The U. Surgeon General will not recommend dry snuff as a safe alternative to other tobacco products, and tins sold in this country bear the same warning stickers as oral snuff and other forms of smokeless tobacco. European snuff makers apply similar labels warning users of snuff's damaging health effects and addictive properties. Studies conducted by the U. Department of Health and Human Services have shown the use of smokeless tobacco products like snuff can lead to nicotine addiction, and that smokeless tobacco users are more likely to become cigarette smokers.
According to a Federal Trade Commission report , roughly 20 million individual packages of dry snuff were sold in the United States in , the last year for which such data is available. In the same year, roughly Dry snuff's popularity in the Western world peaked generations ago. Since then, it's been seen primarily as an old man's vice.
For most, talk of the stuff conjures vague images of mustachioed Germans wearing tweeds and toting pocket watches, taking toots from a wooden snuff box after a hearty dinner of Weisswurst in some candlelit Munich den a century ago. Snuff comes in different strengths and flavors.
The powdered tobacco is most commonly mentholated, but some varieties are scented with fruit, floral oils or anise. More exotic blends are flavored with bourbon, coffee, chocolate, coconut or peppermint. The act of taking snuff is somewhat colorful as well. Is it true that a few hundred years ago cities stank all the time? The claim about snuff is doubtful, or at least exaggerated, but yes, cities did often stink. A modern urban dweller, traveling back in time, but remaining in the same place, might well be bowled over by the olfactory experience.
In , a friar who accompanied Columbus on his 2nd voyage noted that the Indians they encountered used tobacco in two ways. The first was by smoking it through a cane pipe, the end of which they placed into their mouths.
The European explorers took up both practices, of smoking and snuffing, and spread them simultaneously worldwide. Despite this, the popularity of snuff was not due solely, or even primarily, to its usefulness in drowning out unpleasant smells. Personal cleanliness has long been seen as a social virtue, as a way to be polite to others. Put stoppers on them and one might be easily fooled.
It is also conceivable that the Europeans, who first introduced snuff to the port cities and capitals of the East, on realizing the constraints of their own boxes introduced some other type of vessel upon which the design was further developed.
Either way, the creation and development was an unalloyed success. Snuff originated in the Americas and was in common use in Europe by the seventeenth century, where it had become a luxury commodity. The exact timing of its introduction to China from the New World and Europe is unclear, but by the late sixteenth century and certainly by the seventeenth century it was a regular import.
Figure 3a shows the established trade routes in the seventeenth century. The following picture shows a glass vessel from the private collection of Bob Hall containing an indigenous Chinese snuff. The vessel, which probably dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, contains a lovely warm dark brown snuff powder. Early references prove beyond doubt that whereas the smoking of tobacco—widespread outside the royal household—was frowned upon at court, the taking of snuff, a powdered tobacco flavored with various aromatic spices and essences that is snorted into the nasal cavity, was not.
In fact, its taking was readily encouraged as a useful medicinal tool. It was believed to cure many ailments, from the common cold to headaches and a host of stomach maladies. During these early years the snuff bottle began to take on more perfidious undertones as a purveyor of favor at court. Thus began a dance of entitlement and graft. Snuff taking became a part of social ritual and helped to distinguish the elite members of society.
It remained primarily a northern habit, centered in the sprawling Beijing metropolis. The result of this increasing interest in and intensified production of snuff bottles was not only a windfall for the industries involved, but also a blessing for collectors today. These small treasures reflect, on a miniature scale, the extraordinary artistic achievements of the Qing Dynasty. Back then, they believed, as many still do, that snuff keeps one free from colds and gives relief from catarrh and similar complaints.
Tsar Michael I of Russia decreed that smokers should be whipped for the first offence and executed for the second, whilst snuff takers should be treated rather more leniently - they were merely to have their noses cut off! It was given its name following a naval battle off the shore of the Spanish port of Vigo, in The French fleet there was protecting a rich Spanish convoy of galleons. This had sailed from the West Indies following an attack made by a combined English and Dutch fleet.
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