Lobelia (officially lobelia inflata), alias Indian tobacco, was a common herb prescribed by early North American doctors. Its main use was in healing respiratory ailments, such as asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and coughs. The plant stem, which has only a few branches, is smooth above while the lower part is rough and hairy. The lower leaves, which are about two inches in length, have stalks, while the upper, smaller ones do not. The pale green or yellowish leaves have a sharp taste and a slightly irritating odor. The sparse flowers are pale violet-blue outside and pale yellow inside.

Lobelia consists of various alkaloids, a bitter glycoside (lobelacrin), a pungent volatile oil (lobelianin), resin, gum, chelidonic acid and fats. The alkaloid lobeline is its main ingredient and namesake. Others include lobelidine, lobelanine, nor-lobelaine, lobelanidine, nor-lobelanidine, and isolobenine, as well as fourteen pyridine alkaloids.

Lobeline works much like nicotine in its effect on the central nervous system but without the addictive properties. In fact, it is a main ingredient of many quit smoking treatments. Lobeline acts as a relaxant overall and is used to treat spastic colon and muscle problems. It also dilates the bronchioles, thereby increasing respiration and helping the lungs.

Lobelia’s main use is in treating respiratory problems like bronchitis and pneumonia. It stimulates the adrenal glands to release the hormone epinephrine, which causes the airways to relax. Lobelia is a strong relaxant and clears obstructions. It relaxes the stomach (a common problem in asthmatic children) as it dilates the bronchial passages. In fact, many people have used it to stop asthma attacks in place of inhalants.

Other practical ways to use lobelia’s qualities include these. Rub lobelia tincture or extract on the shoulders of a restless child; this is an excellent way to help him go to sleep. Rub the extract on the gums of a teething baby. Take it internally to expel mucus, remove congestion from the stomach, and to encourage the flow of oxygenized blood. A poultice can be applied for ringworm, bruises, and insect bites. Catnip and lobelia enemas are good for treating mumps in males. As a sedative it is said to rank somewhere between veratrum and aconite.

Use lobelia to treat laryngitis in children and for barking coughs. Ellingwood recommended lobelia for the following pathologies: “spasmodic asthma, spasmodic croup, membranous croup, infantile convulsions, whooping cough, puerperal eclampsia, epilepsy, tetanus, hysterical paraxysms, diphtheria, hysterical convulsions, tonsillitis, pneumonia,” among others.

Lobelia is available for internal use as a dried herb, in a liquid extract form, and as tinctures. Externally, it is available in ointments, lotions, suppositories, and plasters. You can make a tea by mixing 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of the dried herb with eight ounces of water. Then let it steep for 30 to 40 minutes. Take two ounces of this four times a day but, be warned, many think it tastes awful! Take.6 to 2 ml of the tincture each day. This is based on a 150 pound adult. Adjust dosage for children proportionately.

Lobelia is considered a potentially toxic herb. Special care is advised when using it. Signs of lobelia poisoning may include weakness, heartburn, weak pulse, difficulty breathing, and collapse. People with high blood pressure, heart disease, tobacco sensitivity, paralysis, and seizure disorder should not take lobelia. Lobelia is not recommended for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Lobelia can be an aggressive emetic, even in relatively small doses if the system is highly toxic. The resulting nausea and vomiting, though unpleasant, will be beneficial to the patient.

Lung Cancer Screening At Hospitals

Hospitals all over the country offer screening for lung cancer. According to the CDC, the choice to get screened should be an educated one.

Lung Cancer Screening

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in America for both men and women. According to recent estimates, the lung cancer accounts for over 150,000 deaths each year, more than the next three leading causes (colon, breast, and pancreatic cancer) combined. This is a worrying phenomenon, undoubtedly precipitated by an individual’s rate of tobacco smoking, as well as by factors related to air pollution, such as car exhaust, industrial emissions, and other emissions that can blanket cities in dense smog. It is a serious epidemic that has long-lasting effects on everyone diagnosed, even if the symptoms are identified early on. As a result, testing for lung cancer is very important. Many hospitals offer free screening, and it is highly advisable to go through screening if you are at risk.

Who is at risk?

