The tobacco smoke enema, an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum by enema, was a medical treatment employed by European physicians for a range of ailments.
Tobacco was recognised as a medicine soon after it was first imported from the New World, and tobacco smoke was used by western medical practitioners as a tool against cold and drowsiness, but applying it by enema was a technique appropriated from the North American Indians. The procedure was used to treat gut pain, and attempts were often made to resuscitate victims of near drowning. Liquid tobacco enemas were often given to ease the symptoms of a hernia.
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.
Tobacco smoke is an aerosol produced by the incomplete combustion of tobacco during the smoking of cigarettes, pipes, or cigars. Temperatures in burning cigarettes range from ambient to 950 ℃, depending on the amount of oxygen present. During the burning of tobacco (itself a complex mixture), thousands of chemical substances are generated by combustion, distillation, pyrolysis, and pyrosynthesis. Tobacco smoke is used as a fumigant and inhalant.
Composition
The particles in tobacco smoke are liquid aerosol droplets (~ 20% water), with a mass median aerodynamic diameter (MMAD) that is submicrometer (and thus, fairly "lung-respirable" by humans). The droplets are present in high concentrations (some estimates are as high as 10¹⁰ droplets per cm³). Most cigarettes today contain a cigarette filter, which can reduce "tar" and nicotine smoke yields up to 50% by several different mechanisms, with an even greater removal rate for other classes of compounds (e.g., phenols).
Tobacco smoke may be grouped into a particulate phase (trapped on a glass-fiber pad, and termed "TPM" (total particulate matter)) and a gas/vapor phase (which passes through such a glass-fiber pad). "Tar" is mathematically determined by subtracting the weight of the nicotine and water from the TPM. However, several components of tobacco smoke (e.g., hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, phenanthrene, and pyrene) do not fit neatly into this rather arbitrary classification, because they are distributed among the solid, liquid and gaseous phases.
Ruffalo is a noted enthusiast of smoking – marijuana at least – and has been vocal about his beliefs on several occasions ... When women could not even vote & tobacco smoke enemas were an established medical treatment,' he wrote on X in April.
... spontaneous generation, tobacco-smoke enemas, Holocaust denial, or the theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked ... And tobacco-smoke enemas? I'm intrigued -- off to the library to learn more.
The 5th U.S ... "No one thinks the Constitution requires public libraries to shelve books promoting quackeries like phrenology, spontaneous generation, tobacco-smoke enemas, Holocaust denial, or the theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked ...
... of medical procedure is being dictated by a law from the 1800s, an era when doctors prescribed — and this is true — chloroform for asthma, cocaine for hay fever and tobacco-smoke enemas for cholera.
... the legislation itself comes from “an era when doctors prescribed — and this is true — chloroform for asthma, cocaine for hay fever and tobacco smoke enemas for cholera.”.
Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.
Tobacco enemas were first pioneered (for want of a better word) by Native Americans, who would blow smoke up the anus as medicine ... Or, to put it in layman's terms, it was time to start inserting tobacco smoke into her anus. .
