THE 



USE AND ABUSE 



OP 



TOBACCO. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OP TOBACCO. 



1. It is generally agreed tliat the use of tobacco in 

 Europe, as a means of inebriation, originated in the 

 introduction of the leaves of the plant into Spain from 

 America. There is every reason to suppose that the 

 plant previously existed in Asia, if not from the earliest 

 times, though we have no very reliable authority for its 

 having been used, at least to any great extent, for any 

 of the purposes to which we have devoted it. I am 

 aware that various old authors report, that the ancients 

 of the extreme East were acquainted with the burning 

 of vegetable substances as a means of inhaling narcotic 

 fumes ; and, indeed, when we consider their love of in- 

 censes, both as a luxury and an element of their reli- 

 gious cult, we need not be surprised at this; but we 

 have no evidence that the smoking of tobacco was known 

 in the Old World before the introduction of the plant 

 from the New. It was in 1492 that Columbus first be- 

 13 (13) 



