Note 3 — Chapter IV · TOBACCO IN RELATION TO HEALTH AND CHARACTER

Possibly hebenon is here employed for henbane, a name sometimes applied to tobacco by writers in Jacobean times. William Strachey, in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannica (1610), speaks of the tobacco-plant as ‘like to henbane.’ John Gerard in his description of the plant calls it ‘henbane of Peru.’ French writers of the same period had an unlimited vocabulary for tobacco, and among their names for it may be found ‘Peruvian henbane’ (jusquiame de Peru). If this view be admitted, then we have in ‘hebenon’ the only reference to tobacco the whole of Shakespeare’s works contain.