Although tobacco was in such general use it yet had plenty of enemies.  It was extravagantly abused and extravagantly praised.  Robert Burton, of “Anatomy of Melancholy” fame, like many other writers of his time, was prepared to admit the medicinal value of the herb, though he detested the general habit of smoking.  Tobacco was supposed in those days to be “good for” a surprising variety of ailments and diseases; but to explore that little section of popular medicine would be foreign to my purpose.  Burton believed in tobacco as medicine; but with regard to habitual smoking he was a worthy follower of King James, the strength of whose language he sought to emulate and exceed when he denounced the common taking of tobacco “by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale”—­as “a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.”  No anti-tobacconist could wish for a more whole-hearted denunciation than that.

Thomas Dekker, to whose pictures of London social life at the opening of the seventeenth century we are so much indebted for information both with regard to smoking and in respect of many other matters of interest, was himself an enemy of tobacco.  He politely refers to “that great Tobacconist, the Prince of Smoake and Darkness, Don Pluto”; and in another place addresses tobacco as “thou beggarly Monarche of Indians, and setter up of rotten-lungd chimney-sweepers,” and proceeds in a like strain of abuse.

One of the most curious of the early publications on tobacco, in which an attempt is made to hold the balance fairly between the legitimate use and the “licentious” abuse of the herb, is Tobias Venner’s tract with the long-winded title:  “A Brief and Accurate Treatise concerning The taking of the Fume of Tobacco, Which very many, in these dayes doe too licenciously use.  In which the immoderate, irregular, and unseasonable use thereof is reprehended, and the true nature and best manner of using it, perspicuously demonstrated.”  Venner described himself as a doctor of physic in Bath, and his tract was published in London in 1637.  Venner says that tobacco is of “ineffable force” for the rapid healing of wounds, cuts, sores and so on, by external application, but thinks little of its use for any other purpose.  Like others of his school, he attacks the “licentious Tobacconists [smokers] who spend and consume, not only their time, but also their health, wealth, and witts in taking of this loathsome and unsavorie fume.”  He admits the popularity of the herb, but expresses his own personal objection to the “detestable savour or smack that it leaveth behind upon the taking of it”; from which one is inclined to surmise that the doctor’s first pipe was not an entire success.  With an evident desire to be fair, Venner, notwithstanding his dislike of the “savour,” refuses to condemn tobacco utterly, because of what he considers its valuable medicinal qualities, and