“This Vile Custom of Tobacco Taking”

‘LOATHSOME to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.’

Penned nearly four hundred years ago, this description concludes the antismoking manifesto entitled A Counterblaste to Tobacco, published by no less a person than England’s King James I, the sponsor of the 1611 Bible translation known as the King James Version.

What prompted this, and what lessons can we draw?

Medicinal and Other Uses

When Christopher Columbus returned to Europe after his visit to America in 1492, he brought back some seeds of a plant prized by American Indians for its medicinal properties. Later, Nicholas Monardes identified the herb as tabaco (or picielt, according to the Indians). The conquering Spaniards had learned of its value in caring for the wounds they suffered, ‘healing themselves to great benefit.’​—Joyful News Out of the New Found World, English translation by John Frampton, 1577.

It was another use of this plant, though, that particularly caught the explorers’ attention. Monardes explains:

‘One of the marvels of this herb, and that which brings most admiration, is the manner how the Priests of the Indians did use it. When there was amongst the Indians any manner of business, of great importance, in which the chiefs had necessity to consult with their priests, their chief Priest took certain leaves of the Tabaco and cast them into the fire, and did receive the smoke of them at his mouth and at his nose with a cane, and in taking of it, he fell down upon the ground, as a dead man, and remaining so, according to the quantity of smoke that he had taken. When the herb had done its work, he did revive and awake, and gave them their answers, according to visions and illusions which he saw. In like sort the rest of the Indians, for their pastime, do take the smoke of the Tabaco.’

Sir Walter Raleigh took possession of Virginia in 1584. As the colony grew, the Indian custom of smoking tobacco became popular with the settlers there too. Back in England, ‘it was Raleigh who was chiefly responsible for introducing the habit and patronising the cult,’ asserts historian A. L. Rowse.

The “Counterblaste”

Opposing the newfound habit, however, was none other than his king, James. He put pen to paper to alert his subjects to the dangers of smoking tobacco.

‘That the manifold abuses of this vile custom of Tobacco taking may the better be espied, it is fit that first you enter into consideration both of the first original thereof, and likewise for the reasons of the first entry thereof into this country.’ So begins the famous Counterblaste. After reviewing what the king called the ‘stinking and unsavory’ custom of using tobacco smoke to cure ills, James lists four arguments people used to justify their habit:

1. That human brains are cold and wet, and thus, all dry and hot things (such as tobacco smoke) should be good for them.

2. That this smoke, through its heat, strength, and natural quality, should purge both head and stomach of colds and upsets.

3. That people would not have taken the custom to heart so much if they had not found by experience that it was good for them.

4. That many find relief from sickness and that no man ever received harm from tobacco smoking.

In the light of modern scientific knowledge, you will no doubt well agree with James’ counterarguments. Tobacco smoke not only is hot and dry but, rather, has a ‘certain venomous faculty joined with the heat thereof.’ ‘It does no more good to inhale such smoke to cure a cold than to eat meat and drink beverages that give you wind in order to prevent colic pains!’ Some people may claim to have smoked for years without any ill effects, but does that make smoking beneficial?

James forcefully reasoned that ‘though old harlots may attribute their longevity to their immoral practices, they ignore the fact that many prostitutes die prematurely’ from the sexually transmitted diseases they contract. And what about old drunkards who believe they prolong their days ‘by their swinelike diet’ but never consider how many others die ‘drowned in drink before they be half old’?

Sins and Vanities

Having decimated the arguments in favor of smoking, James next draws attention to ‘sins and vanities’ committed by those who smoke. Prominent among these, he maintains, is the sin of lust. Not content with inhaling a little tobacco smoke, most crave more. Indeed, nicotine addiction has become a common phenomenon.

And what of ‘vanities’? James blasts the tobacco smoker with the argument: ‘Is it not both great vanity and uncleanness that at the table, a place of respect, you puff filthy smoke and stink, breathing out the smoke, infecting the air, when others present abhor such a practice?’

As if aware of the numerous health hazards smokers face, James reasons: ‘Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than the dining chamber, and yet it makes a kitchen also oftentimes in the inward parts of men, soiling and infecting them, with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as has been found in some great Tobacco takers that after their death were opened.’

To crown his argument, James continues: ‘Herein is not only a great vanity but a great contempt of God’s good gifts, that the sweetness of man’s breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke!’

[Picture on page 13]

King James I

[Credit Line]

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

[Picture on page 13]

Sir Walter Raleigh

[Credit Line]

Courtesy of the Trustees of The British Museum