Cigarette Products:

The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 3:

It is pretty clear that not a few of the druggists who sold tobacco were great rascals. Ben Jonson has let us into some of their secrets of adulteration—the treatment of the leaf with oil and the lees of sack, the increase of its weight by other artificial additions to its moisture, washing it in muscadel and grains, keeping it in greased leather and oiled rags buried in gravel under ground, and by like devices. Other writers speak of black spice, galanga, aqua vitæ, Spanish wine, aniseeds and other things as being used for purposes of adulteration.

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The Social History of Smoking

George Latimer Apperson

Chapter 15:

These questions received no answers from the learned correspondents of the most useful and omniscient of weekly papers. Personally, I much doubt Mr. Denman's suggested explanations of his highlander's curious implement. There is no evidence that a sergeant in the British army ever carried a cricket-bat-like implement either as a sign of office or to be used for disciplinary or punitive purposes like the canes of the German sergeants of long ago. It would seem to be more likely that this particular figure was of unusual, perhaps unique, make, and had some special local or individual significance, wherever or for whom it was first made and used, which has now been forgotten.

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