Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 1:

It may further be added that though the use of tobacco was known and practised on the continent of Europe for some time before smoking became common in England-it was taken to Spain from Mexico by a physician about 1560, and Jean Nicot about the same time sent tobacco seeds to France-yet such use was exclusively for medicinal purposes. The smoking of tobacco in England seems from the first to have been much more a matter of pleasure than of hygiene.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 6:

Grave wits, who, spending farthings four,
Sit, smoke, and warm themselves an hour.

The allusions in the Spectator to smoking in the coffee-houses are frequent. "Sometimes," says Addison, in his title character in the first number of the paper, "sometimes I smoak a pipe at Child's and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-man, over-hear the conversation of every table in the room." And here is a vignette of coffee-house life in 1714 from No. 568 of the Spectator: "I was yesterday in a coffee-house not far from the Royal Exchange, where I observed three persons in close conference over a pipe of tobacco; upon which, having filled one for my own use, I lighted it at the little wax candle that stood before them; and after having thrown in two or three whiffs amongst them, sat down and made one of the company. I need not tell my reader, that lighting a man's pipe at the same candle is looked upon among brother-smoakers as an overture to conversation and friendship." From the very beginning smoking has induced and fostered a spirit of comradeship.

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