Tobacco, Nicotiana Tabacum
Caption reads, Tobacco, 1. flower; 2. calix; 3. seed vessel; 4. seed. Hand colored engraving by Elizabeth Blackwell...Among the illnesses that the oil of the tobacco leaf can cure, the author notes ulcers, piles, hemorrhoids, and the King's Evil (scrofula). At the time Blackwell was preparing her herbal, tobacco had already come into general use in England in the form of snuff and pipe tobaco and it was an important factor in the trade between Britian and the North American colonies. Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. In consumption it most commonly appears in the forms of smoking, chewing, snuffing, or dipping tobacco. Tobacco had long been in use as an entheogen in the Americas, but upon the arrival of Europeans in North America, it quickly became popularized as a trade item and a recreational drug
