Virtues of Tobacco

Writing in the 1610s, William Barclay pointed to the astonishing paradoxical benefits of smoking: “Tobacco is hote, because it hath acrimonie; yet, it is cold because it is narcoticke and stupefactiue, it maketh drunken, and refresheth, it maketh hungrie and filleth, it maketh thirstie and quencheth thirst. Finalie, to bring man to health, it changeth as many formes as Iuppiter does change shapes to conuey himself to his Mistresse.” Or, to cite the motto from a nineteenth-century smokers’ magazine, ” fumer est prier .”