The first European smoker of tobacco was Luis de Torres, a Spanish explorer of Cuba. The sight of smoke coming from his mouth was enough for the Spanish Inquisition to jail de Torres for seven years. When he was released, the craze for cigar smoking had taken over. Within a hundred years, tobacco smoking was prescribed as a cure for thirty-six diseases, including toothache, bad breath, and cancer. As an economic force, tobacco was even more important. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries tobacco was the monetary standard in the American colonies, lasting twice as long as the gold standard.