Yes, Cigarettes Were Once Used to Treat Asthma

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Yes, Cigarettes Were Once Used to Treat Asthma
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Cigarettes containing stramonium leaves and other ingredients such as tea leaves, chestnut leaves, gum benzoin, and kola nuts were a common treatment for asthma in the early 20th century.

Stramonium was enthusiastically adopted by asthmatic patients and their physicians. In promoting its use as a pain-reliever in 1816, Alexander Marcet noted that Datura stramonium was often “cultivated in some English gardens” expressly for the purpose of treating asthma. During the following decades, most medical authorities on asthma advocated smoking stramonium because of its anti-spasmodic properties.

During the early decades of the twentieth century, the prominent position of smoking stramonium was challenged not only by new theories of asthma, which prioritized the role of inflammation and regarded smoke as an irritant, but also by the proliferation of novel and effective pharmaceutical remedies, by expanding state regulation of poisonous substances such as opium and cannabis, and by growing concerns about the health risks associated with smoking tobacco.

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