UNSMOKED TOBACCO.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 11 September 1912, Page 7

UNSMOKED TOBACCO.

A good deal of the world's tobacco crop is neither smoked, snuffed, nor chewed. Nothing will so rapidly destroy insect pests on fruit-trees as tobacco. In countries where the plant is grown, large bundles of tobacco stalks are piled round <the root s of each tree. These stalks not only kill the insects, but as they decay form an excellent fertiliser for the soil. Many hundreds of tons of coarse tobacco are also manufactured into liquid insecticide. As a remedy for plant-lice this cannot be beaten.

A cheap kind of coarse tobacco is employed entirely for the manufacture of sheepwash. Twenty pounds of this leaf and stalk, is boiled in forty gallons of water ,and the sheep dipped in the liquid.

At one time tobacco was very largely prescribed in medicine, and even today considerable quantities are so made use of. General Chapman records that he was cured of a severe strain simply by a poultice of tobacco leaves. As an external remedy for wounds and bruises and sprains, a wet tobacco poultice is commonly used in all countries wh£re tobacco is grown.

In sore throat, erysipelas, sciatica, and swellings of various kinds, tobarco externally applied has a 'wonderfully good effect. It seems to increase the pain for a few minutes, but afterwards acts as a sedative, and allays the suffering. It may take as much as two hours to produce the soothing: effect, but the result is usually that the sufferer is enabled to sleep, and inflammation entirely subsides.

Moist tobacco is one of the best cures' imaginable for the bite of any poisonous insect. Ordinary leaf tobacco, well soaked, and tied over the bitten spot, takes the pain away rapidly, and brings down the inflammation. For ordinary cases of ophthalmia or sore eyes it i^ also efficacious.

Being- so gocid as it is, tobacco is sometimes applied by soldiers to raw wounds. It is said that no case of lockjaw or mortification has ever occurred where this precaution has been taken. Altogether, a good deal <f tobacco is used up medicinally, especially in India, where a hot poultice of tobacco leaves is a usual first remedy when symptoms of choleara appear.