Though the medical man whom duty calls to densely-crowded, unwholesome districts fortifies himself against attack from the invisible foe with a Manila or Cuban leaf, he protests emphatically against the smoking habit which has recently cropped up among boys. The boy-smoker, besides being a nuisance, is rendering himself physically and mentally unfit for the duties of life.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING
Like Horace’s greybeard, we are all more or less prone to look lovingly towards the past, to regard the days of our forefathers as the good old times in which they played their part in life’s drama on a larger and nobler scale than we do, or are capable of doing. In this spirit of admiration for antiquity we see the beginnings of that hero-worship which with the Greeks gradually developed into their beautiful mythology. They, above all other people, delighted to extol the powers and achievements of their ancestors; they clothed them with the attributes of deity, and strove to emulate and honour them in all manly deeds; thus they exalted their own conceptions of life, and idealised the course of their national existence. And yet this innate tendency to magnify and extend into the dim, illimitable regions of antiquity whatever of human effort is deemed most worthy, is a source of difficulty to the conscientious student. Amid the wild growth of myth and marvel the antiquary or archæologist warily treads his way to surer ground, and out of scattered fragments of a by-gone age constructs anew an old order of existence, or opens a vista to the mind’s eye through which glimpses may be gained of the habits and inner life of our remote ancestors. Then it is we see the present linked with the past in one unbroken chain; our knowledge is enlarged, and we recognise the unity of our race. Needless then to say that it is in no narrow spirit of mere curiosity that the wise men of Europe have devoted much labour and learning to the task of discovering if the habit of tobacco-smoking, now so common all over the world, existed in Eastern countries before the discovery of America by Columbus.
It is justly claimed for the subject that it possesses interest for a much larger class than professed ethnologists; that it is invested with an absorbing fascination for every earnest student of the history and habits of mankind. For it is maintained that nothing but a deep-seated craving in the nature of human beings for narcotics and stimulants can explain the immediate, rapid, and over-mastering success with which the passion for tobacco spread over the world after its introduction into Europe by the Spaniards. That this should have been so, seems to point directly to the conclusion that before the discovery of the New World the tobacco-plant and the habit of smoking its leaves were unknown elsewhere. Let it be remembered, however, that we have to take into account the farther East, more particularly China, the Cathay of our forefathers, who had found every approach leading into the interior jealously guarded against intrusion from the barbarian of the outer world.
Scattered through the pages of ancient historians and naturalists are some curious allusions to a practice occasionally indulged in of inhaling the fumes of burning vegetable substances, either for pleasure’s sake or for medicinal purposes. A few of these may suffice to indicate the shifts men were put to in remote times in order to appease their longing for narcotics of one kind or another.
Herodotus says that the Messagetæ, or Scythians, possessed a tree bearing a strange fruit which, when they met together, they cast into the fire and inhaled its fumes till they became intoxicated, in much the same way as the Greeks did with wine. What this strange produce was we learn in book IV., cap. 78, where he relates the story of the Scythians making themselves drunk with hemp-seed. They crept with it under their blankets, and, throwing it on red-hot stones, inhaled the fumes arising therefrom. Simple narrations such as these fall in quite naturally with one’s ideas of primitive man adapting himself to his circumstances. The Father of History never indulges in flights of fancy or creations of the imagination; it is enough for him to render a straightforward account of such things as came under his own eyes, or of events as they had been related to him. But when we come to a modern writer who tells a smoking-story of far-back times, relating, indeed, to none other than the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord,’ (enjoying, we may assume, a quiet pipe after a day’s hard riding across country), then doubt begins to take possession of the mind, and we are inclined to let that tale go for what it is worth. Lieutenant Walpole is responsible for the story that, when he was at Mosul, there came into his hands a very old Arabic manuscript, in the opening