Snuff-Taking (2024)

Abstract

AT a meeting of the Society for the Study of Inebriety and Drug Addiction held on April 21, Dr. J. D. Rolleston read a paper on snuff-taking, which he said has increased enormously within the last five years as the result of letters to The Times by Sir Buckston Browne advocating the use of snuff as a protection against colds. On its first introduction into Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century by Jean Nicot, the French ambassador at Lisbon, snuff was used for the treatment of headaches and colds in the head. It soon, however, passed from being a drug to the rank of a luxury, and snuff-taking became general throughout Spain, Italy and France during the early part of the seventeenth century. Snuff-taking was introduced into Great Britain at the time of the Restoration by the courtiers and officers of Charles II in France, and its popularity increased considerably after the Great Plague. Henceforward until about the middle of the nineteenth century, the snuff box played an important part in the social life of the time, and medical and lay writers were equally extravagant in their praise or denunciation of the new habit. The most serious complication of snuff-taking, to which numerous references are to be found in the medical works of the last century, was the occurrence of plumbism due to the accidental adulteration of the snuff by lead in the packing. Numerous other adulterants which were not only detrimental to the revenue but also injurious to health were described by an Analytical Sanitary Commission in 1853. The Commission, however, was of opinion that the constitutional effects of snuff-taking were much less than in the case of smoking and chewing tobacco, the effects in most cases being mainly local. In conclusion, Dr. Rolleston said that there is no recent information as to how far snuff-taking might become an addiction, but that most probably it should be ranked with other forms of consumption of tobacco, voluntary or enforced cessation of the habit causing considerable discomfort in some cases and little or none in others.