Bound in dark maroon morocco: fine blind-tooled line round edge: gold-tooled lines on rim of boards and border on turnover: title in gold on spine: signed ‘Ramage, London’. Extra leaves included after text to give appropriate thickness for binding. Tobacco was introduced into Europe from South America in the mid-16th century, and it is traditionally said that Sir Walter Raleigh promoted its use in England. King James I, soon after his accession to the throne, joined in the anti-smoking campaign with this vehement denunciation, to which he punningly refers as ‘the fume of an idle brain’. In his peroration he calls tobacco-smoking a ‘custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the brains, daungerouse to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse’. A quotation from the treatise has been used in Parliament in recent years. STC 14363: three other copies are known in Britain, five in the USA.