Firstmed Blog

Tobacco (Nicotinia spp) is a broad-leafed plant of the nightshade family native to North and South America. It is thought that the first people to start to use leaves of the tobacco plant for chewing and smoking were the Mayan civilisations of Central America in approximately 1000BC. The Mayans viewed tobacco as something of an all-purpose medicine widely believing that it had some magical powers. The practise of chewing and smoking tobacco is thought to have been gradually adopted throughout Central America, spreading across to North and South America.

In 1492 Christopher Colombus was presented with “certain dry leaves” on his travels alongside fruit and spears. It is recorded that the gifts were accepted and taken back to his ship whereby the fruit was eaten and the leaves thrown away. In the same year, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres were credited as the first Europeans to be seen smoking. Back in Spain Rodrigo de Jerez was imprisoned after his neighbours were frightened by the smoke seen coming outo f his mouth and nose and he was imprisoned for seven years. On his release, smoking was the latest craze in Spain. By 1498, Columbus visited Trinidad and Tobago, naming the latter island after tobacco.

Throughout the sixteenth century, sailors are credited with the global spread of tobacco. It is thought that tobacco was introduced to England by Sir John Hawkins in 1560. However, it was not readily accepted in England and James I (1566-1625) notably published ‘A Counterblast to Tobacco’ in 1604 in which tobacco was described as “an invention of Satan”. He went on to ban tobacco from London alehouses and introduced a tax. However, he later had a change of heart and even introduced a reduction in the tax on tobacco.

The cigar became increasingly popular in England in the 1820s before the advent of the cigarette. The birth of the cigarette is a topic of controversy among historians. While some believe that they were born from beggars in Seville who picked up the cigar ends thrown down and wrapped them in scraps of paper, others think that the first paper-rolled cigarettes were made by Egyptian soldiers fighting in the Turkish-Egyptian war. It wasn’t really until the Crimean war when British soldiers emulated their Turkish comrades rolling their tobacco in newspaper print that cigarettes were introduced to the Brits. It soon became very popular with the first cigarette factory opening in Walworth, England in 1856.

Quite rapidly a smoking culture built up and after World War 1, in the 1920s smoking became associated with a glamorous, carefree lifestyle and it also became socially acceptable for women to smoke. However, The Lancet was already writing about fears of the impact of smoking on one’s health in 1858 and in 1950 the British Medical Journal published evidence suggesting a link between smoking and lung cancer, to be followed by the announcement in 1964 by US Surgeon General Luther Terry that smoking causes lung cancer. By 1965, UK bans cigarette advertisements on television later followed by a ban for advertising cigarettes on radio in 1971. More recently in 2003, the advertisement and promotion is banned in the UK while over in New York, smoking is banned in all public places.

Tobacco can be smoked (usually in the form of a cigarette, cigar or in a pipe), chewed, “dipped” or sniffed in to the nose as snuff. Chewed tobacco is one of the oldest methods of consuming tobacco leaves known. Native Americans in both North and South America are known to have chewed tobacco, frequently mixing it with lime. These days modern tobacco meant for chewing is produced in produced in three forms; twist, plug and scrap.

Often confused with chewing tobacco is dip. In contrast, a small pinch of ‘dip’ is taken from a tin and placed inbetween the lower lip and gums. In this spot, blood vessels are plentifuol and close to the surface meaning that the nictine easily passes into the blood system. Saliva which comes into contact with the dip is very nauseating if swallowed and is commonly spitted out.

These days snuff is a generic term for finely ground tabacco although it initially referred to a dry snuff popular in the eighteenth century. European (dry) snuff was sniffed in up the nose where as American snuff was much stronger and intended to be used in dipping. When snuff was popular, it was placed in a small depression formed by three tendons below the thumb on the back on the hand before it was sniffed. This depression is know named the anatomical snuff box.

Currently, the most popular intake of tobacco is via smoking, with cigarettes leading the way. Cigarettes rarely contain pure tobacco but instead have a whole host of things added. Nicotine is the active ingredient in cigarettes and is what people become addicted to. It does however have limited carcinogenic effects. More than 4000 chemical compounds have however been identified in tobacco smoke, of which at least 43 are known to be related to carcinogenesis. The precise make up of individual makes of cigarettes varies greatly, in particular with reference to nicotine and tar content.