Strong Drink and Tobacco Smoke - The Structure, Growth, and Uses of Malt, Hops, Yeast, and Tobacco

By Henry P. Prescott

This vintage book contains a detailed treatise on the structure, growth, and uses of malt, hops, yeast, and tobacco. A fascinating and in-depth investigation into the scientific properties of tobacco and brewing ingredients, "Strong Drink and Tobacco Smoke" is highly recommended for those with an interest in the history and development of these industries, and is not to be missed by the discerning collector of related literature. Contents include: "Introductory", "Materials", "How Barley Grows", "Structure of Barley and Some Other Seeds", "Hops and Yeast", "Malt, Beer, Spirit", and "Tobacco and Some Other Leaves". Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on beer brewing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vintage Cookery Books
• Release date: Aug 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473339194

Book preview

STRONG DRINK

AND

TOBACCO SMOKE;

THE STRUCTURE, GROWTH, AND USES OF MALT,

HOPS, YEAST, AND TOBACCO.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS,

DRAWN AND ENGRAVED ON STEEL.

BY

HENRY P. PRESCOTT, F.L.S.

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

A History of Smoking

Smoking has a surprisingly long history. It dates back to as early as 5000 BCE in shamanistic rituals, originating in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes. Tobacco smoking as we know it today, only spread with the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century however. After this, the consumption, cultivation and trading of tobacco quickly spread. With the modernization of farm equipment and manufacturing, the scope of consumption was massively expanded, which continued to grow until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and medical condemnation in the 1980s.

Many ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, burnt incense as a part of religious rituals, as did the Israelites and the later Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches. In Ancient Greece, smoke was used as healing practice and the Oracle of Delphi made prophecies while intoxicated by inhaling natural gases from a bore hole. The Greek historian Herodotus also wrote that the Scythians used cannabis for ritual mourning purposes and, to some degree, pleasure. He describes how Scythians burned hemp seed:

'At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour-bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure.'

Smoking in the Americas probably originated in the incense-burning ceremonies of shamans, and was later adopted for pleasure or as a social tool. The Maya employed it in classical times (at least from the tenth century) and the Aztecs included it in their mythology. The Aztec goddess 'Cihuacoahuatl' had a body consisting of tobacco, and the priests that performed human sacrifices wore tobacco gourds as symbols of divinity. Even today certain Tzeltal Maya sacrifice thirteen calabashes of tobacco at New Year. Akin to the Greeks, the smoking of tobacco and various other hallucinogenic drugs was used to achieve trances and to come into contact with the spirit world. Reports from the first European explorers and conquistadors to reach the Americas tell of rituals where native priests smoked themselves into such high degrees of intoxication that it is unlikely that the rituals were limited to just tobacco.

In North America the most common form of smoking was in pipes, which today are best known as the peace pipes offered both to other tribes and later European settlers as a gesture of goodwill and diplomacy. In the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America, early forms of cigarettes including smoking reeds or cigars were the most common smoking tools. By the time Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late-fifteenth century, there was widespread use of tobacco smoking as a recreational activity. At the banquets of Aztec nobles, the meal would commence by passing out fragrant flowers and smoking tubes for the dinner guests. At the end of the feast, which would last all night, the remaining flowers, smoking tubes and food would be given as a kind of alms to old and poor people who had been invited to witness the occasion.

Smoking in this fashion became incredibly fashionable in mainland Europe, and it was a Frenchman, Jean Nicot (from whose name the word 'nicotine' derives) who introduced the substance to the continent. From France, it spread to England. The first report of a smoking Englishman is of a sailor in Bristol in 1556, seen 'emitting smoke from his nostrils.' Like tea, coffee and opium, tobacco was just one of many intoxicants originally used as a form of medicine. Early modern European medical science was still to a great extent based on humorism; the idea that everything had a specific humoral nature that varied between hot and cold, dry and moist. Tobacco was often seen as something that was beneficial in its heating and drying properties and was assigned an endless list of beneficial properties.

The concept of ingesting substances in the form of smoke was entirely new and was met with astonishment, but also skepticism by many Europeans. A debate raged among priests, scientists and laymen over whether tobacco was a bane or boon, and both sides had powerful supporters. The English king James I was one of the first outspoken skeptics and wrote A Counterblaste to Tobacco – an unforgiving literary assault on what he believed was a menace to society. Though rife with, at times, irrelevant and partial arguments, it did address some of the health issues and pointed out the peculiar fact that tobacco was frequently assigned conflicting, and at times almost miraculous, properties:

'It makes a man sober that was drunke. It refreshes a weary man, and yet makes a man hungry. Being taken when they goe to bed, it makes one sleepe soundly, and yet being taken when a man is sleepie and drowsie, it will, as they say, awake his braine, and quicken his understanding. As for curing of the Pockes, it serves for that use but among the pockie Indian slaves. Here in England it is refined, and will not deigne to cure heere any other than cleanly and gentlemanly diseases.'

Ever since smoking was introduced outside the Americas, there has been much vehement opposition to it – and as it turns out, not without good cause. Arguments ranged from socio-economic, with tobacco called a usurper of good farm land, to purely moralistic, where many religiously devout individuals saw tobacco as another form of immoral intoxication. Today, we know that smoking is seriously injurious to health – a breakthrough that was first discovered in 1948 by the British epidemiologist Richard Doll. In 1950, Doll published his research in the British Medical Journal, showing a close link between smoking and lung cancer.

Since the 1990s, smoking defence groups have reacted against legislation in some countries with increased taxes, restrictions on where to smoke, and anti-smoking campaigns. These groups feel that new regulations