104 ST NICOTINE 



uplifted doctor did not recognise in the painting a 

 representation of the ancient art of glass-blowing. The 

 tricks the imagination plays upon us at times would be very 

 amusing were it not for the ruffle they give to one's self- 

 love. Some men, rather than admit they were, or could be 

 deceived, will hold to their error through all time and in 

 the face of every rebuff. 



It is not improbable that some varieties of the tobacco- 

 plant may be indigenous to the Old World. There are 

 about forty, of which seldom more than three are cultivated 

 for consumption as tobacco ; Virginia (Nicotina talacum, 

 Syrian {Nicotina rtistica), and Shiraz (Nicotina Persica). 

 Diligent research, however, extending over many years, has 

 failed to bring to light any evidence of the existence in 

 Europe or western Asia of either of these plants before the 

 Spaniards discovered America. The allusions made by 

 Dioscorides, Strabo, and Pliny to a practice common 

 among both the Greeks and the Romans of inhaling the 

 fumes of tussilago and other vegetable substances, have no 

 bearing on tobacco-smoking, nor on any general habit. 

 They refer rather to the use of certain herbs as remedies 

 for affections of the throat and chest, used much in the 

 same way as our forbears used certain other herbs for the 

 cure of similar ailments. Most people condemned to suffer 

 the rigours of an English winter have experienced kitchen- 

 treatment of the kind, when shrouded in a blanket over a 

 bowl of steaming medicaments they lay siege to the citadel 

 held by the bacteria of influenza. From Pliny we learn 

 that a tribe of unknown barbarians burned the roots of 

 a species of cypress, and inhaled the fumes for the reduction 

 of enlarged spleen — a malady very common among the 

 inhabitants of the plains of southern India. He tells us 

 also (xxiv., 84) that ihc Romans smoked coltsfoot through 



