Crashbox

I stumbed across this little blurb on Wikipedia today while browsing the web in a coffee house in Portland. This spring I have left a short-lived romance with cigarettes behind me, but this still tickled me. In 1604, King James the 1st put forth this entertaining but rather compelling anti-smoking statement, (remember, this was before the invention of proper cigarettes):

Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the Nose, harmefull to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

The last sentence is the best!