Chapter IV: Third Day (5)

[101] The _Tabacum_, or common Tobacco plant, was first
discovered in America, by the Spaniards, about the year
1560, and by them imported into Europe. It had been used
by the inhabitants of America long before; and was called
by the inhabitants of the islands, _yoli_, and by those of
the continent, _pætux_. It was sent into Spain from Tabaco,
a province of Yucatan, where it was first discovered, and
from whence it takes its common name. Sir Walter Raleigh is
generally said to have been the first who introduced it into
England, about the year 1585, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
and who taught his countrymen how to smoke it. The following
anecdote is related of him. He having imitated the Indians in
smoking this plant, at length so much delighted in it, that
he was unwilling to disuse it on his return to England; and
therefore supplied himself with several hogsheads, which he
placed in his own study, and generally indulged himself with
smoking secretly two or three pipes a day. He had a simple man,
who waited at his study door, to bring him up daily a tankard
of old ale and nutmeg, and he always laid aside his pipe when
he heard him approaching. One day, being earnestly engaged in
reading some book which amused him, the man abruptly entered,
and, surprised at seeing his master enveloped in smoke, (a
sight perfectly new to him) the smoke ascending in thick vapors
from his mouth and the bowl of the tobacco-pipe, immediately
threw the ale in his master’s face, ran down stairs, and
alarmed the family with repeated exclamations, that his master
was on fire in the inside, and that if they did not make haste,
before they could get up stairs, he would be burned to ashes.

[102] Taylor on remarkable Trees, Plants, and Shrubs.

[103] Evangelical Magazine, January, 1814.

[104] Dr. Black, ii. 694.

[105] Phil. Trans. for 1796.

[106] See Mr. Hitchen’s Paper, in Phil. Trans. vol. xci. p.
159.

[107] Storch’s Picture of Petersburgh, p. 330.

[108] Several salts are formed by art with this metal for
medicinal purposes. One of the most valuable is _calomel_,
which is made by triturating fluid mercury with corrosive
sublimate, and then submitting the mixture to sublimation. As
this medicine is much used in private families, and as dreadful
consequences might ensue if it were improperly prepared, it
ought to be generally known, says Mr. Parkes, that if it be
not perfectly insipid to the taste, and indissoluble by long
boiling in water, it contains a portion of oxymuriate of
mercury, or corrosive sublimate, and consequently is poisonous.

[109] Monthly Review, Appendix, vol. xxvii. N.S. p. 551.

[110] Storch’s Picture of Petersburgh, p. 319.

[111] In domestic economy, the necessity of keeping copper
vessels always clean is generally acknowledged; but it may
not perhaps be so well known, that fat and oily substances,
and vegetable acids, do not attack copper while _hot_; and,
therefore, if no liquor be ever suffered to grow _cold_ in
these utensils, they may be used for every culinary purpose
with perfect safety.--Dr. Percival gives an account of a
young lady who amused herself, while her hair was dressing,
with eating samphire pickle impregnated with copper. She soon
complained of pain in the stomach, and in five days vomiting
commenced, which was incessant for two days. After this her
stomach became prodigiously distended: and in nine days after
eating the pickle, death relieved her from her sufferings.
Medical Transactions, vol. iii, p. 80.

[112] The materials forming nearly the whole of this
Section have been selected and arranged from the _seventh_
Edition of Parkes’s _Chemical Catechism_: a work of peculiar
interest, and which was confidently recommended to the Author
by a physician and chemist of distinguished celebrity.

[113] See Encyclopædia Britannica.

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