30 MEDICINAL PROPERTIES. 



inan. "While the physiological effects of nicotine may bo 

 interesting to the medical practitioner, they will hardly inter- 

 est the general reader unless it can be shown that the effects 

 of nicotine and tobacco should be proved to be indentical. 



"We are loth to leave this subject, however, as it is so 

 intimately connected with the history of the plant, without 

 treating somewhat of its medicinal properties which to many 

 are of more interest than its social qualities. The Indians 

 not only used the plant socially, religiously, but medicinally. 

 Their Medicine men prescribed its use in various ways for 

 most diseases common among them. The use thus made of 

 the plant attracted the attention of the Spanish and English, 

 far more than its use either as a means of enjoyment or as a 

 religious act. When introduced to the Old World, its claims 

 as a remedy for most diseases gave it its popularity and 

 served to increase its use. It was styled "Sana sancta 

 Indorum ' " Herbe propre d tons maux" and physicians 

 claimed that it was " the most sovereign and precious weed 

 that ever the earth tendered to the use of man." As early 

 as 1610, three years after the London and Plymouth Compa- 

 nies settled in Virginia, and some years before it began to be 

 cultivated by them as an article of export, it had attracted 

 the attention of English physicians, who seemed to take as 

 much delight in writing of the sanitary uses of the herb as 

 they did in smoking the balmy leaves of the plant. 



Dr. Edmund Gardiner, " Practitioner of Physicke," issued 

 in 1610 a volume entitled, " The Triall of Tobacco," setting 

 forth its curative powers. Speaking of its use he says : 



" Tobacco is not violent, and therefore may in my judge- 

 ment bee safely put in practise. Thus then you plainly see 

 that all medicines, and especially tobacco, being rightly and 

 rationally used, is a noble medicine and contrariwise not in 

 his due time w r ith other circumstances considered, it doth no 

 more than a nobleman's shooe doth in healing the gout in 

 the foot." 



Dr. Yerner of Bath, in his Treatise concerning the taking 

 the fume of tobacco (1637) says that when " taken moderately 

 and at fixed times with its proper adjunct, which (as they doe 



