Re: tobacco

[viking@csra.net (Doug Munitz,Sven Olafssen,Maria Munitz)]

Poster: viking@csra.net (Doug Munitz,Sven Olafssen,Maria Munitz)

>Poster: mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU
>
>I was doing a little light reading on the Bubonic Plauge over breakfast
>this morning and I came across a curious fact.  Apparantly, smoking
>tobacco was a common plague remedy during the 14th century, especially in
>Holland.  Now, I had always thought that tobacco did not come into use in
>Europe until after the age of Exploration in the late 15th and 16th
>centuries, when the plant was brought over from the Americas.  I assumed
>that if this was the case it would be a commodity available only to the
>upper crust, and made more widely available as time went on.  
>        Was there some European form of tobacco that would have been used
>as a plague remedy in the 14th century?  (Please, no posts about Viking,
>Celtic, or any other pre-Columbian American settlements--that's not what
>I'm asking about, we've done it two or three times already, and I doubt
>any of these excursions caused a great tobacco trade).
>Aye,
>Eogan

You didn't mention where you had read this information.  As a social
studies teacher, I can tell you there is a lot of people out there trying
to pass off a lot of bunkum.  Like the selling of Manhattan for a fist full
of beads.  
Nicotine is also present in other plants (who knows what they may have made
teas from).  Anyway, I would check out the credibility of the source.
Lady G  



=======================================================================
List Archives, FAQ, FTP:  http://sca.wayfarer.org/merryrose/
            Submissions:  atlantia@atlantia.sca.org
        Admin. requests:  majordomo@atlantia.sca.org