Asthma and Smoking: When Cigarettes Were Medicine

In 1946, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company launched an ad campaign with the slogan, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” Long before Camel cigarettes became the doctor-approved cigarette of choice, at least in advertising, people living with asthma were often instructed to inhale smoke to relieve their symptoms. And that advice was for asthmatic adults – and children. ‘Asthma cigarettes’, as they were called, and related products, weren’t packed full of tobacco, though many did include it; they were, essentially, psychotropic drugs from the nightshade family that people inhaled in hopes of finding respiratory relief. Let's take a look at what kinds of quack – and, to be honest, some not-so-quack – products for asthma before the invention of the modern inhaler.

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