Alan Blum
Kevin Bailey
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States

London bookseller John Dunton (1659–1733) could be called the first newspaper advice columnist. In 1691 he and three polymath friends founded the Athenian Society, which began publishing a twice-weekly periodical to answer “all the most Nice and Curious questions Posed by the Ingenious”¹ on a wide range of subjects, including politics, religion, literature, science, and health.

During the six years in which Dunton published The Athenian Mercury, it became England’s most popular major periodical. The July 11, 1691 issue (Figure 1) is the oldest original publication in the collection of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. In this issue, a reader asks, “Whether the taking of Tobacco does a man good or hurt?” Dunton’s erudite and delightful answer, lightly edited for Hektoen International readers, stands the test of time:

Mr. Osborn in his Famous Advice to his Son,² made up, as all know, only of his own Experiences, tells him, that he had himself taken it from sixteen to sixty, without ever finding it did him one Farthings-worth either of good or hurt — And the same we are apt to believe many more might say if they’d be but ingenious. However, it’s certain enough that in this Cafe as well as all others, circumstances extremely alter the thing: What’s one Man’s Meat and Physick too is another’s Poison — all grant that Tobacco may be of excellent Use to your Moist and Phlegmatic Constitutions, by drying up or draining off what would else offend Nature. — But on the other side, ’tis almost as much Poison to a dry and choleric Person as the Oil of it is to a Kitten, when dropped upon its Tongue, or convey’d into its Flesh; rendering him yet more adust [scorched] and choleric and even endangering the throwing him into a Frenzy, especially if taken in any great quantity; for a little Poison can do but a little Mischief. And indeed ’tis the Quantity after all that may seem to denominate it either profitable or hurtful. We have known some such Gluttons at it, as to smoke upwards of thirty Pipes a day; and others so bewitched with it, that they can do almost nothing else. These extremes it was, we may believe, which brought all the Wits of the Age against it, when it first obtained in England, if we mayn’t rather be tempted to suspect it was King James the First’s Royal Pen being engaged in the Cause, and proclaiming open War against it, which made all the other writers draw on the same side; (though could that Prince have known what vast Revenues this Plant would in a few Ages have brought to the Crown, he could scarce have had the Heart to be so unmerciful against it.) Hence proceeded Jo. Sylvester’s Volley of Shot thundered from Mount Helicon,³ as well as all the little Potgun-Scribbles which we find in that Age against poor Tobacco. Nor has the World quite done with it yet – Meibomius in a Treatise of his — De Cerevisiis Ebriaminibus aliis,⁴ printed at Helmstadt, 1668. Mentions among other Narcotic Fumes, and is withall very witty upon it, applying thereunto what Virgil says of Cacus⁵ —

“Forth from his Jaws
Vast Smoke he draws,
O strange and wondrous Sight!
He draws and spews,
And fills the House With mingled Fire and Night.”

Which if you are disposed to be Merry, take thus, (or somewhat like ’em) in pure Sternhold.⁶

But notwithstanding all this, and that no Crowned head in Christendom did ever yet smoke, that came to our knowledge, the Porters in London, and the Good-women and Children in the West are not like to take one Pipe less than they did before, — and so we leave ‘em without any farther Disturbance at their unenvied Pleasure.

End notes

1. Cormick J: Medical advice in seventeenth-century journalism. JAMA 1973:224(1):83-87.
2. English essayist Francis Osborne (1593-1659) wrote Advice to a Son. Or Directions For your better Conduct, Through the various and most important Encounters of this Life in 1656. He was critical of women, matrimony, and…smoking.
3. This is a reference to an anti-tobacco broadside by English poet Josuah Sylvester (1563-1618) TOBACCO BATTERED; & THE PIPES SHATTERED (About their Eares that idlely idolize so base & barbarous a WEED OR at least-wise over-love so loathsome VANITIE:) by A Volley of holy Shot Thundered From Mount HELICON.
4. German physician Johann Heinrich Meibom (1638-1700), who wrote 57 medical treatises, including De Cervisiis Potibusque Et Ebriaminibus Extra Vinum Aliis Commentarius (On Beer and Other Drinks), is perhaps best known for his discovery of the sebaceous glands in the eyelid, which are named after him (Meibomian glands). 
5. The reference to Virgil and Cacus comes from The Aeneid, in which Vulcan’s son Cacus steals the cattle that Hercules is driving in one of his labors. Cacus breathes fire and smoke, and the cave in which he and the cows hide before being routed by Hercules is filled with billowing smoke.
6. This is a reference to Thomas Sternhold (1500–1549), an English courtier and the principal author of the first English metrical version of the Psalms, translated from Latin.