As with most serious diseases, many people would rather not admit that they are at risk for lung cancer. While understandable, this knee-jerk aversion must be stopped. Many people would greatly benefit from an early diagnosis, because modern medical techniques can greatly assist those who are diagnosed. According to the CDC, people with a heavy history of smoking who still continue to smoke should be tested at one of their local hospitals. This includes people who have stopped smoking within the last 15 years, as well as people between the ages of 55 and 80 who have smoked in the past. Heavy smoking is defined as 30 pack-years, or 30 years of smoking a pack a day.

Why shouldn’t everyone be tested?

With a disease as formidable as lung cancer, it might seem surprising that the CDC doesn’t recommend that every American be tested. However, the test has its own risks, which can be severe and are, at any rate, grounds for caution. The first risk is a false-positive test result. A false-positive result occurs if the test indicates that the patient has the disease when in fact they do not. This sort of result can result in over-testing and even unnecessary surgery.

The second risk is the over-diagnosis of lung cancer, which occurs when the patient has lung cancer, but the tumor is completely benign and will not cause the patient any problems. These cases often result in unnecessary treatments.

Finally, there is the issue of radiation exposure. The only test recommended by the CDC is called “low-dose computed tomography,” or a CT scan. A CT scan involves an X-ray machine that uses low doses of radiation to take pictures of the lungs. The radiation from a CT scan can cause cancer, even in healthy people, if the test is repeated too often. For these reasons, medical professionals only recommend that people commit to regular screenings if they are at risk. Be sure to look for hospitals that follow the CDC’s recommended practices.

Drinks Service:

Drinking is at the cultural epicentre of every social group on the planet and a yacht stewardess must be extremely competent with serving all types of beverages. Skills a stewardess must possess are:

• Wine knowledge, wine pairing wine storage and wine service.
• Champagne service.
• Port and Cognac service.
• Beer knowledge and beer service.
• Cocktail knowledge, preparation and decoration.
• Spirits knowledge.
• Hot beverages, tea and coffee service.
• Storage knowledge of fine tea and coffee.
• Soft drink and other non alcoholic storage and service.

Further to beverage service a good stewardess will also be educated about tobacco and service of cigars, cigarettes and pipes.

Food Service:

Broadly speaking there are five types of service that a stewardess is required to competently master. These are as follows:

• Silver service.
• American service or plate service.
• English service.
• Buffet service.
• Russian service.

In addition to the styles of service a yacht stewardess must be well versed in table management, table settings, courses and order of service. These duties and the success of a beautiful dinner or a bodacious party primarily lay with the Head Chef and Chief Stewardess.

Housekeeping:

A super yacht is full of fine fabrics, and expensive art work, so a yacht stewardess must be extremely proficient to handle such pieces; or may be required to work under the supervision of the Chief Stewardess until that level has been achieved.

• Housekeeping duties will include cleaning cabins.
• Cleaning public areas on board.
• Cleaning the officers cabins.
• Cleaning the crew mess and other crew areas.

The details of housekeeping will depend on the size of the vessel and will be co-ordinated by the Chief Stewardess.

Laundry Care:

The most common types of fabrics a stewardess must know how to launder correctly are:

• Cotton.
• Silk.
• Microfiber.
• Wool.
• Rayon.
• Polyester.
• Leather.
• Linen.

Laundry details and co-ordination will be explained by the chief stewardess, and must be executed by the stewardess. This is an area where many mistakes can happen so extra diligence is required here.

Flower Arranging & Plant Care:

Flower arranging and plant care is a fun part of the job. The reason why every good stewardess should know how to arrange flowers is that ‘yes… you are on a yacht’ and you may not have access to or the budget to call a florist every time your flowers or plants need attention.

Personal Appearance:

Yes I’m sorry to say that looks do matter in this industry. It is one of the things that I found hard to handle when I was being instructed to hire ‘model’ like stewardesses.

However there is a light at the end of this (some times) superficial tunnel; and that is grooming and presentation. Grooming, personal hygiene and personal presentation is not hard to manage. Knowing your colours, what hair style suits your face and how to wear your uniform can make a great impact on your overall presentation.

