There is little doubt that the smoke of herbs and leaves of various
kinds was inhaled in this country, and in Europe generally, long
before tobacco was ever heard of on this side the Atlantic. But
whatever smoking of this kind took place was medicinal and not social.
Many instances have been recorded of the finding of pipes resembling
those used for tobacco-smoking in Elizabethan times, in positions and
in circumstances which would seem to point to much greater antiquity
of use than the form of the pipes supports; but some at least of these
finds will not bear the interpretation which has been put upon them,
and in other cases the presence of pipes could reasonably be accounted
for otherwise than by associating them with the antiquity claimed for
them. In any case, the entire absence of any allusions whatever to
smoking in any shape or form in our pre-Elizabethan literature, or in
mediæval or earlier art, is sufficient proof that from the social
point of view smoking did not then exist. The inhaling of the smoke of
dried herbs for medicinal purposes, whether through a pipe-shaped
funnel or otherwise, had nothing in it akin to the smoking of tobacco
for both individual and social pleasure, and therefore lies outside
the scope of this book.

It may further be added that though the use of tobacco was known and
practised on the continent of Europe for some time before smoking
became common in England--it was taken to Spain from Mexico by a
physician about 1560, and Jean Nicot about the same time sent tobacco
seeds to France--yet such use was exclusively for medicinal purposes.
The smoking of tobacco in England seems from the first to have been
much more a matter of pleasure than of hygiene.

Who first smoked a pipe of tobacco in England? The honour is divided