Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

One of the most curious of the early publications on tobacco, in which an attempt is made to hold the balance fairly between the legitimate use and the "licentious" abuse of the herb, is Tobias Venner's tract with the long-winded title: "A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning The taking of the Fume of tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe too licenciously use. In which the immoderate, irregular, and unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated." Venner described himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in London in 1637. Venner says that tobacco is of "ineffable force" for the rapid healing of wounds, cuts, sores and so on, by external application, but thinks little of its use for any other purpose. Like others of his school, he attacks the "licentious Tobacconists [smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie fume." He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own personal objection to the "detestable savour or smack that it leaveth behind upon the taking of it"; from which one is inclined to surmise that the doctor's first pipe was not an entire success. With an evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the "savour," refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what he considers its valuable medicinal qualities, and he goes so far as to give "10 precepts in the use of" tobacco.

The sixth is "that you drink not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie Tobacconists are wont"—there must be no alliance, in short, between the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The suggestion that the smoker, when he has finished his pipe, shall wait for half an hour or so before he ventures into the outer air is very quaint.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 11:

Apart from cigarette-smoking, however, the use of tobacco grew steadily during the later Victorian period. In "Mr. Punch's Pocket-Book" for 1878 there was a burlesque dialogue between uncle and nephew entitled "Cupid and 'Baccy." The uncle thinks the younger men smoke too much, and declares that tobacco "has destroyed the susceptibility, which in my time made youngsters fall in love, as they often did, with a girl without a penny. No fellow can fall in love when he has continually a pipe in his mouth; and if he ever feels inclined to when it would be imprudent, why he lights his pipe, and very soon smokes the idea of such folly out of his head. Not so when I was of your age. Besides a few old farmers, churchwardens, and overseers, and such, nobody then ever smoked but labourers and the lower orders-cads as you now say. smoking was thought vulgar. Young men never smoked at all. To smoke in the presence of a lady was an inconceivable outrage; yet now I see you and your friends walking alongside of one another's sisters, smoking a short pipe down the street." "The girls like it," says Nepos. "In my time," replies Avunculus, "young ladies would have fainted at the bare suggestion of such an enormity." The dialogue ends as follows:

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