The Social History of Smoking
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING PREFACE This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this country from the social point of view. There have been many books written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's "History of Tobacco," 1859, and the "Tobacco" (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable authorities--but hitherto no one has told the story of the fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking. Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's "History" is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine
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INTRODUCTION
The decade-long exile of Baha'u'llah in 'Iraq began under the harshest of
conditions and at the lowest ebb in the fortunes of the Babi Faith. It
witnessed, however, the gradual crystallization of those potent spiritual
forces which were to culminate in the declaration of His world-embracing
mission in 1863. In the course of these years, and from the city of
Ba_gh_dad, there radiated, Shoghi Effendi writes, "wave after wave, a
power, a radiance and a glory which insensibly reanimated a languishing
Faith, sorely-stricken, sinking into obscurity, threatened with oblivion.
From it were diffused, day and night, and with ever-increasing energy, the
first emanations of a Revelation which, in its scope, its copiousness, its
driving force and the volume and variety of its literature, was destined
to excel that of the Bab Himself."(1)
Among these early effusions of the Pen of Glory is a lengthy Arabic
epistle known as the Javahiru'l-Asrar, meaning literally the "gems" or
"essences" of mysteries. A number of themes it enunciates are also
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF SMOKING PREFACE This is the first attempt to write the history of smoking in this country from the social point of view. There have been many books written about tobacco--F.W. Fairholt's "History of Tobacco," 1859, and the "Tobacco" (1857) of Andrew Steinmetz, are still valuable authorities--but hitherto no one has told the story of the fluctuations of fashion in respect of the practice of smoking. Much that is fully and well treated in such a work as Fairholt's "History" is ignored in the following pages. I have tried to confine