Tobacco Smoke Enema - Tobacco in Medicine

Tobacco in Medicine

Until its discovery and importation from the New World, tobacco was unknown to western medicine. Europeans were not ignorant of the effects of smoke; incense has been used since antiquity, and the narcotic effects of burning hemp seed was well known by the Scythians and Thracians. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates recommended the inhalation of smoke for "female diseases" as did Pliny the Elder, as a cure for coughs. The Native Americans from whom the first western explorers learnt about tobacco used the leaf for a variety of purposes, including religious worship, but Europeans soon became aware that the Americans also used tobacco for medicinal purposes. The French diplomat Jean Nicot used a tobacco poultice as an analgesic, and Nicolás Monardes advocated tobacco as a treatment for a long list of diseases, such as cancer, headaches, respiratory problems, stomach cramps, gout, intestinal worms and female diseases. Contemporaneous medical science placed much weight on humorism, and for a short period tobacco became a panacea. Its use was mentioned in pharmacopoeia as a tool against cold and somnolence brought on by particular medical afflictions, its effectiveness explained by its ability to soak up moisture, to warm parts of the body, and to therefore maintain the equilibrium so important to a healthy person. In an attempt to discourage disease tobacco was also used to fumigate buildings.

The stimulation of respiration through the introduction of tobacco smoke by a rectal tube was first practiced by the North American Indians. An early example of the use of this procedure was described in 1809 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. — Thomas Sydenham

Tobacco smoke enemas were also reportedly used by 19th-century Danish farmers, for horses that needed laxatives, and the US anthropologist Frank Speck reported that contemporary Catawba Native Americans also treated their horses using the technique.