Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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Camden, who informs us of these fears for the civilization of England, also states that Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, a courtly prelate (who died in 1596), by the use of tobacco “smothered the cares he took by means of his unlucky marriage.” According to Aubrey, the pipe was handed from man to man round the table; and this bears, certainly, a great resemblance to the custom of the North-American Indians—the chief smoking two or three whiffs, then passing it to his neighbour, until from one to another it passes round the circle, and comes back to the first smoker again.

M. Jorevin, a Frenchman, who visited England in Charles the Second’s time, says that the women smoked tobacco as well as the men.

From England the practice of smoking was carried to the Continent. Dutch students were first taught the art of smoking at the University of Leyden by students from England; hence the greatest smokers in Europe derived their knowledge of the use of the pipe from the English.

Lilly, in his autobiography, informs us that when committed to the guard-room in Whitehall, he thought himself in regions far below, where Orpheus sang, and Pluto reigned, for “some were sleeping, others swearing, others smoking tobacco; and in the chimney of the room were two bushels of broken tobacco-pipes.” Good friend Lilly, what wouldst thou have thought of a visit to a Studenten Kneipe, where a crowd of students, amid fumes dense as a London fog in November, scream and growl the well-known song—

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