This is my second blog on smoking. Today my son's grandad bought him a book Horrible Histories ,Terrible Tudors by Terry Deary and Neil Tonge,and in it is a piece about tobacco, I found it interesting so thought I would stick it in a blog.
It starts with a chap named Walter Raleigh who if your not too good with your history (like me) was a sailor, writer and author who was liked very much by Queen Elizabeth the 1st. He was said to have been the first man to bring tobacco to England but this is not true (a lie bad behaviour no?), there are records of tobacco being used in France in 1560-26 years before Raleigh`s ships returned from Virginia.It was brought there by John Nicot (who's name gives us nicotine).
In 1573 William Harrison wrote. In these days the taking of the Indian herb called tobacco is greatly taken up in England. It is used against rheums and other diseases of the lungs with great effect.(plonka)
In 1614, Barnaby Rich wrote, They say tobacco is good for colds, rheums, for aches, for dropsies and all kinds of diseases, but I see the ones who smoke most are as effected by those diseases as much as the ones that don't. It is now sold in every tavern, inn and ale-house as much as beer.....nowadays you can till buy them in the taverns..but you can't smoke them there !
King James the 1st hated tobacco smoking, he wrote that smoking was. . .
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs. (very clever man).
(If Raleigh really did smoke and James the first was the first anti-smoking campaigner, then James I was a great success. In 1618 he cured Raleigh's `loathsome` habit for good. James had Raleigh's head chopped off for treason!!)
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