Fruit, herbs, flesh, fish, whitemeats, spice, sauce, all,
Concoct are by Tobacco’s Cordiall!
Proceeding with his description of a dry dinner and elaborating many mysterious complications of the human system and their complete removal by the use of tobacco, he says that he ‘names his book, Dyet’s Dry Dinner, not only Caminum Prandium, without wine, but Accipritinum, without all drink, except tobacco, which also is but dry drink.’ And as to the first introduction of tobacco into this kingdom, he informs us that it was ‘translated out of the Indies in the seed or root, native or sative in our own fruit-fullest soil. The Indian name for the plant is Peicelt, surnamed tobacco, by the Spaniards of the Ile Tabago. Yet we are not beholden to their tradition. Our English Ulisses, renowned Syr Walter Rawleigh, a man admirably excellent in navigation and Nature’s privy counsell, and infinitely read in the wide boke of the worlde, hath both farre fetcht it and deare bought it, the estimate of which I leave to other; yet this all know, since it came into request, there hath been Magnus Fumi Questus; and Fumi-Vendulus is the best Epithite for an Apothecary.’
How enraptured medical men were with the new herb, believing that at last they had discovered the panacea of their happiest dreams, may be learned from Dr. Gardiner’s Trial of Tobacco. On the title page of this rare quarto volume, published in London in 1610, the author describes in prolix detail the contents of his book, thus:—‘Wherein his (tobacco’s) worth is most worthily expressed: as in the name, nature, and qualitie of the same hearb—his speciall use in physick, with the right and true use of taking it, as well for the seasons and times, as also the complexions, dispositions, and constitutions of such bodies and persons as are fittest, and to whom it is most profitable to take it.’ He asks: ‘What is a more noble medicine, or readier at hand, than tobacco?’ And he informs the reader that although he is an old man he undertakes the task of compiling the book in order to supply a proper knowledge of the plant so much in use among Englishmen. For the cure of the asthmatical, and such persons as are of a consumptive tendency, he prescribed liberally of Foliorum Sana Sancta Indorum combined with other medicaments unknown to modern therapeutics, and which may be readily accredited with very effectual properties—effectual, one would think, in dispelling the extravagant belief of the learned leeches of those days in tobacco as a ‘soverane remedy.’ How people managed to take such concoctions as Dr. Gardiner prescribed and live is beyond conception: their Spartan-like endurance shines out conspicuously under a treatment which embraces ‘tobacco gruel,’ ‘tobacco wine,’ also, tobacco made up into a kind of soup, or syrup, with sufficient sugar. The patient is recommended to drink the decoction hot, as a medicine good against the plague.
A glimpse of the strange notions which entered the heads of our forefathers respecting the medicinal virtues of the Indian weed may be gained from a perusal of the curious collection of odds and ends of social and literary gossip, contained in the Harleian Miscellany. Under the head of Tobacco the writer says he once knew some persons who every day ate several ounces of the herb without experiencing any sensible effect; and from this he infers that, ‘Use and custom will tame and naturalize the most fierce and rugged poison, so that it will become civil and friendly to the body.’ In the hands of the chemist it is perfectly true that some of the most virulent poisons can be made subservient to the healing art, and yield to the physician some of the most helpful medicines known to pharmacy; but it would be unwise to the last degree for the uninitiated in the mysteries of the laboratory to experiment upon himself in the vain belief that use and custom will carry him safely through the ordeal. The writer goes on to say that, ‘Some anatomists tell us most terrible stories of sooty brains and black lungs, which have been seen in the dissection of dead bodies, which when living had been accustomed to tobacco. I know a curious woman in the North, that does very great feats in healing the sick by a preparation of tobacco. And our learned and most experienced countryman, Mr. Boyle (experimental philosophy) does highly recommend tobacco for pains, which are often epidemical in cities and camps.’ He appears, however, to have a wholesome dread of such experimenting, for he consoles himself now and then by remarking that ‘custom and conversation will make the fiercest creature familiar.’ Yet he seems quite unable to break away from the common belief, that, ‘the qualities, nature, and uses of tobacco may be very considerable in several cases and circumstances, although King James himself hath both writ and disputed very smartly against it.’ The reader is next informed that a French author in the Journal of Science (1681) has ‘writ a peculiar tract on tobacco, wherein he commends it for bringing on sleep;’ an idea probably derived from Dr. Thorius’ Hymnus Tabaci (1625) which passed through many editions in London, Paris, and Utrecht. In this elegant Latin poem Thorius playfully alludes to the drowsiness tobacco-smoking produced upon the gods:—
… The gods Bacchus, Liber,
Jove, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, Apollo,
Lustily through their nose the smoke did take,
As if another Ætna they would make.
The goddesses, pleas’d with the novelty,