1 8 The Soverane Herbe 



in Europe, the questions as to whether smoking was 

 practised in Europe before the sixteenth century, 

 and whether tobacco originated in the East, and 

 not in the West, should be considered. It has been 

 asserted by some writers that smoking was practised 

 in Europe and Asia long before the discovery of 

 America. 



The remedial inspiration of the smoke of various 

 herbs and substances dates back to very ancient 

 times. Dioscorides states that the Greeks inhaled the 

 fume of dried coltsfoot through a funnel for difficulty 

 in breathing, and Pliny notes that the Romans in- 

 haled the same smoke through a reed for the relief of 

 old coughs. But these were as strictly remedies as 

 the inhalation of steam in cases of bronchitis. More 

 to the point are the instances of the burning and the 

 inhaling of the smoke of various narcotic plants. 

 The Thracians burnt the seeds of certain aromatic 

 plants and inhaled the perfume. Herodotus states 

 that the Scythians used to inspire the smoke of 

 hemp-seed for the sake of the transient intoxication 

 it produced. Covering their heads with a rug, they 

 placed hemp-seed on red-hot stones, and inhaled the 

 smoke which arose. 



Lieutenant Walpole, the celebrated Arabian travel- 

 ler, declared that an ancient Arabic manuscript which 

 he had seen in Mosul stated that Nimrod smoked. 

 In confirmation he cited a picture on an Assyrian 

 cylinder in the British Museum. This picture subse- 

 quent inquiries have been unable to identify, while 

 the Arabic manuscript bears internal evidence of 

 having been written in the seventeenth century, 



