Tobacco cureth any grief, dolour, imposture, or obstruction proceeding of cold or wind, especially in the head or breast. The fume taken in a pipe is good against rumes, hoarseness, ache in the head, stomach, lungs, breast, etc., also in want of meat, drink, sleep, or rest.’ The dyspeptic and the sleepless are invited to banquet upon a dry dinner, and they will assuredly find in the pipe a never-failing remedy for their several ailments. The uplifted author feels himself impelled to give expression to his high appreciation of the new regimen in verse, and exclaims,