Recently I came across this quote from King James VI of Scotland and I of England. It was written in 1604 about the new trend of smoking, within living memory of tobacco becoming a fashionable New World import in the 1500s:
“A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
The quote comes from “A Counterblast to Tobacco,” a pamphlet King James published to warn his people against a habit he described as disgusting, enfeebling and beneath the dignity of the country. I wondered what else he had to say in this pamphlet, so I read the whole thing. Here are some other good quotes:
Surely in my opinion, there cannot be a more base, and yet hurtful, corruption in a country, than is the vile use (or rather abuse) of taking tobacco in this kingdom.
With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three savage men, were brought in, together with this savage custom. But the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is yet alive, yea in fresh vigour.
And now good countrymen let us (I pray you) consider, what honour or policy can move us to imitate the barbarous and beastly manners of the wild, godless, and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custom? Shall we that disdain to imitate the manners of our neighbour France … and that cannot endure the spirit of the Spaniards … abase ourselves so far, as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the holy covenant of God? … Why do we not as well imitate them in walking naked as they do? In preferring glasses, feathers, and such toys, to gold and precious stones, as they do? Yea why do we not deny God and adore the devil, as they do?
Such is the miraculous omnipotency of our strong tasted tobacco, as it cures all sorts of diseases (which never any drug could do before) in all persons, and at all times. … It makes a man sober that was drunk. It refreshes a weary man, and yet makes a man hungry. Being taken when they go to bed, it makes one sleep soundly, and yet being taken when a man is sleepy and drowsy, it will, as they say, awake his brain, and quicken his understanding. As for curing of the pox, it serves for that use but among the poxy Indian slaves. Here in England it is refined, and will not deign to cure here any other than cleanly and gentlemanly diseases. O omnipotent power of tobacco!
Are you not guilty of sinful and shameful lust … that although you be troubled with no disease, but in perfect health, yet can you neither be merry at an ordinary, nor lascivious in the stews, if you lack tobacco to provoke your appetite to any of those sorts of recreation, lusting after it as the children of Israel did in the wilderness after quails?
Is it not the greatest sin of all, that you the people of all sorts of this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honour and safety of your king and commonwealth, should disable yourselves in both? In your persons having by this continual vile custom brought yourselves to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jews’ Sabbath, but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poor house to kindle your tobacco with?
In the times of the many glorious and victorious battles fought by this nation, there was no word of tobacco.
This very custom of taking tobacco (whereof our present purpose is) is even at this day accounted so effeminate among the Indians themselves, as in the market they will offer no price for a slave to be sold, whom they find to be a great tobacco taker.
Is it not both great vanity and uncleanness, that at the table, a place of respect, of cleanliness, of modesty, men should not be ashamed, to sit tossing of tobacco pipes, and puffing of the smoke of tobacco one to another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof, to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air, when very often, men that abhor it are at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining chamber, and yet it makes a kitchen also oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soiling and infecting them, with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco takers, that after their death were opened.
Here’s the full paragraph the original quote came from. It’s the closing paragraph:
Have you not reason then to be ashamed, and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming yourselves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you: by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
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