In Europe in the middle ages, you could spit during a meal, as long as it was underneath the table. Erasmus wrote that “sucking back saliva” was “unmannerly”. In 1903, the British Medical Journal labelled America one of the “expectorative storm centres of the world”. A Massachusetts health inspector, upon asking in 1908 why tailors spat on the floor in every factory he visited, reported receiving the reply, “Of course they spit on the floor; where do you expect them to spit, in their pockets?”
