Backstories: Smoke Enemas

What if I told you the phrase “blowing smoke up one’s ass” is not just a colorful saying, but a statement with real medical origins?

Across Europe in the 1700s, tobacco smoke enemas were a popular medical practice used to treat everything from constipation and colds to resuscitation and late-stage cholera. (Yes, tobacco—not cannabis. But some experimentation likely occurred!)

European physicians picked up this practice from Native Americans in the New World. Cherokee and Catawba tribes, among others, used the tobacco leaf for many purposes, including stimulating respiration. But the Europeans really ran with it.

In the Netherlands, patients who had fallen into their canals and apparently drowned were given rectal infusions of tobacco smoke as a respiratory stimulant. English doctors prescribed tobacco enemas for intestinal dysfunction.

By 1800, though, the efficacy of such enemas were in question. The toxic nature of nicotine was discovered through animal trials in 1811, ultimately fading out the use of tobacco in Western medicine.

The act of “blowing smoke up someone’s ass” became a figure of speech for lying to someone to flatter them, and we got back to inhaling smoke from just one end.

Weed suppositories on the other hand? Definitely still a thing.