History of Tobacco Plant in the Old World - Part 1




port tobacco Few plants in the history of the world have such complex and contradictory relationships with humans as tobacco. The tobacco plant is undoubtedly responsible for our addictive behaviour, shortened lives, and highly negative financial and medical consequences for the human societies all over the planet. The only people who truly benefit from tobacco are, of course, manufacturers and sellers or cigarettes - all those huge corporative monsters with their staff of employees, consultants, attorneys and psychologists who work together to hook on tobacco as many of us as they can. Thanks to their efforts, tobacco, sold to us as being pleasurable, sophisticated, and “cool”, now is one of the most widely consumed plant drugs on earth. So far no nation has declared it illegal, although the power of international tobacco corporations has been substantially reduced due to the tightened governmental restrictions and elevated taxation on cigarettes in many industrialized countries.

As we all know, tobacco smoking is the primary cause of premature death of millions of people due to debilitating diseases, such as lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, emphysema, and so on. Some researchers consider cigarettes to be even more addictive than the hardest of the existing synthetic drugs - heroin. No wonder that tobacco has a long history of human usage and still is firmly integrated in our everyday lifestyle! How did it come that far?

tobacco history The tobacco plant, as well as the custom of smoking its dry leaves to experience narcotic “high”, is native to the American continent. Although some historians believe that smoking was known to humans already in the Palaeolithic Era, there is no evidence of tobacco consumption in any of the historical civilizations of the Old World before Columbus. However, since Columbus introduced tobacco to the Europeans during his second voyage to America, this drug has spread very quickly and has been with us ever since. Actually, tobacco was one of the most successful of American “newcomers” to the Old World and the most immediate payoff from the discovery the new land.

 As every new drug, tobacco in Europe immediately became associated with medical practices. In 1560, tobacco sniffs (derived from a shamanic Mayan tobacco plant) were offered to Catherine de Medici as a remedy for her chronic migraines, and since then the plant became famous as “Herba Medicea”. In the mid-17th century, Danish doctor Thomas Bartholin started recommending tobacco to his patients in quite a weird form of tobacco-smoke and tobacco-juice enemas, due to their “purgative effect”. In the 18th century, tobacco was prescribed by history tobaccophysicians in France to women suffering from “hysteria” - that time, in the form of “intra-vaginal insufflations of tobacco smoke”. Aside from these eccentric ways to use tobacco, smoking quickly spread around the Old World as an everyday “habit”. Not only smoked, but also chewed and snuffed, tobacco was considered a male dominator privilege in the nineteenth century Europe - actually, in those times, the man’s status was determined depending on the quality of cigars he smoked… Tobacco was used as an recreational drug and was even believed to possess aphrodisiac qualities which could remarkably increase “male strength”! 

To be continued…

Lada Brown

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Posted on September 4, 2007 
Filed Under Tobacco History

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