Professional Etiquette & Interpersonal Communications:

Professional etiquette and personal communications in my opinion is one of the most under rated assets of a stewardess. These skills must be learnt over a period of time; where a stewardess will learn how to speak and when to speak (a skill that many struggle to master); how to walk on a boat, and how to carry herself in front of very important people. Communication skills are not only limited to verbal communications, but also includes non verbal communications, like a pretty smile, or non direct eye contact (depending on the culture of the guests). All of these small things make all the difference to your guests having a truly relaxed and enjoyable experience on board.

STCW 95 & Safety Responsibilities:

Finally a super yacht stewardess must fulfil her safety role in a case of an emergency. Her role will depend on her position, the size of the vessel and her qualifications. Her role will be allocated to her by the Captain or Chief Officer (again depending on the size of the vessel) and must be taken very seriously

Do you have any idea how valuable rare baseball cards can be? To give an idea, the most expensive card ever sold was a Honus Wagner tobacco card. The item was previously owned by hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, and sold for a whopping $2.35 million US dollars. Yes, these items can be sold for a fortune, and you may very well be the next millionaire. However, what would it take to find the rarest of these cards? How does someone go about this? Well, there a lot of aspects to collecting these cards, and a great deal of know-how to spot and find them.

Finding rare baseball cards is not as easy as you might think. It takes a great deal of knowledge, experience, and luck to find and acquire an uncommon card. Multiply those chances by a hundred, and you might find a rare card. However, you may find the card, but is the owner willing to sell or trade it? After all, it does take a significant amount of time for the card’s value to appreciate. Parting with one of these cards will be as difficult as parting with a loved one.

On a regular basis, cards of this caliber can be found in specialty and hobby shops. On rare occasions they can be found in the most unlikely of places, stored away and forgotten. Traditionally, these cards are passed down from father to son; kept for years hoping one of cards in the collection would rise in value.

The reason for collecting these cards varies from person to person. You may be a fan of the certain player; you might be collecting the whole roster, or may be a curator of baseball history. If you plan to take collecting to a whole new level, there are certain things you have to expect. Collecting these cards will take a whole lot of running around, hunting antique shops, garage sales, or even the unsuspecting individual who does not know the card’s true value. You could say collecting these things is just like finding treasure, without a treasure map.

The functionality of a cigarette or pipe is quite easy to understand. All you need to do is light a cigarette and inhale the smoke it produces. On the other hand, a vape pen is somewhat mysterious. However, the way it works is not complicated either. The difference between these units and the traditional units is that they have a heating element instead of fire. Let’s find out more.

Basically, when the tobacco, dry herb, oil or wax heats up, the chemicals found inside transform into vapor. Aside from this, both nicotine and THC turn into vapor at a temperature that is lower than plant matter combustion point. Therefore, vaporizing is a healthy substitute for smoking.

The basics of Vape Pens

Typical vape pens share similar looks with a traditional pen. They have a cartridge for cannabis buds, wax, oil or a different medical herb. Often, the rechargeable battery is a vital part of the device. The mouthpiece is removable so you can clean it without any effort. On some units, you can find temperature adjustment buttons.

These devices are easy to use and can be found in a lot of price tags, materials, colors and shapes. Besides, you can find fresh models in the market.

Materials used in the device

Vape pens use different types of cannabis, oils, waxes, dry herbs and liquids. All of these are concentrated form of the leaves and buds of marijuana. The THC is obtained from the plant with the help of ice water or a solvent.

For concentrate making, the two common chemicals are pressurized carbon dioxide and butane. As far as butane is concerned, the solvent turns into vapor and leaves a little bit of residue. On the other hand, carbon dioxide is a better way of getting the THC concentrate. However, it requires you to go for expensive machinery.

The Health Benefits of Vaping

Smoking has its adverse consequences but vape pens have a few health benefits as well. You can find new types of these units on the market. More and more research studies are being done to find out more health benefits of these devices.

Vape Mods

For the first time, vaporizers were developed by a pharmacist in China. Actually, his goal was to quit smoking. In a few years, these devices appeared in a lot of countries. However, some countries have banned them altogether.

