# Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)

**Nicotiana*; *herba sancta*, *herba panacea**

**Known today as.** *Nicotiana tabacum*.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Nicotinic poisoning (coniine, nicotine, cytisine) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/nicotinic)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** Addictive and poisonous.

## What was it used for?

Hailed in the sixteenth century as a panacea: for wounds, ulcers, headaches, and the cleansing of the brain by smoke.

## What does modern science say?

Nicotine is addictive and toxic; smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the world.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **nicotine**: 
- **nornicotine**: 

**Mechanism.** Nicotine is a nicotinic agonist; the smoke’s tars are the carcinogens.

**Dose.** About 500–1,000 mg of nicotine for an adult, far more than the old 60 mg figure; a cigar’s worth has poisoned children.

**Standing.** Nicotine replacement is on the WHO list of essential medicines.

## What lore surrounds it?

Long before it reached the sixteenth-century apothecary as a panacea, tobacco was sacred among many Native American peoples, above all in the calumet, the ceremonial pipe that carried prayer to the spirit world, sealed treaties, and opened councils, its rising smoke the bridge between the human and the sacred. That older meaning had already been set aside by the time European physicians praised it as *herba sancta* and *herba panacea*.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Jean Nicot.** The French ambassador to Portugal sent it to Catherine de’ Medici in 1560, and it bears his name.

**Nicolás Monardes.** The Seville physician praised it as a cure for many ills.

**James I.** Called smoking “loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.”

## Sources

- Monardes, N. (1574). *Historia medicinal*.
- James I (1604). *A Counterblaste to Tobacco*.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sacred pipe.”
- Mayer, B. (2014). “How much nicotine kills a human?” *Archives of Toxicology* 88.

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*Tobacco.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/tobacco

Historical description, not medical advice.