Review

A cure for apoplexy

Tobacco in history: the cultures of dependence
Jordan Goodman
Routledge, 1993

There is nothing particularly new about the controversy surrounding the use of tobacco. In the seventeenth century, serious theological argument broke out over the use of chewing tobacco by clerics. Not only did their constant spitting and sneezing create dirty and unpleasant churches, but there was the difficult question over whether tobacco counted as a food and would break the Lent fast. It took several Papal Bulls before the matter was completely settled.

What is new, however, is the modern and virtually unchallenged consensus that tobacco is harmful to health, a view always balanced historically by widespread claims for its healing and curative powers.

For instance, the French naturalist Pere Labat wrote in 1742: ‘Nothing is better to increase the fluidity of the blood, to regulate its flow and circulation. It is an unfailing sternutory to revive those with apoplexy or those in a death trance.’

Indeed, tobacco smoke enemas were even used at one time in attempts to resuscitate the vicitms of drowning.

But Jordan Goodman’s account of the economic history of tobacco goes beyond the medical debates of the past 300 years to trace the history of how tobacco came to be such an important global commodity. His analysis helps us to understand why the task of dislodging it from that position now is so difficult.