chapter of which the ancient scribe declared that Nimrod used tobacco. Application of the higher criticism to this relic of antiquity would be quite out of place; why, indeed, should men seek to be wise above what is written? But let us look a little farther into what Mr. Walpole has to narrate of the people among whom he sojourned, respecting their indulgence in the social pleasure of the pipe. From his highly interesting work on The Ansayrii, or The Assassins (published in 1851) we gather that while at Mosul he was so impressed by the prevalence of the habit of smoking among all classes, that he made diligent inquiry of the learned of the land respecting its origin; for he felt convinced that nothing European, much less American, could possibly have crept into this remote district of the Old World, whose inhabitants were living as their fathers had lived for ages. ‘In the East,’ he writes, ‘it is rare to find a man or a woman who does not smoke. Enter a house, and a smoking-instrument is put into your hand as naturally as you are asked to sit down.’ Mr. Walpole had not long to wait before his new friends found means of satisfying his curiosity and of quickening the interest already awakened within him as to the antiquity of the habit. A venerable sage disclosed to his wondering eyes the manuscript aforesaid. It filled over a hundred closely-written pages, and was divided into eight chapters, in the first of which was related the story of Nimrod. The origin of the different opinions for and against tobacco are enlarged upon in its pages; this, by the way, seems to imply that the Koran had not settled the disputed point; but then these Hashishins, who had found tobacco a far more grateful comforter than their fiery hashish, were not good Moslems. Unfortunately for Mr. Walpole, the happy owner of the priceless document, this inestimable relic of antiquity, was a bibliomanist whom nothing could induce to part with it; but he tells the reader that it was being copied—a lengthy process. Youthful exuberance of spirit marks Mr. Walpole’s joy at the discovery. ‘Lovers of the weed,’ he exclaims, ‘may reasonably hope that the elucidation of the Assyrian history will show us Nimrod making kief over the chibouk, and Semiramis calling for her nargilleh. It would enhance the grace of Cleopatra could we imagine her reclining on a divan of eiderdown toying with Marc Antony as she plays with her jewelled narpeesh.’ His enthusiasm is kindled by glowing tales of Eastern life, stretching back to the remotest ages; he sees the folly of entertaining for a moment the thought that Asia could be indebted to America for the luxury of the pipe. ‘We can hardly suppose,’ he writes, ‘that in the comparatively short space of time since the continent of America was discovered by us, the habit could have spread through Europe to the very utmost corners of Asia; that the Burman would smoke his cigar as he does, and the wild man of the forest of Ceylon would make his hand into a bowl and smoke out of it. These people, perfect wild beasts, double up the hand, curving the palm, and thus form a species of pipe; a green leaf protects the hand; within this the weed is placed, and thus they smoke. This is certainly the youth of smoking. Adam may have practised this method, even in the days of his innocence.’
It is, perhaps, a pity Mr. Walpole did not feel satisfied with this display of youthful gaiety. Possibly he saw that something was still wanting; that his new-born idea of an Eastern origin for the weed he loved was too weak to stand without support. At that very moment some evil genius whispered in his ear the fun of sending the reader a wool-gathering to the British Museum. Then it dawned upon him that among the marvels of antiquity the excavations of Botta and Layard were laying bare to an astonished world was an Assyrian relic which would bear oracular testimony to the truth of the old Arabic manuscript found at Mosul, and that henceforth Nimrod must be regarded as the paladin of the pipe. So Mr. Walpole goes on to say: ‘If the curious reader will go to the British Museum he will there see an Assyrian cylinder, found at Mosul, and presented to the Institution by Mr. Badger, whereon is represented a king smoking from a round vessel, attached to which is a long reed.’ Hours have been spent in vain at the British Museum in making careful search for this interesting object. Doctor Wallis Budge, who presides over the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, knows nothing of a cylinder bearing an inscription of a king smoking a pipe. He has, however, a record to the effect that Mr. Badger, on February 8th, 1845, gave the Museum ‘the squeeze of an inscription, the impression of a seal, and a bronze object.’ Doctor Budge warily remarked: ‘I must remind you that in 1845 all sorts of nonsense was talked about Assyrian objects; but that two men