11. The Intuitive Sense of Blowing Smoke Up Drowned People’s Asses
In the context of the time and in light of prevailing medical wisdom, tobacco smoke enemas did not sound as dumb to people in the 1700s as they seem to us today. The treatment made intuitive sense: the drowned person was full of water, so blowing air, in the form of tobacco smoke, would expel the water. And the “fact” that such air was from a plant with healing properties, as tobacco was believed to possess, was an added benefit. The hiccup, of course, was that the water was in the drowned person’s lungs, which are not connected to his or her rear end.
Because of that overlooked bit of human biology, the act of blowing air up the rear ends of drowning victims and into their bowels did little to expel water from their lungs. Although some doctors preferred to stick the tube directly into the lungs through the mouth or nose, most preferred to shove it up the patient’s butt, instead. Although medically useless, belief in the efficacy of tobacco smoke enemas in reviving drowning victims, or even those presumed dead, was widespread.
