Tobacco King James

The first British settlement in North America was established in 1607 and named Jamestown, after King James i. The little tobacco-growing colony was located on the East Coast, in the region that would eventually become the state of Virginia. One of the constant debates among the Jamestown settlers was whether they should expand the colony. Tobacco growing was a very profitable enterprise, especially since labor was so cheap — the Jamestown settlers had brought the first African slaves to North America. But the settlement was surrounded by unfriendly Indians who would, of course, resist the expansion. 

King James I of England expresses a rather different opinion in his Counterblast to Tobacco, which denies the substance has any real medicinal value. The king also tries to reduce the growing popularity of smoking by taxing tobacco, a practice that is soon taken up by other European nations. 

The association of smoking with health problems is almost as old as the use of tobacco. In 1604, King James I of England issued the first... 

Because Franklin and Wilkins were hardly speaking to each other, Franklin left King s College in 1953 for Birkbeck College, also in London, where she finished her DNA work and became head of the team studying tobacco mosaic virus. Franklin died of ovarian cancer on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37. see also Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) Double Helix Pauling, Linus Watson, James Dewey. 

James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), in The Workes of the Most High and Mighty Prince lames. By the Grace of God Kinge of Great Brittaine France Ireland Defendor of the Faith c. (London, 1616), 220. 

See James I, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, and Daemonologie in Forme of a Dialogue (London, 1597). Harrisnotes that James not only presented himself as the nation s moral physician, but demonstrated a notable interest in Paracelsian medicine see Foreign Bodies, 55-6. On James s interest in the theater, see, for instance, Alvin Kernan, Shakespeare, the King s Playwright Theater in the Stuart Court, 1604-1614 (New Haven Yale University Press, 1995). 

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