CURATIVE QUALITIES. 97 



To your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming yourself 

 both in persons and goods, and taking also thereby the notes 

 and marks of Vanity upon you by the custom thereof, making 

 yourselves to be wondered at by all, foreign civil nations and 

 by all strangers that come among you, and be scorned, and 

 contemned ; a custom both fulsome to the eye, hateful to the 

 nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the 

 black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible 

 Stigian smelle of the pit that is bottomless." 



The supposed curative virtues of the tobacco plant had 

 much to do with its use in Europe while the singular mode 

 of exhaling through the nostrils added to its charms, and 



EXHALING THROUGH THE NOSE. 



doubtless led to far greater indulgence. Spenser in his Fairy 

 Queen makes one of the characters include it with other 

 herbs celebrated for medicinal qualities. 



" Into the woods thence-forth in haste she went, 

 To seek for herbes that mote him remedy; 

 For she of herbes had great intendiment, 

 Taught of the Nymph which from her infancy, 

 Had nursed her in true nobility : 

 There whether it divine Tobacco were, 

 Or Panachae, or Polygony, 

 She found and brought it to her patient deare, 

 Who all this while lay bleeding out his heart-blood neare." 



7 



