Tobacco smoke enema

During the early 19th century the practice fell into decline, when it was discovered that the principal active agent in tobacco smoke, nicotine, is poisonous.

Its use was mentioned in pharmacopoeia as a tool against cold and somnolence brought on by particular medical afflictions,[3] its effectiveness being explained by its ability to soak up moisture, to warm parts of the body, and to therefore maintain the equilibrium thought to be so important to a healthy person.

[5] In addition to the Native Americans' use of tobacco smoke enemas for stimulating respiration, European physicians also employed them for a range of ailments, e.g., headaches, respiratory failure, colds, hernias, abdominal cramps, typhoid fever, and cholera outbreaks.

[6] An early example of European use of this procedure was described in 1686 by Thomas Sydenham, who, to cure iliac passion, prescribed first bleeding, followed by a tobacco smoke enema: Here, therefore, I conceive it most proper to bleed first in the arm, and an hour or two afterwards to throw up a strong purging glyster; and I know of none so strong and effectual as the smoke of tobacco, forced up through a large bladder into the bowels by an inverted pipe, which may be repeated after a short interval, if the former, by giving a stool, does not open a passage downwards.

His name was cited in one of the earliest documented cases of resuscitation by rectally applied tobacco smoke, from 1746, when a seemingly drowned woman was treated.

[3] By the turn of the 19th century, tobacco smoke enemas had become an established practice in Western medicine, considered by Humane Societies to be as important as artificial respiration.

"By 1805, the use of rectally applied tobacco smoke was so established as a way to treat obstinate constrictions of the alimentary canal that doctors began experimenting with other delivery mechanisms.

[13] In one experiment, a decoction of half a drachm of tobacco in four ounces of water was used as an enema in a patient suffering from general convulsion where there was no expected recovery.

My object in ordering the tobacco infusion and smoke enemata was to favour the reduction of any obscure hernia or muscular spasm of the bowel which might exist.