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People Tried Unworkable Methods to Ward off Illness Outbreaks in History

Khalid Elhassan March 31, 2020 33 min

Physician - Goat gland — Brinkley's hospital operating room. Imgur

27. A… Slight Hiccup With Blowing Smoke Up One’s Bum

Medical kit, including bellows, for blowing smoke up a patient’s rear end. BC Medical Journal

One hiccup with trying to save drowning victims by blowing smoke up their behinds was that the water was in the drowned person’s lungs, which are not connected to his or her lower digestive tract. Thus, blowing air up the drowning victims’ butts and into their bowels would do little to expel water from their lungs. Although some doctors preferred sticking 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. So widespread, that medical kits for blowing smoke up the butt were found at routine intervals along major waterways, such as the River Thames. There they waited, like modern defibrillators, ready for use to revive the drowned and bring the (presumed) dead back to life.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.