Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

One of the most curious of the early publications on tobacco, in which an attempt is made to hold the balance fairly between the legitimate use and the "licentious" abuse of the herb, is Tobias Venner's tract with the long-winded title: "A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning The taking of the Fume of tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe too licenciously use. In which the immoderate, irregular, and unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated." Venner described himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in London in 1637. Venner says that tobacco is of "ineffable force" for the rapid healing of wounds, cuts, sores and so on, by external application, but thinks little of its use for any other purpose. Like others of his school, he attacks the "licentious Tobacconists [smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie fume." He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own personal objection to the "detestable savour or smack that it leaveth behind upon the taking of it"; from which one is inclined to surmise that the doctor's first pipe was not an entire success. With an evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the "savour," refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what he considers its valuable medicinal qualities, and he goes so far as to give "10 precepts in the use of" tobacco.

The sixth is "that you drink not between the taking of the fumes, as our idle and smoakie Tobacconists are wont"—there must be no alliance, in short, between the pipe and the cheerful glass. The tenth and last precept is "that you goe not abroad into the aire presently [immediately] upon the taking of the fume, but rather refrain therefrom the space of halfe an houre, or more, especially if the season be cold, or moist." The suggestion that the smoker, when he has finished his pipe, shall wait for half an hour or so before he ventures into the outer air is very quaint.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

A frequent sign-device among dealers in snuff was the Crown and Rasp. The oldest method of taking snuff, says Larwood, in the "History of Signboards," was "to scrape it with a rasp from the dry root of the tobacco plant; the powder was then placed on the back of the hand and so snuffed up; hence the name of râpé (rasped) for a kind of snuff, and the common tobacconist's sign of La Carotte d'or (the golden root) in France." Râpé became in English "rappee," familiar in snuff-taking days as the name for a coarse kind of snuff made from the darker and ranker tobacco leaves. The list of prices and names given by Wimble, a snuff-seller, about 1740, and printed in Fairholt's "History of tobacco," contains eighteen different kinds of rappee-English, best English, fine English, high-flavoured coarse, low, scented, composite, &c. The rasps for obtaining this râpé, continues Larwood, "were carried in the waistcoat pocket, and soon became articles of luxury, being carved in ivory and variously enriched. Some of them, in ivory and inlaid wood, may be seen at the Hotel Cluny in Paris, and an engraving of such an object occurs in 'Archæologia,' vol. xiii. One of the first snuff-boxes was the so-called râpé or grivoise box, at the back of which was a little space for a piece of the root, whilst a small iron rasp was contained in the middle. When a pinch was wanted, the root was drawn a few times over the iron rasp, and so the snuff was produced and could be offered to a friend with much more grace than under the above-mentioned process with the pocket-grater."

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