Tobacco History:
The Social History of Smoking
by George Latimer Apperson
First published in 1914
"The Social History of Smoking" by George Latimer Apperson, can be purchased at Amazon.com in two different versions. Depending on the quality of the edition, prices range between $35 and $104.
From Chapter 1: "Tarlton, as other gentlemen used, at the first comming up of tobacco, did take it more for fashion's sake than otherwise, and being in a roome, set between two men overcome with wine, and they never seeing the like, wondered at it, and seeing the vapour come out of Tarlton's nose, cryed out, fire, fire, and threw a cup of wine in Tarlton's face. Make no more stirre, quoth Tarlton, the fire is quenched: if the sheriffes come, it will turne to a fine, as the custome is. And drinking that againe, fie, sayes the other, what a stinke it makes; I am almost poysoned. If it offend, saies Tarlton, let every one take a little of the smell, and so the savour will quickly goe: but tobacco whiffes made them leave him to pay all."
From Chapter 5: Tobacco was still the symbol of good-fellowship. Winstanley, who was an enemy of what he called "this Heathenish Weed," and who thought the "folly" of smoking might never have spread so much if stringent "means of prevention" had been exercised, yet had to declare in 1660 that "Tobacco it self is by few taken now as medicinal, it is grown a good-fellow, and fallen from a Physician to a Complement. 'He's no good-fellow that's without ... burnt Pipes, Tobacco, and his Tinder-Box.'"
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