Its a good habit to at least make an effort to see where these outdated medications were coming from.

So, yknow. Don't ditch your inhaler for a cigarette (and I truly wish there weren't rfk weirdos going around making me need to clarify this); but in a world of severe respiratory illnesses, climate disasters, and medication shortages...

I can't know if we were fine the whole time cuz I dont have access to knowledge of the parallel universe where we weren't doing all this 😂 but I can say those showers sure as shit made me feel a lot better physically and our community felt stronger and more capable, rather than beat down and apart.

For myself, and several other community members, a steam shower with a heavy dose of oregano or peppermint essential oil on an adjacent washcloth brought back scary O2% dips high enough to not go in. The same logic of those asthma cigarettes helped us a lot.

Along with herbs and information. Not as a treatment, but as a proactive hail Mary to try to keep things from getting bad enough to take up a ventilator when there weren't enough to go around.

Back in the early days of covid, before there were any medications available, when it was stay home or go on a ventilator, my community was banding together to try to keep eachother well-enough and out of the hospital. Pulsoxs and meals got delivered to people infected and quarantining

The lurid, ugly, outrageous stories are super compelling- they're also often exaggerated and misunderstood; and sometimes the truths behind them can be very useful...

...and it's usually created by people who dont actually have sufficient backgrounds or skills wrt medical anthropology or medical traditions that predate ~1930 (see: this pharmacist somehow missing that caffiene is a bronchodialtor: www.pharmacytimes.com/view/when-ci...)

The point of this thread is to expand on a really interesting bit of medical history, but im also hopeful it can counteract some of the credulity that goes around on the topic of #medicalhistory. A lot of medical "history" content is designed to entertain more than to educate...

While they come out of a time where frankly deranged patent medicines nobody would've thought to mix before or since were being manufactured, most asthma cigarettes are pretty well-grounded in historical and traditional practice that has the benefit of many hundreds of years of anecdotal evidence

They offer a pretty direct and immediate benefit to clogged and spasming respiratory systems, and they probably did save lives.

So, we know that all inhaled smoke causes lung damaged and is carcinogenic. It doesn't matter if it's tobacco, weed, wildfires, camp fires, industrial pollution...none of its great. However, prior to the advent of aersolized steroid medications, asthma cigarettes actually make a lot of sense

Other herbs that might appear in asthma cigarettes include what wed call lung-affinity aromatics, which includes mints, rosemary, oregano, anise, thyme, and so on. These herbs have volatile essential oils that may also serve as bronchodilators

This one has ephedra, another bronchodilating cns stimulant

Another very common component in asthma cigarettes is lobelia - an herb that is similarly toxic in large doses and has been used as a purgative; but in small doses can relax muscle spasms

The article i got this image from mostly dismisses the other ingredients but ill note that caffiene is also a bronchodialator and even today, a common stopgap home remedy among asthmatics is to drink strong coffee (Ideally while trying to find a better solution!)

However, I will remind yall that benadryl is also a pretty gnarly and toxic hallucinogen - the dose makes the poison. This product has a reccomended dosage of four puffs a day: not four cigarettes, four puffs.

The plants contained in this pictured box have a mix of bronchodialating and expectorant actions, chiefly among them stramonium--also known as datura stramonium, which you might have heard of as a pretty gnarly and toxic hallcinogen!

Like many others, you might be thinking "asthma CIGARETTES? how foolish! How dumb!"
The reality is actually a lot more interesting...and makes a lot more sense.