A proposal is before Parliament to prevent little boys from “smoking” in public places. Little girls are, as the bill at present stands, not to be interfered with. Perhaps this is because they are not to have votes when they grow up, and so they may do as they like.

Apart from the question as to whether the smoking of tobacco is injurious to the health or not, there are many curious questions which arise from time to time as to the history and use of tobacco. I have no doubt that for children the use of tobacco is injurious, and I am inclined to think that it is only free from objection in the case of strong, healthy men, and that even they should avoid any excess, and should only smoke after meals, and never late at night. The strongest man, who can tolerate a cigar or a pipe after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, may easily get into a condition of “nerves” when even one cigarette acts as a poison and causes a slowing of the heart’s action.

A curious mistake, almost universally made, is that of supposing that the oily juice which forms in a pipe or at the end of a cigar is “nicotine,” the chief nerve-poison of tobacco. As a matter of fact, this juice, though it contains injurious substances, contains little or no “nicotine.” Nicotine is a colourless volatile liquid, which is vapourised and carried along with the smoke; it is not deposited in the pipe or cigar-end except in very small quantity. It is the chief agent by which tobacco acts on the nervous system, and through that on the heart—the agent whose effects are sought and enjoyed by the lover of tobacco. A single drop of pure nicotine will kill a dog. Nicotine has no aroma, and has nothing to do with the flavour of tobacco, which is due to very minute quantities of special volatile bodies similar to those which give a scent to hay.

Most people are acquainted with the three ways of “taking tobacco”—that of taking its smoke into the mouth, and more or less into the lungs, that of chewing the prepared leaf, and that of snuffing up the powdered leaf into the nose, whence it ultimately passes to the stomach. A fourth modification of the snuffing and chewing methods exists in what is called the “snuff stick.” According to the novelist, Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the country women in Kentucky use a short stick, like a brush, which they dip into a paperfull of snuff; they then rub the powder on to the gums. Snuff-taking has almost disappeared in “polite society” in this country within the past twenty years, but snuffing and chewing are still largely practised by those whose occupation renders it impossible or dangerous for them to carry a lighted pipe or cigar—such as sailors and fishermen and workers in many kinds of factories and engine-rooms.

One of the most curious questions in regard to the history of tobacco is that as to whether its use originated independently in Asia or was introduced there by Europeans. It is largely cultivated and used for smoking throughout the East from Turkey to China—including Persia and India on the way—and special varieties of tobacco, the Turkish, the Persian, and the Manilla are well known, and only produced in the East, whilst special forms of pipe, such as the “hukah” or “hooka,” the “hubble-bubble,” and the small Chinese pipe are distinctively Oriental. Not only that, but the islanders of the Far East are inveterate smokers of tobacco, and some of them have peculiar methods of obtaining the smoke, as, for instance, certain North Australians who employ “a smoke-box” made of a joint of bamboo. Smoke is blown into this receptacle by a faithful spouse, who closes its opening with her hand and presents the boxful of smoke to her husband. He inhales the smoke and hands the bamboo joint back to his wife for refilling. The Asiatic peoples are great lovers of tobacco, and it is certain that in Java they had tobacco as early as 1601, and in India in 1605. The hookah (a pipe, with water-jar attached, through which the smoke is drawn in bubbles) was seen and described by a European traveller in 1614. Should we not, therefore, suppose that in Asia they had tobacco and practised smoking before it was introduced from America into the West of Europe? It seems unlikely that Western nations should have given this luxury to the East when practically everything else of the kind has come from the East to Europe—the grape and wine made from it, the orange, lemon, peach, fig, spices of all kinds, pepper and incense. Yet it is certain that the Orientals got the habit of smoking tobacco from us, and not we from them.

Incredible as it seems, the investigations of the Swiss botanist, De Candolle (see his delightful History of Cultivated Plants—a wonderful volume, published for 5s., in the International Scientific Series) and of Colonel Prain, formerly in India, now Director of Kew, have rendered it quite certain that the Orientals owe tobacco and the habit of smoking entirely to the Europeans, who brought it from America, as early as 1558. In the year 1560 Jean Nicot, the French Ambassador, saw the plant in Portugal, and sent seeds to France to Catherine de’ Medici. It was named Nicotiana in his honour. But the introduction into Europe of the practice of smoking is chiefly due to the English. In 1586 Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Virginia, and Sir Francis Drake brought over the pipes of the North American Indians and the tobacco prepared by them. The English enthusiasm for tobacco smoking, “drinking a pipe of tobacco,” as it was at first called, was extraordinary both for its sudden development, its somewhat excessive character, and the violent antagonism which it aroused, and, as we learn from Mr. Frederic Harrison, still arouses. It was at once called “divine tobacco” by the poet Spenser, and “our holy herb nicotian” by William Lilly, and not long afterwards denounced as a devilish poison by King James. The reason why the English had most to do with the introduction of smoking is that the inhabitants of South America did not smoke pipes, but chewed the tobacco, or took it as snuff, and less frequently smoked it as a cigar. From the Isthmus of Panama as far as Canada and California, on the other hand, the custom of smoking pipes was universal, and wonderful carved pipes of great variety were found in use by the natives of these regions, and also dug up in very ancient burial grounds. Hence the English colonists of Virginia were the first to introduce pipe-smoking to Europe.

The Portuguese had discovered the coasts of Brazil as early as 1500, and it is they who carried tobacco to their possessions and trading ports in the Far East—to India, Java, China, and Japan, so that in less than a hundred years it was well established in those countries. Probably it went about the same time from Spain and England to Turkey, and from there to Persia, and rapidly developed not only special new forms of pipe (the hookah) for its consumption, but also within a few years special varieties of the plant itself. These were raised by cultivation, and have formerly been erroneously regarded as native Asiatic species of tobacco plant.

