Use of Tobacco in New Guinea and Neighboring Regions is a 1924 booklet written by Albert B. Lewis and published by the Field Museum of Natural History. It’s part of a series of booklets on the origins and spread of tobacco across the world that the Field Museum published mostly in 1924, but completed in 1930.

At the time this booklet was written, tobacco could be used as a form of currency in New Guinea, though it had to be smoking tobacco – chewing tobacco was not used. And it was grown everywhere: “Every village contains many beds of the plant.”1 Tobacco was smoked in pipes or as cigarettes.

This is a very short booklet that mostly describes the use of pipes and how tobacco is cultivated in and around New Guinea.

Use of Tobacco in New Guiinea and Neighboring Regions can be read for free at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

  1. Albert B. Lewis, Use of Tobacco in New Guinea and Neighboring Regions, 1924, pg. 2 [↩]