As an object of Medical Jurisprudence, its claims to our attention are numerous and important; not only as having occasionally been the means of destroying human life, but as furnishing, in its most romantic history, a striking illustration of the triumph of popular opinion over a series of legislative enactments[446] which had no other origin than that of ignorance and prejudice.
Tobacco was at one period of our history raised to a considerable extent in Yorkshire; but the cultivation of it for the purposes of trade have been long prohibited; and this country, as well as the greater part of Europe, is chiefly supplied from Virginia, where the plant is cultivated in the greatest abundance. The recent leaves do not possess any considerable odour, nor have they much flavour; when dried, however, their odour becomes strong, narcotic, and somewhat fœtid; their taste bitter, and extremely acrid. We have stated, upon another occasion,[447] that tobacco would appear to contain two independent elements of activity, an essential oil, and a proximate principle, of an acrid nature, to which _Vauquelin_ has bestowed the name of _Nicotin_. The essential oil is an extremely virulent poison. _Mr. Barrow_, speaking of the use which the Hottentots make of it for destroying snakes, says, “A Hottentot applied some of it from the short end of his wooden tobacco-pipe to the mouth of a snake, while darting out his tongue. The effect was as instantaneous as an electric shock; with a convulsive motion that was momentary, the snake half untwisted itself, and never stirred more; and the muscles were so contracted, that the whole animal felt hard and rigid, as if dried in the sun.” The author has ventured a conjecture in his _Pharmacologia_,[448] with respect to this virulent oil, which he takes this opportunity of repeating, that “_the juice of cursed hebenon_,” by which, according to _Shakspeare_, the King of Denmark was poisoned, was no other than the essential oil of tobacco.
----“Sleeping within mine orchard, My custom always of the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, With juice of _cursed hebenon_ in a vial, And in the porches of mine ears, did pour The leperous _distilment_.”