Note 18 — HISTORY OF POPULAR MEDICINES, ETC.—HOW INFLUENCED BY SUPERSTITION.

James the First wrote a philippic against it, entitled a “Counterblaste to Tobacco,” in which the royal author, with more prejudice than dignity, informs his loving subjects, that “it is a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, painfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs; and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse.”