Betel
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Betel. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a pepper-like plant of the East Indies. The betel leaf and the betel nut are from entirely different plants. The betel nut is the nutlet or seed of the betel palm. The fruit is somewhat smaller than a hen's egg. The nuts are gathered before they are quite ripe. They are boiled, cut into slices, and dried, when they assume a mottled brown appearance. The betel nut gets its name from its use with the leaves of the betel. The natives pluck a green betel leaf, smear its surface with a quicklime made from shells, scrape in some fragments of a betel nut, and make a quid which is chewed like tobacco. Chewing causes a flow of saliva which, with the juice of the betel, blackens the teeth and stains the mouth and lips and gums to a repulsive brick red, almost intolerable. Some say betel chewing destroys the teeth at twenty-five, others that it preserves them, sweetens the breath, aids digestion, and gives color to the blood. One authority suggests that betel supplies a valuable tonic needed by people who are rice eaters, and who have no meat. The betel habit is confined chiefly to the Malay race. Much has been written on this disgusting habit of betel chewing as practiced by both sexes of one-tenth of the human race, but betel cannot be so radically different from tobacco as to warrant a tobacco-using people in passing severe criticism on the betel habit of a people less advanced in civilization. See Tobacco
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or BETLE, the English name of the piper betle, a shrubby plant with evergreen leaves, belonging to the typical genus of the order piperaceæ (pepperworts). It is extensively cultivated in the East Indies. Its leaf is used as a wrapper to inclose a few slices of the areca palm nut with a little shell lime. The southern Asiatics are perpetually chewing it to sweeten the breath, to strengthen the stomach, and, if hunger be present, to deaden its cravings. It is called pan, or pan sooparee.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's editors in 1910 could only report a stalemate — "some say betel chewing destroys the teeth at twenty-five, others that it preserves them, sweetens the breath, aids digestion" — and Collier's in 1921 simply repeated the folk claims that it strengthens the stomach and deadens hunger. That question is now settled: in 2004 the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the areca nut itself as a Group 1 carcinogen, causing cancer even when chewed without tobacco, and betel quid is a leading cause of oral cancer in South and Southeast Asia. Aiton's estimate of a tenth of humanity was not far off — several hundred million people still chew daily, from India and Taiwan to Papua New Guinea, so it is far from "confined chiefly to the Malay race." Governments have responded with restrictions rather than the moral judgement of 1910: several Indian states have banned packaged gutka, and Taiwan runs public campaigns against the habit.
Written for this edition, 2026.