IXFLUEXCE OX THE HUMAX SYSTEM. 85 



" For men are brought to worse distresses 

 By taking physic than diseases ; 

 And therefore commonly recover 

 As soon as doctors give them over." 



With these preliminaries, let us proceed to 

 examine the medical bearings of the question. 



The various names of tobacco attest the vogue 

 in which it was held at its early introduction.* It 



* The name, tobacco, has been derived from Tabasco, a 

 to-vrn of Mexico, and from Tabaco or Tobago, an island in 

 the Bay of Panamd. I can find no ratioual origin of the 

 name. What the natives of Cuba called it when Columbus 

 in 1492 found them, men and women, smoking *' small 

 brands " or cigars, he did not state. In Mexico it is called 

 by the natives Petun — in fact, our adopted Petunia of the 

 flower-gardens is a species of tobacco. A certain Mr. Neil, 

 in ' The Lancet,' suggests Tu 'Rax,zv (^^ Bacchus) as its deri- 

 vation, because he thinks it " a provocative or incentive to 

 strong drinks ! " Thus, as Ben Jonson says, these doctors are 



" Made of all terms and shreds ; no less beliers 

 Of [nature's] favours than their own vile med'cines." 



A writer who professed to have been in the island of Cuba 

 states that the "triangular tube alone, amongst the Indians, 

 bore the name of tohaco, but not the leaf or the plant. Fumar 

 uii tabaco is the expression in Havannah for smoking a cigar." 

 The word tobaco belongs, according to Humboldt, like 

 savannah, maize, &c., to the ancient language of Hayti or 

 St, Domingo, and was generally used in the AVest India 

 islands after the Spanish conquest. The former writer gives 

 a most extraordinary statement respecting the manufacture of 

 cigars, which, although a striking curiosity, I almost feel 

 inclined to omit. He says, " When the connoisseur is saun-^ 

 tering at his ease, inhaling with delight one of those cigars* 



