Smoking trivia through the ages
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Saturday June 20 2009
Nicotine is named after France's Ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot de Villemain, who, in 1560, sent tobacco to the French Court as a cure for a prince's migraines.
The first medical text in English to include tobacco, in 1577, recommended it as a cure for toothache, worms, bad breath, lockjaw, cancer, and to stop fingernails from falling out.
The term 'smoking' was not coined until the late 1700s. Before that, the common term was 'drinking smoke'. One astounded ambassador in the Netherlands in 1627 described witnessing "a fog-drinking bout".
In 1902, foolish Coney Island zookeeper J Blount fed a lit cigarette to Topsy the elephant. Topsy picked him up and dashed him to the ground, killing him.
In 1904, a New York judge sent a woman to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.
In 1911, a campaign against smoking mothers intensified when Time ran a cover featuring a baby girl in nappies smoking one of her mother's cigarettes.
In the 1930s, there were 1,550 licenced tobacco growers in the Irish Free State, planting 750 acres. In 1934, the Fianna Fáil government said this would be raised to 10,000 acres. It wasn't.
Today's top tobacco-consuming nations are Russia, followed by Indonesia, Laos, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, Jordan and China. The African continent is fast catching up, as smoking there is considered 'modern' and 'Western'.
