Not to blow smoke up your ass, but…
Today’s Moment of Science… blowing smoke up your ass, for your health!
Originating in Central and South America, the use of tobacco dates back almost as far as agriculture. It’s been used medicinally, for trade, and for ceremonial purposes for about 8,000 years in many cultures throughout the Americas. Indigenous people in North America were growing it by the time Europeans arrived, and they had a smallpox-blanket-for-crippling-addiction swapsies.
Europeans picked up on the medicinal perks of the plant from Indigenous tribes. In an era with nearly no medicine, it was treated like it was all the medicine, a panacea. Some employed it for pain relief, stomach problems, cancer, “female problems,” or just taking a wet mound of tobacco and ‘thwapping it on an open wound to promote healing. It was highly popular for asthma or any old respiratory problem because it went straight into the lungs, ipso facto.
Did it actually help with many of these? Not really, but nicotine is a stimulant and it does give you a little buzz. So maybe you would give less of a shit about the fact that you were probably gonna die from tuberculosis.
Even with what we now know about the long term carcinogenic effects of the plant, it contains one of few drugs they’d found, and it does have some interesting pharmacological effects. Sorting out agriculture and rudimentary medicine with the plant before we had written language was pretty impressive.
But then the stewards of this plant got to historic times, and used written language to promote some utterly daffy shit.
Before we established the face holes as best suited for breathing, people got creative. Tobacco smoke enemas came from the New World along with the tobacco. After a man- allegedly- managed to revive his wife via tobacco smoke enema from a near-drowning incident, London physicians William Hawes and Thomas Cogan knew what to do.
The Institution for Affording Immediate Relief to Persons Apparently Dead From Drowning was founded in 1774.
Apparently falling into the Thames River in London and becoming very nearly dead was common enough that there were several of these societies, but what set these guys apart? They made tobacco smoke enema kits handily available around the Thames, like the defibrillator kits of Revolutionary War era England.
At the time there was believed to be very little difference in effect between blowing air into the human’s front or back entrance. Smoke was alleged to accomplish the two things believed to effectively revive people: warming them and giving them some stimulation from that zippy nicotine hit. If that failed, then they tried breathing in the face holes.
It had a success rate of more than 0%, so what the fuck do I know?
In the early 1800s, the party came to an end after it was discovered that nicotine was toxic to the heart and that they were fishing around in the wrong hole. Also, do you know what happens when you blow through a tube into a butt? I mean not necessarily from personal experience you delightful perverts, but can you take a gander? There’s poop in there. That butt’s gonna blow right back eventually. In an era of diseases like cholera, this was likely doing more harm than good.
The Institution for Affording Immediate Relief to Persons Apparently Dead From Drowning was renamed the Royal Humane Society. They no longer use this treatment, much to the disappointment of the occasional kinky tourist with buoyancy woes.
Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any link between this and the phrase ‘blowing smoke up one’s ass.’ The phrase came into common use in the mid-twentieth century, long after the practice fell out of favor, mysteriously with no connection to the ancient art of tobacco smoke enemas.
This has been your daily moment of science, seriously effing concerned about the origin of the phrase ‘screwed the pooch.’
To get more the MOS sent straight to your inbox with more tales of NASA funded dolphin hand jobs, rocket scientist orgies and fucking… Australia… head to patreon.com/scibabe.
Join the discussion!