Tobacco smoke enema device

Tobacco enemas were used to resuscitate victims of drowning right up into the eighteenth century. Tobacco had been brought to Europe from the New World, where its use by indigenous peoples as a medicinal remedy had been noted by the colonists. Held to have desiccative properties, it was used in various forms – in salves and oils or as smoke. Tobacco enemas were already being used in the sixteenth century by barber-surgeons in bathhouses as a method of achieving a balance between the humours in the body.