INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN SYSTEM. 87 



striking names, herha sacra, herha divina, herha 

 medica, and finally, herha panacea, tobacco was a 

 specific in the hands of the faculty, or at all events 

 that portion of it called — 



" impostors, 

 Quack-salving, cheating mountebanks, whose skill 

 Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill." 



There can be no question that the first attempt 

 at smoking reveals phenomena which plainly 

 show that the herb divine requires her votaries 

 to go through a certain ordeal or trial before 

 admitting them to her favours, if they aspire to 

 the rank of her highest functionaries. I know 

 not whether my case is singular, but I can state 

 that I enjoyed my first cigar — some twenty years 

 ago — as much as the one I am now smoking. 

 Others are less fortunate, and the trial-scene is 



■worthy of notice, even on the doctor's assertion that the oil 

 of tobacco might have produced death by the ears. The 

 doctor seems to forget that the discovery of the empy- 

 reumatic oil of tobacco is a disclosure of modern chemistry; 

 and if the ancients even thought it possible to poison Alex- 

 ander the Great by first thoroughly imbuing with poison a 

 girl who was to sleep with him, what wonder that a hundred 

 such-like applications to all parts of the body might enter 

 into the imaginations of men, and be used for their " craft" 

 by the poets ? 



