Hand Virginia pipe tobacco; hand Virginia cigarette tobacco; hand Turkish tobacco

These dried tobacco leaves are the basic material behind the huge global phenomenon that is smoking. Traditionally grown on huge plantations, the leaves are dried before being processed into the range of products that includes cigarettes, cigars, snuff, chewing and pipe tobacco.

This is an example of the raw product and was donated to the Wellcome collections in 1926 by W D and H O Wills Ltd, a major tobacco company then located in Bristol, England.