Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/186

170 particular district (Florida) from which it was brought to Jean Nicot. He remarks upon the strangeness of the fortune by which the insignificant settlement of Tobago has come to give the name by which the weed is generally known, and he says : " Many grave treatises were now extant (particularly on the Continent), which celebrated the virtues of this plant in the most extravagant terms. To listen to them, the grand elixir was scarcely more restorative and in- fallible." In a quaint book containing much curious information, " Opium and the Opium Appetite," by Alonzo Calkins, M.D. (Philadelphia: J. B, Lippin- cott & Co., 187 1), I find such a passage quoted, and worth requoting, from the " Message to Humanity " of one Dr. CorneUus Bontek^, who was not indeed of Jonson's time, but of that of the Restoration : "A remarkable fact it is that three things of the greatest moment to mankind were discovered at about the same era — the circumnavigation of the globe, the circulation of the blood, and the smoking of tobacco. [I answer not for the good doctor's statements.] This is the very best remedy to be found in the world against that root of all the diseases afflicting mankind, the scurvy. Is one amorous at heart and joyless in his loneliness ; is he sick and weak in body, or torpid and stiff in the joints ; is there pain in the head, eyes, or teeth ; doth colic, or gout, or stone exist ; or, is there a proneness to cra- pulency ? Here in this glorious weed is provided an all-sufficient remedy for his manifold ills." What does your contributor, Dr. Gordon Stables, say to that? Returning to our comedy, we soon find Master