10
Dec

The View from Scotland … on Smoking

   Posted by: Win Tonkin   in Quotes

We continue our series of the opinions of James VI of Scotland /James I of England.

If only his view had prevailed 400 years ago, when the use of tobacco in Europe was still quite new. In Britain, Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 – 1618) is credited with making tobacco popular.

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”. (A Counterblast to Tobacco, 1604)

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2 comments so far

Leslie McCawley
 1 

Thank you for posting this great quote! As an anti-tobacco activist this is one of my favorites. Readers might be interested to know that in the early 1600s Pope Urban VIII threatened excommunication for anybody caught smoking in a holy place.

Then, in 1612, the Chinese Emperor issued an edict forbidding the planting or use of tobacco, and it was later made a crime punishable by execution. Now that was a serious public health policy!

December 27th, 2010 at 14:41
Dorothea Preis
 2 

I also loved it due to my own views on smoking!

December 27th, 2010 at 16:07

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