130 TOBACCO : ITS HISTORY. 



amulet. Certain it is, however, that in the course 

 of the following century tobacco waxed strong in 

 the popular belief as a panacea or cure for all 

 diseases. In the small work, ' De Herba Panacea,' 

 of zEgidius Everartus, we find enumerated all 

 the usual ailments of the body with their appor- 

 tioned dose of tobacco. The fair sex might find 

 in its juice a primitive Rowland's Kalydor — 

 faciei ruhorem tollit succus : it restored hearing 

 to the deaf, and sight to the blind. Headache, 

 toothache, colic, catarrh, worms, uterine neu- 

 ralgia, and haemorrhoids — in a word, all diseases 

 fled before it — nam illas omnino curat* 



Whether its use as a medicine in those days 

 killed ultimately more than it cured — like so 

 many of its successors in the healing art — or that 

 it lacked the aid of endless advertisements, 

 doings on a large scale, fictitious testimonials, 

 and all the other paraphernalia of humbug — it is 

 impossible to say; but there is a fashion in 

 remedies, in doctors, in courtesans, in warriors, 

 in preachers, in eveiy thing that can appeal to 



* De Herba Panaced, Auc. ^md. Everarto, Ant. 1C64. 



