How did nicotine get its name?

Nicotine is a chemical, which has been widely used as a stimulant for centuries. Found in the nightshade family of plants, most of us will predominantly know nicotine as the drug found in tobacco.

As a stimulant, nicotine speeds up the messages travelling between the brain and body. Nicotine is highly addictive, and has a wide range of adverse health effects on humans.

As it's most commonly found in tobacco, nicotine has been used by people in Europe since the middle of the 16th century when tobacco was introduced to Europe. By the late 17th century, tobacco was being commonly used as a drug, while nicotine was also found in insecticides.

At the time of the arrival of Europeans, tobacco was the most widely used psychoactive plant used in the Americas. Brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus, it was initially considered to be medicinal and was used variously as an aphrodisiac, in treatment of pain, to alleviate intestinal colic and to heal wounds.

The scientific name for the tobacco plant is Nicotiana tabacum.

This name derives from a 16th diplomat, Jean Nicot de Villemain (1530-1604), who was the French ambassador in Portugal.

Nicot served in this diplomatic role in Lisbon under three French kings, from 1547 to 1574. (Excerpts from his diplomatic papers can be read on Europeana.) Later in his life, in he compiled one of the first French dictionaries (which was published posthumously in 1606).

In 1560, Nicot is credited as introducing tobacco to the French court. He brought tobacco plants from Portugal, believing they had medicinal value. Snuff tobacco became popular with the nobility in the court, band eventually more and more of Paris's fashionable people began to use the plant, making Nicot a celebrity.

In 1586, the botanist Jaques Dalechamps gave the tobacco plant the scientific name Herba nicotiana. Later, this was also adopted by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who is considered the 'father of modern species taxonomy'.

As science developed through the 19th century, nicotine was identified as an isolated chemical and drug by German chemists Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt and Karl Ludwig Reimann in 1828. They believed it was a poison.

Its exact chemical formula was described by Belgian scientist Louis-Henri-Frédéric Melsens in 1843. By 1893, German chemists Adolf Pinner and Richard Wolffenstein had discovered its structure.

Today, although nicotine has many harmful effects, it is legal and widely used across Europe and globally, with its name stemming all the way back to the 16th century French diplomat. As for Monsieur Nicot, his moniker now goes beyond nicotine and can be found on streets and other buildings across France.