Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1883 — Cigars with a Flavor. [ARTICLE]

Cigars with a Flavor.

“Most people like a flavored cigar,” said an Indianapolis druggist to a reporter, who had stepped in to buy a weed. “Try one of these; I think you will like it.” The reporter took one of the brand recommended to him, lighted it, and began- to smoke. “I have to put up considerable cigar flavor,” continued the drUg man, “and I suppose some people wouldn’t find it so difficult a thing to quit smoking if they knew what the popular flavors were made of. On the second thought, though I don’t think it would make any difference. The fact that old cigar stumps are worked over into cigarettes and smoking tobacco, though thoroughly ventilated in the «newspapers, never cured a smoker of the habit.” “Tell me something about these flav ors,” said the reporter. “Well, since you insist on it I will. A flavor I have made a good deal of—it’s a flavor that, in the language of the trade, makes a ‘lO-cent cigar for 5 cents’ —is made as follows: Gum guiaO, gum tolu, tonqua beans, and essence of pineapple, of each one ounce; valerian root, two ounces; laudanum (tincture of opium), one ounce; oil of rose, six drops; Jamaica rum, half a pint; macerate for thirty-six hours and pour off, using one ounce to a pint of port wine, to blow on the fillers. ” “A good many men who get attached to a certain brand of cigars don’t know what chains ’em. It’s the opium, and they get into the habit of using it unconsciously. Valerian taken habitually renders the heart’s action more rapid but feebler, causes buried respiration,

and may occasion congestion of the kidneys. If its use is long continued it may paralyze the spinal cord, so the books say. Its action on the tongue and throat is more prompt and apparent, frequently causing epithelium. As to opium, its infernal effects are well known. It would take an almanac to enumerate all the diseases it occasions. It’s opium and valerian that makes the artificially-flavored cigar popular.”— Inclianapolis Joumal.