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

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De Lagny states that the “Old Believers”, a sect of dissenters from the Greek Church in Russia, look with horror on the use of tobacco. The Wahhabees, a Pharasaical sect of strict Moslems, are rigid in their condemnation of tobacco, and in their adherence to the precepts of the Koran, and the traditions of the Prophet.

There are to be met with nearer home, those who are inveterate against its use, and who willingly join with Cowper in denouncing the

“Pernicious weed which banishes for hours,

That sex whose presence civilizes ours.”

An occasional pamphlet or letter, makes its way into the hands of speculative publishers or into class papers, giving gratuitous advice, and much denunciatory language, against a habit which is by far too general, and has been tested by too many experiments not to be well known, and equally well understood. These “counterblasts” differ but little from the model one which each would seem to aim at imitating—the quaint expressions, the only redeeming quality in the original, alone being wanting.