 In Victorian era Britain, a few miracle "snake oil" claims on the health or curative benefits of certain snuff types surfaced in publications.For instance, a London weekly journal called "The Gentlewoman" advised readers with ailing sight to use the correct type of Portuguese snuff, "whereby many eminent people had cured themselves so that they could read without spectacles after having used them for many years".Snuff's image as an aristocratic luxury attracted the first U.S. federal tax on tobacco, created in 1794.