38 ST NICOTINE 



cane or tube is about half a cubit long.' This description 

 would seem to indicate snuffing rather than smoking. It 

 seems clear that we have here come upon the origin of the 

 practice of titillating the olfactories which towards the close 

 of the sixteenth century, had become, says Moliere, Ma 

 passion des honnetes gens.' Catherine de Medici became 

 one of the earliest devotees to the new indulgence ; fashion 

 led the poudre a la Reinc through the courts of Europe, 

 where elegant dilettanti vied with each other in the display 

 of jewelled snuff boxes filled with odeur de Rome, or other 

 right puissant sternutatories, not always of a harmless kind. 

 Prelates and abbes were enamoured of the delightfully- 

 scented refresher, and in Spain they did not scruple to 

 place their brilliant boxes on the altar for their use, in spite 

 of Pontifical ordinances and anathemas from Urban VIII. 

 and Innocent XII. Physicians, carried away with the 

 belief that a grand sternutatory had been discovered, 

 proclaimed its advent to a grateful people, and prescribed 

 its use liberally ; for, said they, ' it must needs do good 

 where the brain is replete with many humours, for sense- 

 lessness or benumming of the brains, and for a hicket that 

 proceedeth of repletion.' Yet there were divisions in the 

 ranks of medical men ; there were different sides of the 

 question, different interests or tastes to be considered. Had 

 not the Due d'Harcourt suffered martyrdom in the new 

 cause in order to please Louis le Grand ? The Court 

 physician, Monsieur I'agon, devoted his brilliant talents to 

 a public denunciation of the new vice which, springing 

 from heathen soil, was fast spreading over Christendom ! 

 Unhappily for the success his eloquence merited, in the 

 warmth of his oratory he so far forgot himself as to dip his 

 fingers into his waistcoat pocket and take copious pinches 

 of tabac en poudre in order to refresh his fickle brain. 



