North American Indians had many traditional remedies, including one to assist with the stimulation of respiration. In this method tobacco smoke was introduced, via a rectal tube, into the rectum of a drowning victim to revive them. The first documented case of this method being used in the western world was in 1746 when a woman who appeared to have drowned was resuscitate by a sailor inserting the stem of his pipe into her rectum and air was blown into the bowl through a piece of perforated paper. This method became well practiced, and by the dawn of the 19th century tobacco smoke enemas were standard practice and considered as beneficial as artificial respiration.
However, in 1811 Benjamin Brodie showed, through animal experimentation, that the nicotine in the tobacco smoke was a poison that had a propensity to stop the circulation of blood. The practice began to vanish shortly thereafter.
There were always those who doubted the credibility of the procedure and they purportedly coined the phrase, "Blowing smoke up my ass." The phase lives on even though the procedure has long since disappeared.
-Professor Walter
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