Asthma, then and now
Allergists urge asthma sufferers to stay away from smoke, whether from tobacco or other sources. But that wasn’t always the case. In Medical History (April), Mark Jackson recalls a time when doctors advised asthmatic patients to light up.
In the 19th century, many sufferers treated their asthma by smoking the stalks and roots of jimsonweed, known as stramonium. In 1835, one doctor endorsed stramonium as an asthma treatment that had the added benefit of producing “a grateful forgetfulness and a balmy oblivion, like opiates.” An 1860 asthma treatise advocated smoking stramonium each night to “keep the disease at bay.” By the end of the century, many companies were marketing stramonium cigarettes or stramonium powder that an asthmatic could burn in a bowl, inhaling the smoke.
The stramonium prescription largely died out by the middle of the 20th century, as doctors concluded that smoke worsens bronchial inflammation. But there may have been something to the treatment: Some of today’s asthma inhalers administer atropine, an alkaloid derived from stramonium.