Aside from this, laws regarding vape pen keep on changing with time. According to many studies, vaporized nicotine can be an effective method if you want to quit smoking. Nowadays, a heated debate is happening to set laws to regulate the use of these units.

For instance, in California, there are regulations to use vape pen. Most people use vape mods to vaporize nicotine and avoid other tobacco products. These units look like a pen. Vape mods use a small cartridge that contains e-liquid. This liquid is made of propylene glycol and liquid nicotine with different flavors. The battery heats up the liquid until it hits 375 degrees and releases vapor that you can inhale via a mouthpiece.

Hopefully, this article will help you understand the basics of vape pens.

What if the next time you open your menu at your favorite restaurant, the nutritional information – calories, fat, sodium, etc. – is listed right there for you to consider? Would you still order Houston’s Grilled Chicken Salad (34 grams of fat) or Macaroni Grill’s Salmon (1160 calories, 25 grams of fat and 1240 mgs of sodium!)? How about Chili’s Chocolate Molten Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream (1270 calories and 62 grams of fat)? Are you surprised at these numbers? Or would you rather not know?

New labeling mandates taking effect this year require restaurants with 20 or more outlets operating under the same name to provide nutritional information on their menus.

Why does the government think it’s important for you to know? Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods, cites the “huge obesity problem in this country that’s due in part to excess calorie consumption outside the home.”

Extra weight, as most of us know, carries its own problems, such as increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and many types of cancer. In fact, obesity is about to overtake tobacco as the #1 cause of preventable death in the United States.

Today, 63% of American adults are either overweight or obese. If we continue to pack on the pounds, obesity will cost the U.S. an estimated $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018.

Are you beginning to see the domino effect here? Weight, there’s more.

Obese patients spend an average of $1,429 (42%) more annually for their medical care than do people with a healthy weight. Health economist Eric Finkelstein, co-author of The Fattening of America, says medical costs won’t go down unless Americans “slim down by improving their diet and exercise patterns.”

So will the new nutrition labeling requirements help? Advocates, including me, believe that if you know what’s in your food, you’re more likely to make better choices about what you put in your mouth and, therefore, have a better chance of avoiding the obesity trap. However, many restaurants are concerned that if you know the nutritional truth, you won’t come back.

Houston’s, a popular restaurant chain with 30 locations across the U.S., apparently believes you can’t handle the truth. Instead of reprinting its menus to include the nutritional information, the chain is changing its name. That’s right; Houston’s is re-branding 11 of its locations with the new name of Hillstone, surrendering 34 years of brand equity in its name in order to circumvent the new law. This way, patrons can continue to enjoy their spinach dip and ribs without the burden of knowing what the caloric cost is.

So I ask you again: is ignorance bliss or would you rather know?

Perhaps you think all this government intervention is just too much. But what if it really could save lives, not to mention millions (billions) of our taxpayer dollars. Let’s look at two cases.

When seat belt legislation went into effect in 1984, you may recall that critics argued heatedly about restrictions of our civil liberties. People were up in arms about the government telling us what to do in our own cars. Well, statistics released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that seat belt legislation has reduced the number of injuries in road accidents by 45%, and reduced death from car accidents by 50%. And for a country that can’t afford it, annual medical costs due to crashes amount to about $11 billion, rising to $70 billion when lost productivity is factored in. Imagine what these costs would be without the seat belt laws.

On the other hand, how effective has tobacco legislation been? Cigarette advertising on TV and radio was banned in 1970, when approximately 50% of Americans smoked. Warning labels on cigarette packaging first appeared 46 years ago, and yes, we’ve seen a steady decline in smoking over the past four decades. Today, 20% of Americans still smoke; while that’s still a significant number, it’s less than half that were smoking in the 70s. (The FDA has proposed new, larger warning labels – designed to cover 50% of the packaging. Will these have a greater effect on reducing smoking?)

But cigarettes and chocolate cake are hardly the same… or are they? Sugar has also been proven to be highly addictive and, despite the “fun” image of a sugary dessert, too much sugar can lead to serious health risks.

Perhaps something truly miraculous will occur with the new menu labeling; maybe food companies and restaurants – faced with new labeling laws and better-informed consumers – will provide healthier options. Now that would be reason to go out to dinner and celebrate.

