The Snuff, also known as snuff to snort, is a preparation based on plant snuff (Nicotiana tabacum) that has a long history of mankind, even longer than cigarettes. This ground compound, which is consumed by inhaling it through the nose, is mixed with other flavoring substances (such as mint, among others) to reduce its strong aroma.
Rapé is a French word, whose translation into Spanish means “scratched” and it was precisely because it was originally scratched tobacco that this ancestral preparation was given that name.
Even the Royal Spanish Academy in its dictionary included this ended as the definition of snuff tobacco. This substance is obtained in most cases in the form of a powder, made with cut and ground leaves after they have already matured.
Origin of snuff
The origin of snuff is in the pre-Columbian cultures of America and at the same time, but without shared knowledge, in different regions of the continent tobacco was consumed in its different versions, including sniffing.
The indigenous peoples of Brazil were among the first on record to start using snuff. For its preparation, they placed the dry tobacco leaves in a mortar and ground it and then inhaled it.
Different types of snuff. Oimel
Also in Haiti they absorbed tobacco through a tube. In his novel The Noble Art of Smoking, the writer Dunhill gives an account of this practice and describes it simply: "They used a pestle of rose and a mortar to grind the powder," he wrote.
With the arrival of Christopher Columbus, and his boats, the American continent began to have a record of this form of consumption of striped tobacco.
These practices were picked up by some of the travelers, among them the religious brother Ramón Pané, and thus this preparation began its worldwide expansion, mainly in Europe.
Snuff reached the Old Continent first by way of the Portuguese settlers and then the Spanish. Almost a century later, the first tobacco seeds would arrive for its cultivation and later some medicinal experiments would be carried out.
Applications
Snuff, in addition to being a substance for recreational consumption, in its first moments in Europe had medicinal applications, about which some controversies still exist.
Felipe II was one of the promoters of snuff in the form of medicine. Known as "El Prudente", he was king of Spain between 1556 and 1598, of Naples and Sicily from 1554 and of Portugal and the Algarves from 1580. He also ruled in England and Ireland.
The monarch asked the doctor and botanist Francisco Hernández de Boncalo to start growing tobacco for medicinal uses.
One of the first people to test the faculties of snuff was Catherine de Medici, wife of Henry II of France, who began a paleative treatment against the migraines suffered by her son.
Thus, this preparation gained popularity among the elites, so that for many years snuff was associated with a typical product of the aristocracies and was considered a luxury good.
Despite these medicinal uses, the healing powers of snuff, or snuff, were never scientifically proven.
Health effects
According to the most modern studies on the effects that snuff produces on people's health, its consequences are associated with tobacco in any of its versions.
Although snuff does not generate the combustion that is so harmful to health that cigarettes do, it contains all the components of the Nicotiana tabacum plant.
These types of products contain carcinogenic substances, such as nitrosamines, formaldehyde, crotonaldehyde, benzopyrene and other polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, in addition to polonium.
Nitrosamines are the component that can cause the greatest danger to health, as they are the most prevalent and strongest carcinogens in tobacco, with effects mainly on the mouth and pancreas, one of the most powerful types of cancer, especially in men.
Despite scientific records, data on the toxicity of snuff varies in each country. Even in some parts of the world the increase in cardiovascular diseases related to snuff consumption was not proven.
Some experiments revealed that snuff has decongestant powers for the respiratory tract and can even prevent some types of colds. However, specialists warn of its side effects.
Rapé today
In some shamanic cultures in Mexico or the Colombian Amazon, snuff is used as a substance with healing properties.
In addition, in today's world, snuff has regained popularity in different parts of the planet, being one of the new forms of tobacco consumption, despite its long history.
Many consumers rediscovered this way of enjoying smokeless tobacco, as a way of respecting the environment, with a community that grows day by day in different corners of the world.
But not only is the modern rise of snuff due to an ecological conscience, it is also linked to a new consumer trend for this stimulating product.
According to consumers, snuff, or snuffed tobacco, is a tasty, refreshing and stimulating way to enjoy the Nicotiana tabacum plant.
Historical personalities such as Napoleon I, Frederick the Great, the poet Friedrich Schiller, the philosopher Immanuel Kant and Helmuth von Moltke were some of the great consumers of snuff.
References
- Alfren H. Dunhill, The Noble Art of Smoking, Parsifal, 1996.
- Bourne, GE: Columbus, Ramon Pane, and the Beginnings of American Anthropology (1906), Kessinger Publishing, 2003.