Cigares de Joy

ADvent Calendar Day 17

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Although smoking and asthma now seem an unlikely combination, cigarettes were an efficient way of getting medication into the lungs. According to the Medical Times and Gazette in 1875, the Cigares de Joy were ‘very useful little agents for inhaling the smoke of stramonium.’ Datura stramonium and its relative Datura tatula were common remedies for asthma, formerly being pipe-smoked before this more elegant form came along. Stramonium is hallucinogenic, but in appropriate doses the Cigares probably did bring some relief to those struggling to breathe.