Thomas Browne

“ Tobacco may be made or cured without a caldo, and will ferment and grow brown long laid together, and hung up will grow brown. To advance the same the caldo may be added before the rolling up, for then it will have a quicker taste and sweeter smell. The leaves first ripe make the best when they grow gummy and brittle; they must be often cleared of the sprouts that grow upon the same stem and the baschros left out. To make the best tobacco, these to be taken, and of the male; and a good caldo used, and kept awhile, till time digest remaining crudities. ”

“ The purgative quality lieth in the middle principle, which goes not away from a gentle heat; for the water purgeth not, the smoke but very doubtfully, and seldom in clysters of the smoke of three or four pipefuls, nor in the salt thereof, neither incineration, but in the middle principles of the nitrous salt, and such parts as are to be extracted by tincture,infusion, or decoction, whose actives remain in the menstruum, and therefore that which is decocted, and after dried, grows faint in the purgative quality, if it returneth. Of tobacco there is the male and female; the male the best. ”

“ That which comes fermented and dyed unto us affords no distinct account, in regard it is infected with a decoction or lixivium, which is diverse according to different places, and some ascend no higher than urine. ”