Lots of knowledge in here, but my favorite piece has always been this treatment for intestinal parasites:
"Tobacco: Eat 1 to 1.5 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worms long enough for your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, but no sooner."
To your actual question yes and no. In the past, yes. Currently no.
I think its more the principle. Nicotine, like caffine was evolved by planets as a pesticide. Animals (like parasites) that don't normally come in contact with it, likely don't have resitances to it.
Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.
A cigarette contains up to a gram of tobacco with a nicotine content of 0.5 to 2 percent. A recent estimate of nicotine's human LD50 is in the range of 0.5 to 1 grams. A four cigarette dose would seem unlikely to be lethal.
7.2.1 Human data
7.2.1.1 Adults
The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988).
7.2.1.2 Children
The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine (Arena, 1974).
7.2.2 Relevant animal data
Dog: oral LD50: 9.2 mg/kg
mouse: oral LD50: 3.3 mg/kg (RTECS, 1985-86)
rat: oral LD50: 50 mg/kg
0.5-1.0 mg/kg, not 0.5-1.0 grams. Don't go eating cigarettes.
> Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.
I don't know about 'advanced'; my understanding was that our protein were simply slightly different, enough to make nicotine not a potent poison, but just another substance you don't want to take too much of.
From a document called "Combat Survival and Evasion":
> Depending upon the supplies, there is a worm remedy: swallow a couple of tablespoons of kerosene or gasoline. Kerosene is more effective but gasoline will do. Either will make you a bit sick, but will make the worms a lot sicker.
It's amazing how the wording is very similar. This document is from sometime in 50's I think, written by a Korean(?) war vet (talks about his time being a POW and "stealing" a wooden house board by board until it was slowly gone altogether. The Chinese guards were confused but weren't amused.)
"Tobacco: Eat 1 to 1.5 cigarettes. The nicotine in the cigarette will kill or stun the worms long enough for your system to pass them. If the infestation is severe, repeat the treatment in 24 to 48 hours, but no sooner."