Tobacco In Folk Cures in Western Society

Journal of American Folklore Vol. 78, No. 308 April-June, 1965

KATHARINE T. KELL

TOBACCO IN FOLK CURES IN WESTERN SOCIETY

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT about the folklore of tobacco
is that the white man did not know about it until after the discovery of the Western
Hemisphere, although smoke-usage and even smoking of a sort had a faint parallel
in Europe. Europeans had used smoke in the form of incense at least since the days
of the Egyptians, and the Scythians and Thracians discovered early the narcotic
effect of burning hemp seed. Hippocrates prescribed the inhalation of smoke for
"female diseases," and Pliny later recommended sucking-up the smoke from burning
coltsfoot through reeds as a cure for coughs (a cure which lasted into modern times),
but these usages were isolated and limited. Smoking as we know it did not exist,
and tobacco itself, all-pervasive as it is in contemporary limes, had to wait until that
day in 1492 before Europeans became aware of it. Thus, any European folklore about
tobacco is no more than four hundred and seventy-two years old—an important fact
for the folklorist, for it means that he sometimes can trace usages to their origins
instead of having to conjecture about them in remote antiquity. It means further
that if he would understand those usages, he would do well to look at the intellectual
climate of Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.