Tobacco. Nicotiana Tabacum.
(Pentandria Monogynia. Nat. Ord. Luridæ, Lin. Solaneæ, Juss.)
Tobacco is an annual plant, a native of America, from whence it was imported into Europe. We learn from Humboldt that it has been cultivated from time immemorial by the native people of the Oroonoko; and was smoked all over America at the time of the Spanish conquest. Hermandez de Toledo sent it into Spain and Portugal in 1559, when Jean Nicot[[445]] was Ambassador at the court of Lisbon, from Francis II, and he transmitted, or carried either the seed, or the plant to Catherine de Medicis, as one of the wonders of the new world, and which, it was supposed, possessed virtues of a very extraordinary nature. This seems to be the first authentic record of the introduction of this plant into Europe. In 1589 the Cardinal Santa Croce, returning from his nunciature in Spain and Portugal to Italy, carried thither with him tobacco; and we may form some notion of the enthusiasm with which its introduction was hailed, from a perusal of the poetry which the subject inspired. It is said that the smoking tobacco was first introduced by Sir Walter Raleigh on his return from America; and the avidity with which the custom was immediately adopted is shewn by the philippic written against it by King James, entitled the “Counterblaste to Tobacco.”
As an object of Medical Jurisprudence, its claims to our attention are numerous and important; not only as having occasionally been the means of destroying human life, but as furnishing, in its most romantic history, a striking illustration of the triumph of popular opinion over a series of legislative enactments[[446]] which had no other origin than that of ignorance and prejudice.
Tobacco was at one period of our history raised to a considerable extent in Yorkshire; but the cultivation of it for the purposes of trade have been long prohibited; and this country, as well as the greater part of Europe, is chiefly supplied from Virginia, where the plant is cultivated in the greatest abundance. The recent leaves do not possess any considerable odour, nor have they much flavour; when dried, however, their odour becomes strong, narcotic, and somewhat fœtid; their taste bitter, and extremely acrid. We have stated, upon another occasion,[[447]] that tobacco would appear to contain two independent elements of activity, an essential oil, and a proximate principle, of an acrid nature, to which Vauquelin has bestowed the name of Nicotin. The essential oil is an extremely virulent poison. Mr. Barrow, speaking of the use which the Hottentots make of it for destroying snakes, says, “A Hottentot applied some of it from the short end of his wooden tobacco-pipe to the mouth of a snake, while darting out his tongue. The effect was as instantaneous as an electric shock; with a convulsive motion that was momentary, the snake half untwisted itself, and never stirred more; and the muscles were so contracted, that the whole animal felt hard and rigid, as if dried in the sun.” The author has ventured a conjecture in his Pharmacologia,[[448]] with respect to this virulent oil, which he takes this opportunity of repeating, that “the juice of cursed hebenon,” by which, according to Shakspeare, the King of Denmark was poisoned, was no other than the essential oil of tobacco.
----“Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ears, did pour
The leperous distilment.”