History of tobacco

Some indigenous peoples in California have used tobacco as the base ingredient in smoking mixtures used for treating colds; usually it is mixed with other traditional medicinals such as Salvia dorrii or Lomatium dissectum (the addition of which was thought to be particularly good for asthma and tuberculosis).

[7] According to Iroquois mythology, tobacco first grew out of Atahensic's head after she died giving birth to her twin sons, Sapling and Flint.

Among the Cree and Ojibwe of Canada and the north-central United States, it is offered to the Creator, with prayers, and is used in sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies, and presented as a gift.

[9] Bartolomé de las Casas described how the first scouts sent by Christopher Columbus into the interior of Cuba found: men with half-burned wood in their hands and certain herbs to take their smokes, which are some dry herbs put in a certain leaf, also dry, like those the boys make on the day of the Passover of the Holy Ghost; and having lighted one part of it, by the other they suck, absorb, or receive that smoke inside with the breath, by which they become benumbed and almost drunk, and so it is said they do not feel fatigue.

[9] Swiss doctor Conrad Gesner in 1563 reported that chewing or smoking a tobacco leaf "has a wonderful power of producing a kind of peaceful drunkenness".

In this work, he claimed that tobacco could cure 36 health problems,[11] and reported that the plant was first brought to Spain for its flowers, but "Now we use it to a greater extent for the sake of its virtues than for its beauty".

Stuart King James I wrote a famous polemic titled A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, in which the king denounced tobacco use as "[a] custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

To help the colonies, Charles II banned tobacco cultivation in England, but allowed it to be grown in herb gardens for medicinal purposes.

Tobacco first arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century by the Spanish,[13] where it attracted the attention of doctors[14] and became a commonly prescribed medicine for many ailments.

Although tobacco was initially prescribed as medicine, further study led to claims that smoking caused dizziness, fatigue, dulling of the senses, and a foul taste/odour in the mouth.

In 1682, Damascene jurist Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi declared: "Tobacco has now become extremely famous in all the countries of Islam ... People of all kinds have used it and devoted themselves to it ...

"[16] Although Nicotiana suaveolens is native to Australia,[9] tobacco smoking first reached that continent's shores when it was introduced to northern-dwelling Indigenous communities by visiting Indonesian fishermen in the early 18th century.

By the early 19th century tobacco was an essential commodity routinely issued to servants, prisoners and ticket-of-leave men (conditionally released convicts) as an inducement to work, or conversely, withheld as a means of punishment.

[17] In the Thirteen Colonies, where gold and silver were scarce, tobacco was used as a currency to trade with Native Americans,[18] and sometimes for official purposes such as paying fines, taxes, and even marriage license fees.

By bringing African slaves instead, plantation owners acquired workers for long hours in the hot sun without paying them, providing only a bare subsistence.

The increasing role of tobacco as a cash crop led to a shift in the labor force that would shape life and politics in the American South up through the civil war.

In order to maximize profits, tobacco plantation owners abandoned the traditional practice of indentured servitude in the Americas and turned instead to slavery to supply them with cheap, fungible labor, allowing them to increase their yield while reducing the cost of production.

[21] In the early years at Jamestown the settlers paid little heed to quality control; this attitude soon changed due to both the market and to regulations.

Even though its capacity varied slightly, governed by the regulations of the day, the average weight of the tobacco stored in a hogshead barrel was about a thousand pounds (450 kilograms).

In 1609, English colonist John Rolfe arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, and became the first settler to successfully raise tobacco (commonly referred to at that time as "brown gold")[22] for commercial use.

Large tobacco warehouses filled the areas near the wharves of new, thriving towns such as Dumfries on the Potomac, Richmond and Manchester at the Fall Line (head of navigation) on the James, and Petersburg on the Appomattox.

A historian of the American South in the late 1860s reported on typical usage in the region where it was grown:[34] The chewing of tobacco was well-nigh universal.

Out of doors where his life was principally led the chewer spat upon his lands without offence to other men, and his homes and public buildings were supplied with spittoons.

Even the pews of fashionable churches were likely to contain these familiar conveniences.James Bonsack, an avid craftsman, in 1881 created a machine that revolutionized cigarette production.

[42] A true breakthrough came in 1948, when the British physiologist Richard Doll published the first major studies that proved that smoking could cause serious health damage.

It gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products to protect public health.

However, smoking prevalence and associated ill health continued to rise in the developed world in the first three decades following Richard Doll's discovery, with governments sometimes reluctant to curtail a habit seen as popular as a result – and increasingly organised disinformation efforts by the tobacco industry and their proxies.

The companies ran advertisements that emphasized how their products supposedly had lower tar and nicotine levels alongside improved filter technology.

[50] In order to reduce the potential burden of disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) successfully rallied 168 countries to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003.

The 1946 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by Wendell Meredith Stanley for his 1935 work crystallizing the virus and showing that it remains active.