What do you think?

The best thing that can be said about the Huntsville Alabama Real Estate Market is that it bears the fruit from the tree of the city economic diversity.

Early in its history Huntsville and the surrounding areas thrived as a merchant city of tobacco, watercress, and of course cotton textiles. This was the constant until the 1940s and 1950s which gave way to the US Army coming in and establishing chemical munitions plants ( on the 38,000 acre Redstone Arsenal ) and the forming of the ordinance guided missile center under lead German scientist Wernher von Braun. Today there is a civilian workforce slightly under 14,000 people on Redstone Arsenal. This cooperation with the military as government workers would provide one of the founding pillars of the economy for the future of Huntsville.

Once this team was established, slow and steady progress was being made on the commercial side of missile & aerospace, and this would evolve today into missile defense and commercial aerospace flight programs and testing. Eventually though the commercial aspect picked up the pace quickly through government contracting. Today many of these government contracting businesses exist in Huntsville and some have branched off from being only based on government contracts. This would become the second pillar.

Science, technology, and biotechnology came as a side effect of the main pioneers on Redstone Arsenal. Cummings Research Park ( now 4,000 acres ) was founded as Huntsville Research Park in 1962. Companies such as IBM, Northrup, and Lockheed would soon fill this space surrounded by many smaller independent companies including the most recent biotechnology center Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology. This corporate sciences and technology would make up the third pillar.

The fourth pillar is purely an economic one. It is a strong sense of economic planning and planning for growth. For years there has been steady city and county population growth leading to a larger tax base and a constant small job growth as well, keeping jobs available to the public. Huntsville has managed to ground its value of its homes and appraise them realistically to not lead to housing bubbles of inflated prices. This helped when the economic hit did come, that these homes did not lose value like surrounding states such as Florida did. There was a buoyancy that allowed the listing prices of homes to drift away from normal appraisal value but with lower than national employment levels the homeowners were still able to pay their mortgages and keep values at a nominal level so they weren’t underwater. City and County economic planning cooperation has done well to weather the national financial storm.

These four areas of Government/Civilian Employees, Government Contracting, Corporate Science and Technology, and Realistic Economic Planning have helped Huntsville to stay afloat in difficult times as other areas have declined in prosperity.

Country music has been described with a number of stereotypes over the years, some good, some not so good, some clever, and some not. No doubt you’ve probably heard someone mockingly describe country tunes with a variation on this idea: “My dog left me, my woman got stolen, and my truck left me for another man” (something like that). There’s also the famous description (I think it was Hank Williams but I may be wrong) of country music as “3 chords and the truth” which I think is just about right.

But, in spite of the seemingly shallow “good love gone bad” metaphorical aspect, there have been a number of country song titles which are not only clever, but even profound. Perhaps just because of the way the song titles highlight something obvious that hadn’t been described in a certain way. It was some tough doin’, what with corn shuckin, tobacco chewin, and hay pilin’ all keepin me busy, but I managed to whittle my list of the cleverest country song titles down to 5:

1. She Thinks I Still Care – George Jones

This Jones classic song of heartbreak is really a great song, clever title or otherwise. This song heralded George Jones’s discovery of his own unique style and was a #1 hit. But the wonderful irony, so thinly and sarcastically veiled in the title, is what really makes the song work. When George sings: “just because I saw her then fell all to pieces/ she thinks I still care” we feel that feeling because we’ve all felt it before.

2. I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know About Her – Various Artists

Everybody and their sister in the music world has covered this one. Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn…the list goes on. It’s another absolute standard in the country music canon; and there’s a reason for that. Another heartbreak song, we see in the title the voice of a spiteful scorned lover, having difficulty with the loss of his beloved. The title is almost a reassuring mantra, cutting down the new lover and consoling the speaker. “You think you know the smile on her lips/ the thrill of the touch of her fingertips/ but I forgot more than you’ll ever know about her”. Well said.

3. Who Walks In When I Walk Out – Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

This is kind of an obscure number…which is too bad because it’s really a terrific piece of music. It almost sounds like a New Orleans funeral march, and the Bob Wills recording is filled with all sorts of whoops and wails. Here we see the suspicious husband (or wife) wondering what’s happening when he’s away. It’s a haunting melody, albeit an upbeat one, but the jealousy comes through in the title. It’s clever, no?