The definite proof of the fact that tobacco was in this way introduced from Western Europe to the Oriental nations is, first, that Asiatics have no word for it excepting a corruption of the original American name tabaco, tobacco, or tambuco: it is certain that it is not mentioned in Chinese writings nor represented in their pottery before the year 1680. In the next place, it appears that careful examination of old herbariums and of the records of early travellers who knew plants well and recorded all they saw, proves that no species of tobacco is a native of Asia. There are fifty species of tobacco, but all are American excepting the Nicotiana suaveolens, which is a native of the Australian continent, and the Nicotiana fragrans, which is a native of the Isle of Pines, near New Caledonia.

Forty-eight different species of tobacco (that is to say, of the genus Nicotiana) are found in America. Of these Nicotiana tabacum is the only one which has been extensively cultivated. It has been found wild in the State of Ecuador, but was cultivated by the natives both of North and South America before the advent of Europeans. It seems probable that all the tobaccos grown in the Old World for smoking or snuffing are only cultivated varieties—often with very special qualities—of the N. tabacum, with the exception of the Shiraz tobacco plant, which, though called N. persica, is of Brazilian origin, and the N. rustica, of LinnÆus, a native of Mexico, which has a yellow flower, and yields a coarse kind of tobacco. This has been cultivated in South America and also in Asia Minor. But tobaccos so different as the Havannah, the Maryland and Virginian, the incomparable Latakia, the Manilla, and the Roumelian or Turkish—all come from culture-varieties of the one great species, Nicotiana tabacum.

The treatment of tobacco-leaf to prepare it for use in smoking, snuffing, and chewing requires great skill and care, and is directed by the tradition and experience of centuries. As is the case with “hay,” the dried tobacco-leaf undergoes a kind of fermentation, and, in fact, more than one such change. The cause of the fermentation is a micro-organism which multiplies in the dead leaf and causes chemical changes, just as the yeast organism grows in “wort” and changes it to “beer.” It is said that the flavour and aroma of special tobaccos is due to special kinds of ferment, and that by introducing the Havannah ferment or micro-organism to tobacco-leaves grown away from Cuba, you can give them much of the character of Havannah tobacco! A very valuable kind of tobacco is the Roumelian, from which the best Turkish cigarettes are made. It has a very delicate flavour, and very small quantities of an aromatic kind prepared from a distinct variety of tobacco plant grown near Ephesus and on the Black Sea (probably a cultivated variety of Nicotiana rustica) are judiciously blended with it. This blending, and the use of the very finest qualities of tobacco-leaf, are essential points in the production of the best Turkish cigarettes. The so-called “Egyptian” cigarettes are made from less valuable Turkish tobacco, with the addition of an excess of the aromatic kind. It is a mistake to suppose that opium or other matters are used to adulterate tobacco. The only proceeding of the kind which occurs is the mixing of inferior, cheap, and coarse-flavoured tobaccos with better kinds. Water and also starch are used fraudulently to increase the weight of leaf-tobacco. But skilful “blending” is a legitimate and most important feature in the manufacture of cigars, cigarettes, and smoking mixtures.

The first “smoking” of tobacco seen by Europeans was that of the Caribs or Indians of San Domingo. They used a very curious sort of tubular pipe, shaped like the letter Y. The diverging arms were placed one up each nostril, and the end of the stem held in the smoke of burning tobacco-leaves, which was thus “sniffed up” into the nose. The North American Indians, on the other hand, had pipes very similar to those still in use. The natives of South America smoked the rolled leaf (cigars), chewed it, and took it as snuff.

It has been suggested that in Asia smoking of some kind of dried herbs may have been a habit before tobacco was introduced—since even Herodotus states that the Scythians were accustomed to inhale the smoke of burning weeds, and showed their enjoyment of it by howling like dogs! But investigation does not support the view that anything corresponding to individual or personal “smoking” existed. “Bang” or “hashish” (the Indian hemp) was not “smoked,” but swallowed as a kind of paste before the introduction of tobacco-smoking in the East—as we may gather from the stories of the “Arabian Nights”—although the practice of smoking hemp (which is the chief constituent of “bang”) and also of smoking the narcotic herb “henbane,” has now been established. Opium was, and is, eaten in India, not “smoked.” The “smoking” of opium is a Chinese invention of the eighteenth century.

The Oriental hookah suggests a history anterior to the use of tobacco, but nothing is known of it. The word signifies a cocoanut-shell, and is applied to the jar (sometimes actually a cocoanut) containing perfumed water, through which smoke from a pipe, fixed so as to dip into the water, is drawn by a long tube with mouthpiece. It seems possible that this apparatus was in use for inhaling perfume by means of bubbles of air drawn through rose-water or such liquids, before tobacco-smoking was introduced, and that the tobacco-pipe and the perfume-jar were then combined. But travellers before the year 1600 do not mention the existence of the hookah in Persia or in India, though as soon as tobacco came into use this apparatus is described by Floris, in 1614, and by Olearius, in 1633, and by all subsequent travellers.

The conclusion to which careful inquiry has led is that though various Asiatic races have appreciated the smoke of various herbs and enjoyed inhaling it from time immemorial, yet there was no definite “smoking” in earlier times. No pipes or rolled-up packets of dried leaves—to be placed in the mouth and sucked whilst slowly burning—were in use before the introduction of tobacco by Europeans, who brought the tobacco-plant from America and the mode of enjoying its smoke, and passed on its seeds to the people of Turkey, Persia, India, China, and Japan.