Re: tobacco

[Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>]

Poster: Dick Eney <dickeney@access.digex.net>


On Mon, 2 Jun 1997 mn13189@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU wrote:

> 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.  

Russia actually does have a variety of _Nicotiana_, though not true
tobacco.  It's called _mahorka_ (or rather, the Cyrillic equivalent -- ask
Mistress Fevronia!)  But in Western Europe there were only a variety of
smoking herbs, of which the dried inside bark of the willow is the only
one I can definitely name.

|---------Master Vuong Manh, C.P., Storvik, Atlantia---------|
|Now, let's stop and think: how would Bugs Bunny handle this?|
|----------------(dickeney@access.digex.net)-----------------|

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