624 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSfeUM, 1897. 



shape are traced from southern Mexico to the British possessions in 

 the uortli. 



From the first advent of the Spanish they appear to have adopted 

 the habit of smoking from the natives, the reasons tlierefor being that 

 it alhiyed hunger or fatigue in addition to many medicinal properties 

 which it was said to possess. The French in turn, and for like reason, 

 appear to have adopted its use, and finally the English took to smoking, 

 the example being set by Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of the Court 

 of Queen Elizabeth, who herself does not appear to have been averse 

 to use of the weed ujmn certain occasions. The ravages of the plague 

 during the first three fourths of the seventeenth centuiy appears to 

 have been one of the chief causes of the rapid spread of the use of 

 tobacco throughout the world, for in an incredibly short space of time 

 the custom had iraveled around the earth, again entering America by 

 way of Asia on the west. 



So far as appears to be now known, the North American natives at 

 the time of the advent of the whites do not seem to have confined 

 their smoking to the tobacco i^lant, nor do they do so even at the pres- 

 ent daj^, but employed for that jjurpose sumac and willow, as well as 

 many other i)lants, and at times insects and other ingredients, which 

 were supi)Osed to impart desirable odors, as, for example, gums in Mex- 

 ico and the musk of the muskrat in Maine. There appears to be no 

 evidence that native cultivation could have supplied any great quantity 

 of herbs used in smoking prior to the advent of the whites. After the 

 coming of Spanish, French, and English, cultivation of the tobacco 

 plant probably had much to do with the spread of its use. 



To the whites, who for a century or more used tobacco as a panacea 

 for every ailment of the body, must be given the credit, if it be a credit, 

 which many will doubt, of adopting the habit of smoking as a pastime. 

 Owing to the tales of early travelers to America, the smoke of the 

 tobacco plant was considered a specific for all diseases. In a short 

 time the use of the plant came to be viewed as a vice. At first the 

 medical faculty throughout Europe prescribed tobacco to be used in 

 every imaginable way, at various times, from early morning to late 

 night, on empty and on full stomachs, according to the fancy of the one 

 j)rescribing it. It has been known as the " sacred herb," the " intoxi- 

 cating plant," the " devil's oracle." Le Jeune in 1G33 spoke of the 

 natives using it as " unhappy infidels, who spend their life in smoke 

 and their eternity in flames;" though Dr. Everard, about 1659, the 

 au.thor of a work on the subject entitled, " The panacea, or universal 

 medicine," says : " The devil was much afraid of it, as I was informed 

 by one born in England of Spanish parentage." 



The derivation of the word tobacco does not appear to be certain. 

 One of the earliest references to the word, that by Oviedo, referred 

 rather to the pipe than to the plant. The illustration was not con 

 tained in the earliest edition of the work, and when it did appear, it 



