66 • TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



&C.5 in some of the oldest books of medicine 

 extant. 



The Turk? and Persians have become the 

 greatest smokers in the world. In Turkey the 

 pipe is perpetually in the mouth. In India all 

 classes and both sexes smoke. The Siamese 

 chew moderately, but smoke perpetually. The 

 Burmese of all ranks, of both sexes and of all 

 ages, down even to infants of three years old, 

 smoke cigars. In China the practice is so uni- 

 versal that every female, from the age of eight 

 or nine, wears, as an appendage to her dress, a 

 small silken pocket to hold tobacco and a pipe. 

 Indeed, from the extensive prevalence of the 

 practice in Asia, and especially in China, Pallas 

 argued long ago that the use of tobacco for 

 smokinc; in those countries must be more ancient 

 than the discovery of America. 



"Amongst the Chinese," he says, " and amongst the 

 Mongol tribes, who had the most intercourse with them, 

 the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and has 

 become so indispensable a luxury; the tobacco-purse 

 affixed to their belt so necessary an article of dress ; the 

 form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have 

 taken the model of theirs, so original ; and, lastly, the 

 preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed 