4. Married By The Bible, Divorced By The Law – Hank Snow

“Divorces by the thousands/ is this human race insane?/ I always thought that marriage should be a sacred thing.” Obviously this is a bit of an old song, because I don’t think anyone follows the old ideas of marriage anymore. The separation of church and state carries through in the title of this song. It’s a nice idea. Old Hank would be spinning in his grave if he saw the divorce rates today…I think it’s now possible to get divorced before you’re even married. But I need to be careful…I think I’ve just discovered another clever title.

5. The Man That Wrote Home Sweet Home Never Was A Married Man – Charlie Poole

“She’ll meet you at the door when you want to come in/ She’ll knock you down with a rolling pin”. This is a truly magnificent song (and recording if you can find it). Hilarious. Probably misogynist as well, but these are just a couple old drunks from North Carolina singing and pickin’ the banjo. This song has no bearing in real life. None at all.

What is Psoriasis?

The name Psoriasis comes from the Greek word ‘Psora’ meaning ‘itch’, it is an inflammatory, skin disorder due to which, roughness and redness appears on affected areas, with fine silvery scales. It is not a contagious or an infectious disease but a life style induced disease.

Causes; Symptoms; Remedies:

According to ayurveda , impurities in the blood along with emotional factors are the main cause of the disease, it is also accepted that it has a genetic component. The disease appears first round the back of the elbow and the front of the knees as small pimples, each covered with a white cap of scales, which enlarge till they form patches. It occurs due to imbalance of vata and kapha dosha. Irregular food habits, consumption of incompatible foodstuff, salted items; alcohol, tobacco etc may also activate the disease. Ayurvedic treatment of psoriasis uses tri- pronged approach targeting the ahara (diet), vihara (lifestyle) and aushada (medicines).

Ayurveda suggests certain dos and don’ts for Psoriasis:

1) Reduce stress levels and maintain levels of calmness. Practice Pranayama, the breathing and mental exercises have proven time and again successful for treatment of almost all kinds of chronic skin disorders.

2) Do not prick, peel, scratch or rub towel vigorously on skin. Avoid soap or other irritating cleansing measures; apply herbal balm liberally on affected areas after drying the skin.

3) Wear cotton clothes. Never tend to control natural urges like urination, bowel, belching, farting etc.

4) Avoid cold-water bath immediately after a heavy work out, brisk walk etc.

5) Consume foods, which are easily digested. Diet should be strictly vegetarian and yogurt; chilies, black gram and excess salt intake should be avoided. Refrigerated and cold foods should also be avoided.

Psoriasis is an inflammatory, noncontiguous skin disorder due to which, roughness and redness appears with fine silvery scales. Psoriasis can be considered as a imbalance of Vata and Kapha doshas. Irregular food habits, consumption of foodstuffs that cannot be eaten together (E.g.: milk products with fish), excessive intake of yogurt, black gram, seafood, salted items, alcohol and tobacco are few things, which may enhance this disease.

Few Ayurvedic Medicines and remedies are:

1) Guggul is an Ayurvedic herb from a resin of a small tree, which grows in northwestern India, its useful in treating psoriasis. It has anti-inflammatory and lipid-lowering actions, helps remove fat, excess fluids from the body and penetrates deep into the tissues. An effective Kapha- and Vata-pacifying supplement.

2) Psoraban an ayurvedic product is a liquid mixture manufactured from herbs and plants having unique properties to overcome all types of Psoriasis.

3) Neem is one among the best blood purifier and detoxifier known to Ayurveda. It enhances immune system and neem oil is an antiseptic in itself. Leaf extracts are used in antiseptics and can be effectively used in treating psoriasis. It destroys fungus and bacteria and is best for almost all kinds of skin diseases including redness of skin and itching.

4) An extract of Margosa leaves with extract of cow dung and cow urine may feel repulsive, owing to the ingredients and also the stench but the bottom line is that it works quite effectively.

5) To mention a few daily use items as recommended by ayurveda are: green leafy cabbage, bitter gourd juice, sesame seeds, lecithin seeds, vitamin E rich foods.

