Nicholas Monarde (ca. 1512–1588). Delle cose che vengono portate dall’Indie Occidentali [Of the things that have been brought from the West Indies]. Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1575. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (165.02.00)
Medicinal Virtues of Tobacco
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europeans were obsessed with tobacco as a commodity and, especially, as a panacea. Nicholas Monardes, a physician from Seville, published a popular medical history in 1574 that included a lengthy description extolling the virtues of tobacco. Quickly translated into English in 1577, Joyfull Newes out of the Newfound World claimed that tobacco was an ideal “hearbe” long familiar to American Indians, who taught its virtues to Spanish explorers. Monardes enumerated the properties of the plant: to “heale griefes of the head” to “cureth the headake” and even to relieve weariness and provide sustenance when food and water were lacking.