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HERBALS AND HEALTH

The first literary mention of tobacco in English, in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene of 1590, is, appropriately, a reference to the healing qualities of the herb. Indeed, initial European interest was devoted almost entirely to the tobacco plant itself and its medicinal applications. Some of the lengthiest discussions of tobacco in the 16th century appeared in herbals, vast compendia of knowledge about plants that served primarily as medical handbooks. The medicinal value of tobacco was perceived as virtually limitless: there was no ailment, it seemed, that tobacco could not cure, from shortness of breath and halitosis to labor pains and wounds. It was even considered a prophylactic against the plague. The cures were effected either by inhaling the smoke from the leaves, making a sugary syrup or juice with them, applying the hot leaves directly to the problem area, or, on occasion, through an enema.

Medical conceptions of the human body and disease during this period were based on the Galenic theory that all matter has an essence consisting of a combination of four qualities –hot, cold, wet, and dry –and that the human body is governed by the four humors –blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. The humors each had an essence: blood was seen to be hot and moist, phlegm cold and moist, and so forth. The health of the body, then, was based on the equilibrium of the humors, with illness or disease defined as an imbalance thereof. Treatment meant returning the body to a state of humoral equilibrium, essentially by depleting the body of the excess humor by such means as bloodletting, purging, and vomiting. Tobacco, seen as hot and dry, was useful for depleting the body of surplus phlegm –hence its apparent appropriateness as a treatment for asthma.

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Theodor de Bry (Flemish, active in Germany, 1528–1598) after Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (French, d. 1588)
Floridian health remedies, including inhalation of tobacco smoke
Hand-colored engraving from: Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Brevis Narratio in Eorum Quœ in Americœ Provincia Gallis Acciderunt . . . [A brief narration of those things which befell the French in the province of Florida in America . . .]. Frankfurt: Johann Wechel and Theodor de Bry, 1591
Rare Books Division

Three distinct Amerindian health remedies are described in the lower image. The first entailed sucking blood from a cut in the sick person's forehead; the blood was then drunk by pregnant women and young mothers, whose children became stronger as a result. Other patients were laid face down to inhale the smoke of certain seeds, to purge disease. The cure effected by tobacco, shown in the center background, was described as follows:

They also have a plant which the Brazilians call petum and the Spaniards tapaco. After carefully drying its leaves, they put them in the bowl of a pipe. They light the pipe, and, holding its other end in their mouths, they inhale the smoke so deeply that it comes out through their mouths and noses; by this means they often cure infections.

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Charles Rye (British, 1st quarter 19th century) after Hendrik Goltzius (Dutch, 1558–1617) Supposed portrait of Jean Nicot (1530–1604)
Engraving, 1822
Arents Tobacco Collection

The name of Nicot, whose garden in Lisbon became a mecca for people looking for cures while he was in Portugal on French royal business, will forever be associated with tobacco. His fame resulted at least in part from his having effected tobacco cures at the French court, including curing the migraines of the Queen Mother, Marie de Medici. The absence of an actual portrait of Nicot accounts for the wishful thinking seen in the adoption of the Dutch engraver Goltzius's portrait of Nicot's younger contemporary, the Antwerp merchant Jan Nicquet, as a portrait of Nicot.

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D. Nicole (French, 3rd quarter 18th century?)
Horse with smoking pipe extending from its anus
Etching and engraving from an unidentified veterinary manual, n.d.
Print Collection, David McN. Stauffer Collection

This rather astounding print is a graphic illustration of one of the medicinal uses of tobacco, and testimony to the long-lasting conviction that it was a useful health remedy. The herb was generally described as a purgative, whether through smoking or other forms of ingestion or external use, making its application as an enema natural.

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Nicolás Monardes (Spanish, ca. 1512–1588); John Frampton (British, active 1577–96), translator
Ioyfull newes out of the newe founde worlde, Part II
London: William Norton, 1577
Arents Tobacco Collection

Although the Seville physician Monardes omitted tobacco from his first New World herbal, the 1571 publication of his second book, which featured tobacco on its title page, had a broad popularizing effect. Among the various problems tobacco was thought to remedy were: "griefs" of the head, breast, stomach, and joints; the "evil of the mother" (apparently labor pains); "evil breathing at the mouth of children" (halitosis); worms; toothache; and old, new, and venomous wounds. "Griefs of the breast" included shortness of breath, to be cured by taking a syrup concocted from the leaves, or the smoke, both of which caused the "rottenness" to be expelled at the mouth!

According to Monardes, among the Indians not only did shamans use tobacco to conjur "visions and illusions," but laypeople also used it recreationally, "for to make themselves drunk withal, and to see the visions, and things that do represent to them."

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Crispijn II de Passe (Dutch, 1597–ca. 1670)
Petum Maius, Sive Latifolium [May, or large-leaved, petum]
Engraving in his: Hortus Floridus [The flower garden]. Arnhem: Johannes Janssonius and Utrecht: Crispijn de Passe, 1614
Spencer Collection

Florilegia, the flower books that gained popularity in the 17th century, differ from the earlier medicinal herbals in their emphasis on flowering plants, and in the attractiveness of their engraved plates, which provide more detailed pictorial information. The history of the herbal is one of constant searching for ever-greater accuracy in the depiction of plants, and the use of engraved plates (the Hortus is one of the first in this field) was considered a great improvement over the rougher, more generalized woodcuts. Besides such basic information as how plants look and when they bloom, the Hortus, which is organized by season, allows the viewer to visit a seasonal "garden" in bloom no matter the time of year.

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Edmund Spenser (British, 1522–1599)
The Faerie Queene, vol. I
London: Printed by John Wolfe for William Ponsonbie, 1590
Arents Tobacco Collection

Coming upon the wounded Timias in the woods, the huntress Belphoebe immediately goes off in search of tobacco. Once in her possession:

The souveraine weede betwixt two marbles plaine
She powneded small, and did in peeces bruze,
And then atweene her lilly handes twaine,
Into his wound the iuice thereof did scruze

upon which the hero was miraculously healed. Spenser was befriended by Sir Walter Raleigh, who popularized tobacco use in England in the decade preceding the publication of The Faerie Queene, and who may well have been cultivating the "divine weed" on his Irish estate, not far from Spenser's.

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Unidentified (Dutch, 1st half 17th century)
Dutch tobacco shop
Engraving in: Johan van Beverwyck (Dutch, 1594–1657). Schat der Gesontheydt [Treasury of health]. Amsterdam: Jan Jacobsz Schipper, 1656
Arents Tobacco Collection

Beverwyck discusses tobacco at the end of his section on "Drinks" (including water, wine, and beer). One of the virtues of tobacco smoke is that, once taken into the body, it "turns the stomach upside down," causing convulsions and thereby purging it. He mentions little more about the virtues of the herb, but gives vivid warning against abuse, recounting the story of a man who, after regularly smoking 20 pipes per day, ended up drowning in his own phlegm.

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Unidentified (German, 1st quarter 18th century)
Tobacco Clyster Pipe
Engraving in: Michael Bernhard Valentini (German, 1657–1729). Polychresta Exotica . . . [Exotic remedies . . .]. Frankfurt am Main: Johann Adam Jung, 1701
Arents Tobacco Collection

Tobacco smoke as a treatment for intestinal worries was apparently not just for horses, and was enthusiastically prescribed by the German doctor Valentini in his book detailing numerous different types of clysters, or enemas. The tobacco smoke clyster, preferable to messier oily varieties, was said to be good for the treatment of colic, nephritis, hysteria, hernia, and dysentery.