Apart from medicines, diet control, a controlled lifestyle and yoga go long way to attain best results from ayurveda for treatment of psoriasis.

The Europeans’ so-called discovery of the so-called New World goes down in history as one of the most important and earth-shattering moments in human history, ranking right up there with the advent of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the discovery of the use of fire. Although the Vikings made it to Newfoundland around the year 1000, they apparently decided that Greenland would make for a much better colony and scrammed, leaving the Spanish with all the glory almost five centuries later. The ensuing exchange of plants, animals, people, and diseases has since been named the “Columbian Exchange” after the charismatic Christopher Columbus, who bumped into the Bahamas thinking he’d made it to India.

Over the next few centuries, different groups of European explorers brought crops such as corn, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, peppers, cocoa, peanuts, strawberries, and tobacco back to the Old World from the Americas – meaning that the potato is no more Irish than the tomato is Italian, the pepper is Spanish, or the cigarette is French. In particular, carb-rich corn and potatoes helped ease the killer food shortages that were all-too common in Europe; Ireland’s population alone swelled 800 percent in 200 years – only to be devastated by the potato blight in the mid-1840’s. So much for putting all your potatoes in one basket.

Of course, it wouldn’t be called the Columbian Exchange if the process hadn’t gone both ways. Picture the Plains Indians, then subtract the horses. Picture a Central American banana republic, then subtract the bananas. Picture a Columbian donkey carrying a load of coffee beans, then subtract both the donkey and the coffee beans. Picture a spread of Mexican food, then subtract the rice, cheese, lettuce, black olives, onion, chicken, pork, and beef. Or picture a handful of far-flung, arid, completely impoverished Indian Reservations, then subtract the smallpox, influenza, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and malaria. These were just a few of the things that Europeans brought with them during the early years of interaction with the New World.

The New World was a pretty healthy place before the Columbian Exchange, which is why Old World diseases had such an easy time decimating the indigenous populations. Think Jim and Dwight talking health insurance on The Office. Dwight: “Don’t need it. Never been sick. Perfect immune system.” Jim: “Okay, well, if you’ve never been sick, then you don’t have any antibodies.” Having already spent centuries suffering continuous outbreaks of some thoroughly nasty diseases, Old Worlders had built up quite the array of antibodies by the time they reached the Americas. In fact, many of the animals they brought to the New World – those aforementioned chickens, pigs, and cows, for example – were a major reason that Europeans were so sick all the time. Turns out, sleeping in the same one-room house as your livestock can do some wicked damage to your health, especially at a time when bathing once a week made you a real dandy.

Before Spanish Colonization and the Columbian Exchange, the native population of the Americas was estimated to be between 40 and 100 million, meaning that, in all likelihood, Native Americans far outnumbered Europe’s 60 million citizens. In fact, in 1492, the Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan was larger, cleaner, and more beautiful than any city in Europe, while the Inca boasted the single largest empire on earth. The “Great Dying” of indigenous people that followed may well have killed as many as 1 in 5 humans worldwide. Westerners love to go on and on about the Black Death of the fourteenth century, but the plague – or even the sum of Europe’s many plagues – can’t hold a candle to what happened in the New World.

When European settlers arrived in what is now the US, they were absolutely delighted by how beautiful, pristine, and park-like the landscape was, and since the “Indians” were dying in droves around them, they thought that God was giving them a sign of their entitlement to the land. Little did they know that they had stumbled upon the work of thousands of years of maintenance by native peoples, many of whom had been decimated by rapidly-spreading European diseases before the colonists had even gotten there.

The vast majority of indigenous people who suffered during the Columbian Exchange no longer exist to tell the tale. However, some of its unexpected survivors include the black populations of the Americas; the introduction of the cassava plant to West Africa resulted in a population boom that would help fuel the slavery built around cultivating Columbian-Exchange cash crops such as cotton, sugarcane, coffee, and tobacco. Although Americans have long been taught to live by words like “Manifest Destiny” and “American Dream,” we mustn’t forget the millions upon millions for whom, to quote Langston Hughes’s poem, America was a Dream Deferred.