Cigarettes Were The Perfect Asthma Treatment
- Time Period: 1920s to 1960s
Reading the above header, you might laugh a bit. Yet it’s true that many physicians used to believe cigarettes could help people with asthma problems. Of course, one would naturally think the worst thing for an asthmatic person would be smoking, but not them. It could be that they were able to partially coat the throat a bit, and offer some aid due to the use of nicotine involved. We did not realize how addictive nicotine was back then, nor did people consider what’s in cigarettes beyond this.
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, smoking was so widely accepted that doctors often smoked in the room while seeing patients quite often. Early cigarettes were a bit harder to use but by the 1920s, menthol was added into most to help with this. Menthol is a very useful thing that could potentially help someone with asthma or sinus issues. Doctors seemed to ignore the idea of using menthol on its own for a while, which resulted in the recommendation of cigarettes.