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Nobody knows when began history of smoking. But some researchers assert that first smokers were Egyptian pharaohs. Hookah and other smoking accessories were found in one of tombs and dated the II B.C.
History of tobacco in America
But historical evidence of consumption wild tobacco species by Native Americans related far before B.C.E. Tobacco used in small dozes as stimulating remedy for suppression of starvation and thirst, and also as analgesic. Smoking of a small amount of tobacco was ritual during military negotiations, and strengthening of soldiers fighting. Indians knew that large dozes of tobacco influence consciousness. This property of tobacco smoking was used for religious purposes – to achieve trances and dialogue with spirits. Smoking wasn’t only way of tobacco using. More often Indians added tobacco in food, chewed leaves, drank juice of tobacco or syrup.
History of tobacco and nicotine in Europe
Tobacco had already long been used in the Americas when European settlers arrived and introduced the practice to Europe, where it became popular at the end of the fifteenth century. In long history of tobacco remarkable fact is that nicotine was first isolated from the tobacco plant in 1828 by German chemists Posselt & Reimann.
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Nicotine is named after the tobacco plant Nicotiana tabacum. This plant is named after Jean Nicot de Villemain, French ambassador in Portugal, who sent tobacco and seeds from Brazil to Paris in 1560 and promoted their medicinal use.
History of nicotine started in 1828 when Wilhelm Posselt and Karl Reimann managed to isolate nicotine from tobacco plant. In 1843 Melsens explains its experimental chemical formula and A. Pictet and Crepieux did the first synthesis in 1893.
They discovered that nicotine was a potent and powerful chemical that could be absorbed through the skin, which made it an effective pesticide that is still used around the world.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, lung cancer was a rare medical disease. The “cigarette,” a new product, was becoming popular, while in England, Professor John N. Langley of Cambridge University was exploring the effects of nicotine.
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Evidence of the marijuana (or Cannabis) smoking can be found as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C., as indicated by charred cannabis seeds found in a ritual brazier at an ancient burial site in present day Romania.
Marijuana has been used also by the ancient Hindus of India and Nepal thousands of years ago. Cannabis was also known to the ancient Assyrians, who discovered its psychoactive properties through the Aryans.
The Chinese were already cultivating cannabis 4500 years BC. The first medicinal applications were described two thousand years later. It was used for rheumatism, gout, malaria, and a number of other disorders.
Long history of marijuana use also has been proved in 2003. When a leather basket filled with cannabis leaf fragments and seeds were found next to a 2,500- to 2,800-year-old mummified shaman in the north-western Region of China.
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History of smoking
