Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

Thomas Dekker, to whose pictures of London social life at the opening of the seventeenth century we are so much indebted for information both with regard to smoking and in respect of many other matters of interest, was himself an enemy of tobacco. He politely refers to "that great Tobacconist, the Prince of Smoake and Darkness, Don Pluto"; and in another place addresses tobacco as "thou beggarly Monarche of Indians, and setter up of rotten-lungd chimney-sweepers," and proceeds in a like strain of abuse.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 13:

Another French visitor to our shores, M. Jorevin, whose rare book of travels was published at Paris in 1672, was wandering in the west of England about the year 1666, and in the course of his journey stayed at the Stag Inn at Worcester, where he found he had to make himself quite at home with the family of his hostess. He tells us that according to the custom of the country the landladies sup with strangers and passengers, and if they have daughters, these also are of the company to entertain the guests at table with pleasant conceits where they drink as much as the men. But what quite disgusted our visitor was "that when one drinks the health of any person in company, the custom of the country does not permit you to drink more than half the cup, which is filled up and presented to him or her whose health you have drunk. Moreover, the supper being finished, they set on the table half a dozen pipes, and a packet of tobacco, for smoking, which is a general custom as well among women as men, who think that without tobacco one cannot live in England, because, say they, it dissipates the evil humours of the brain."

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