"_Herbe propre a tous maux_," and
physicians claimed that it was "the most sovereign and precious weed
that ever the earth tendered to the use of man." As early as 1610,
three years after the London and Plymouth Companies settled in
Virginia, and some years before it began to be cultivated by them as
an article of export, it had attracted the attention of English
physicians, who seemed to take as much delight in writing of the
sanitary uses of the herb as they did in smoking the balmy leaves of
the plant.

Dr. Edmund Gardiner, "Practitioner of Physicke," issued in 1610 a
volume entitled, "The Triall of Tobacco," setting forth its curative
powers. Speaking of its use he says:

"Tobacco is not violent, and therefore may in my judgement
bee safely put in practise. Thus then you plainly see that
all medicines, and especially tobacco, being rightly and
rationally used, is a noble medicine and contrariwise not in
his due time with other circumstances considered, it doth no
more than a nobleman's shooe doth in healing the gout in the
foot."

Dr. Verner of Bath, in his Treatise concerning the taking the fume of
tobacco (1637) says that when "taken moderately and at fixed times
with its proper adjunct, which (as they doe suppose) is a cup of
sack, they think it be no bad physick." Dr. William Barclay in his
work on Tobacco, (1614) declares "that it worketh wonderous cures." He
not only defends the herb but the "land where it groweth." At this
time the tobacco plant like Indian Corn was very small, possessing but
few of the qualities now required to make it merchantable. When first
exported to Spain and Portugal from the West Indies and South America,
and even by the English from Virginia, the leaf was dark in color and
strong and rank in flavor. This, however, seems to have been the
standard in regard to some varieties while others are spoken of by
some of the early writers upon tobacco as "sweet."

The tobacco (uppowoc) grown by the Indians in America, at the time of
its discovery, and more particularly in North America, would compare
better with the suckers of the largest varieties of the plant rather
than with even the smallest species of the plant now cultivated. At
the present time tobacco culture is considered a science in order to
secure the colors in demand, and that are fashionable, and also the
right texture of leaf now so desirable in all tobaccos designed for
wrappers. Could t