It was...

July 27, 2006 7:14 PM

It was an important consumer product in the 18th century. Rich and poor “took” it and it was processed in several locations. Outside Bewdley, a mill was created to grind the raw material. The history of the industry is linked to early 20th century photographs, which show the abandoned and derelict mill and machinery.
posted by boo_radley (27 comments total)

I'm happy to see that snuff is appropriate for the front page.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:25 PM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

W. A. Penn wrote in 1901: Snuff-taking today is indeed a curiosity. One reason for the decline of the habit is said to be that white handkerchiefs have completely displaced the coloured silk and bandana ones of our grandfathers.

Ew.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:29 PM on July 27, 2006

Just so I'm clear ...

Nasal snuff is pinched, placed in both nostrils and sniffed. Then it stays there, effectively clogging said nostrils, just waiting for an inevitable sneeze (hence the handkerchief)?
posted by grabbingsand at 7:36 PM on July 27, 2006

Think cocaine for the genteel, grabbingsand. If one sneezes, one is taking one's snuff incorrectly.
posted by boo_radley at 7:37 PM on July 27, 2006

By the way, Mongols still use snuff.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:41 PM on July 27, 2006

Thirteenkiller, really? Where did you hear that? I'd like to read more about it.
posted by borkingchikapa at 7:44 PM on July 27, 2006

Indeed. Snuff bottles are a traditional gift in Mongolia.
posted by boo_radley at 7:48 PM on July 27, 2006

Here
posted by boo_radley at 7:48 PM on July 27, 2006

I've tried it. It's very intense. And your snot is disgusting afterwards. Sneezing is not a big issue.
posted by unSane at 7:48 PM on July 27, 2006

By the way it's not placed in your nostrils. You take a pinch and place it in the little hollow between thumb and forefinger and sniff from that.
posted by unSane at 7:49 PM on July 27, 2006

You can still buy it at Wallgreens actually. I found it there, and bought some. I wouldn't say it was intense, at least not in the sense of a tobacco buzz.
posted by WetherMan at 7:53 PM on July 27, 2006

Snuff was, briefly, a weird fad for me and some friends of mine. Reading some of the comments here I'm not sure we ever took it correctly. All we ever got was ground tobacco in our sinuses and nasty, nasty boogers. Oh yeah, and the occasional nosebleed. Good times.
posted by lekvar at 7:54 PM on July 27, 2006

I lived in Mongolia for a while so that's how I learned that. I never tried it myself; as a girl, I could refuse without looking rude. A lot of the men have bottles made of agate (here is a good example of a pretty plain one) or jade or metal and sometimes they have pretty stones set into them. Men will exchange snuff bottles as a sorta formal greeting. They'll take a sniffle from each others' bottles then return them. I suspect they got the tradition from China during the Qing Dynasty.

I don't know any good sites about it, but if I see something I'll post. Google has pretty good results.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:58 PM on July 27, 2006

A bit about it here
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:59 PM on July 27, 2006

A friend of ours takes snuff, and on a tipsy whim I gave it a shot one night.

Weird. Kind of a mild version of that high you get when you've smoked a cigarette for the first time in a really, really long time.
posted by padraigin at 8:00 PM on July 27, 2006

your history tag is misspelled.

interesting links, thanks...reading, reading...
posted by carsonb at 8:07 PM on July 27, 2006

'Zounds! This post has left me desirous of a pinch of Drake's magical weed.
posted by Ohdemah at 8:33 PM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Thirteenkiller, I don't see your email in your profile, but I'd like to know more about your whole Mongolia thing. Would you mind emailing me?
posted by borkingchikapa at 10:01 PM on July 27, 2006

Well played, boo!
posted by shoepal at 10:17 PM on July 27, 2006

They used to serve snuff at very posh dinners at my university college - it's good stuff, actually, it has a kick but I was very aware of it when I woke up the next morning hung over with brown gunk coming out of my nose.... Thanks for the links, really interesting.
posted by greycap at 11:35 PM on July 27, 2006

Snuff has a long history of use among Southern women. They don't sniff it though, they dip it, like other smokeless tobacco.

It was regarded by some as more genteel than pipe smoking in the era prior to widespread cigarette availability. Needless to say, its incidence has been on the decline for a century or so.
posted by gwyon at 1:00 AM on July 28, 2006

thirteenkiller said: By the way, Mongols still use snuff.

Indeed (self-link to a picture of me doing the traditional Mongolian snuff-exchange greeting with the leader of our yurt camp).

I gave him a cigarette, and he gave me some of his snuff. Our guide may have been pulling our leg, but she told us that the camp leader (something like a tribal leader) told his horsemen to give us his best ponies for our ride across the steppes.

The only other place I've seen much snuff use is at the Oktoberfest in Munich. I was pretty surprised to come across the stuff there.
posted by syzygy at 1:45 AM on July 28, 2006

it has a kick

Quite. I gave it a fair try some years back, and found it very easy to OD: too many "Christ-I'm-gonna-vomit-or-faint" moments to be enjoyable.
posted by raygirvan at 3:15 AM on July 28, 2006

I used Cop[enhagben to enable me to get nictotine fix in workplace where smoking not allowed...till my dentist advised me that I had pre-cancerous lesions from it. My grandmother used the same brand but left lid off to evaporate wetness and then she used the dry stuff. Seems you get a kick of some sort from sneezing!
But "real men " used chew!
posted by Postroad at 4:48 AM on July 28, 2006

I have learned from experience that a modicum of snuff can be most efficacious.

posted by notbuddha at 5:15 AM on July 28, 2006

By the way, Mongols still use snuff.

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I noticed that the local Ingles' had a selection of eleven different brands of snuff. I was pretty much blown away, since I don't think I've ever even met anyone who takes the stuff. I guess my point is that you hardly have to go to Mongolia to find those exotic people that still use snuff.
posted by norm at 8:38 AM on July 28, 2006

Ok, One thing I need to point out before this thread closes, is that there's two kinds of snuff.

American Snuff: Wet, Tobacco Leaf. Suitable for chewing

European Snuff: Dry Powder. Meant for inhaling.

If you attempted to do one with the other, you would have a very bad day.
posted by WetherMan at 6:16 AM on July 30, 2006