Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

The fumes of dried coltsfoot leaves were used as a remedy in cases of difficulty of breathing, both in ancient Roman times and in Tudor England. Lyte, in his translation, 1578, of Dodoens' "Historie of Plants," says of coltsfoot: "The parfume of the dryed leaves layde upon quicke coles, taken into the mouth through the pipe of a funnell, or tunnell, helpeth suche as are troubled with the shortnesse of winde, and fetche their breath thicke or often, and do [sic] breake without daunger the impostems of the breast." The leaves of coltsfoot and of other plants have often been used as a substitute for tobacco in modern days. A correspondent of Notes and Queries, in 1897, said that when he was a boy he knew an old Calvinist minister, who used to smoke a dried mixture of the leaves of horehound, yarrow and "foal's foot" intermingled with a small quantity of tobacco. He said it was a very good substitute for the genuine article. Similar mixtures, or the leaves of coltsfoot alone, have often been smoked in bygone days by folk who could not afford to smoke tobacco only.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

Addison, in the twenty-eighth Spectator, April 2, 1711, took note of the severance which had taken place between sign and trade, and of the absurdity that the sign no longer had any significance. After satirizing first, the monstrous conjunctions in signs of "Dog and Gridiron," "Cat and Fiddle" and so forth; and next the absurd custom by which young tradesmen, at their first starting in business, added their own signs to those of the masters under whom they had served their apprenticeship; the essayist goes on to say: "In the third place I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent than to see ... a tailor at the Lion? A cook should not live at the Boot, nor a Shoe-maker at the Roasted Pig; and yet for want of this regulation, I have seen a Goat set up before the door of a perfumer, and the French King's Head at a sword-cutler's."

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