Any specific means introduced into use is inevitably accompanied by a multitude of charlatan medical theories and methods of treatment. Cocaine abuse, as we shall see, was preceded by the fashion for tonic “Vin de Mariani”, and heroin was offered as a treatment for addiction to morphine. In order not to be disgusted with the Mayan “enema” rituals, one should take into account that in 1661 the Danish doctor Thomas Bartholin recommended enemas to his patients not only from tobacco juice, but also from tobacco smoke.

Anyone who accidentally swallowed tobacco can witness its laxative effect. This property is used in tobacco enemas used in enemas. My dear brother Erasmus showed me this method. The smoke from two pipes (filled with tobacco) is blown into the intestines. Suitable for this tool came up with an ingenious Englishman.

Not conceding to a clever Englishman, a French doctor of the 18th century, Buco began to defend the use of “intravaginal injection of tobacco smoke for the treatment of hysteria.”

Quite apart from these eccentric and strange uses of tobacco consumption and despite the disapproval of the clergy, the habit of smoking quickly spread in Europe.

Any means in the process of its introduction into a new cultural environment is glorified as a “love affair,” which is obviously the most effective of all advertising tricks. Such different substances as heroin and cocaine, LSD and MDMA, all of them at some stage were offered as a means of providing a certain sense of intimacy – sexual or psychological. Tobacco was no exception: the reason for its rapid spread was in part the sailors’ trailing bikes about its remarkable properties as an aphrodisiac.

The sailors talked about Nicaraguan women who smoked this potion and found such ardor that they would not see in their sleep. Probably, it was these rumors that became the decisive argument in favor of the popularity of smoking among women in Europe. Perhaps this is the reason for the success of the former Franciscan monk Andre Teve, who in 1579 presented tobacco to the French court.

Teve was well aware that tobacco would be smoked and consumed as a means of restoring strength and invigoration. Earlier, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nico, experimented with shredded leaves of tobacco, using them as a snuff

mixture for the treatment of migraine. In 1560, Niko handed over a sample of his smelling mixture to Catherine de Medici, who suffered from chronic migraine. The queen was delighted with the action of this plant, and it quickly became known as “Herba Medicea”, or “Herba Catherinea”. Niko’s snuff was obtained from the more toxic Nicotiana rustica, the classic Mayan shaman tobacco. Nicotiana tabacum monk Teve conquered Europe in the form of cigarettes and was a plant that became the basis for an extremely important tobacco economy, which grew in the colonial New World.

AGAINST TOBACCO

Not everyone welcomed the appearance of tobacco. Pope Urban VII threatened to excommunicate anyone who smoked or snuff tobacco in the temples of Spain. In 1650, Innocent X prohibited the snuffing of tobacco at St. Peter’s Basilica under threat of weaning. The Protestants also condemned the new habit and were directed in their efforts no less as the king of England James I, whose fiery “Protest against tobacco” appeared in 1604.

And good compatriots, let us (I ask you) consider what honor or prudence can inspire us to imitate slave Indians, especially in such a disgusting and fetid custom … Without shame, I will tell you why we should humiliate ourselves like that, being like these rude Indians, the slaves of the Spaniards, the dregs of the world, also alien to the Covenant of God? Why don’t we then imitate them in walking in the nude? .. And why should we not deny God and worship the Devil, like them.

By launching this rhetorical “protest,” in which you can see the first application for the “just say no” approach, the king turned his attention to other things. Eight years later, the report said that in the city of London alone there were at least 7,000 tobacco merchants and as many tobacco shops! Smoking and snuffing tobacco came with the intensity of modern fashion.