A factual archive as true today as in the middle of the 18th century to explain the state of science, scientific enquiry and dogma through the minds of some of our most bogan political, public, corporate and academic institutions.
This is a colonial period ‘Tobacco Smoke Enema Kit’ from the 1750s. It was used to blow tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum to resuscitate drowning victims. Doubts about its credibility led to the popular phrase ‘blowing smoke up your arse’.
Tobacco resuscitation kits consisting of a pair of bellows and a tube were provided by the Royal Humane Society of London and placed at various points along the Thames. European physicians furthermore employed these enemas for a range of ailments.
Tobacco was believed by Europeans to be medicinal soon after it was first imported from the New World, and tobacco smoke was used by western medical practitioners as a tool against cold and drowsiness. During the early 19th century, the practice fell into decline, when it was discovered that the principal active agent in tobacco smoke, nicotine, was poisonous and much later carcinogenic.
It is not clearly understood how one breathes through one’s rectum, but we do know the rectum is a primary organ for the absorption of nutrients and anything else it is capable of collecting subject to the knowledge and desires of its host.
This tool is still used by Politicians and Ministers, the Liberals, the Nationals, our Prime Minister and his mates, the Federal Government, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Commonwealth chief medical advisers and most of the mainstream media oligopoly in Australia – News Corp, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, most of the commercial TV channels and even by a few universities including UniSA, University of Adelaide, UNSW and UTS. Even the AMA found a use for it recently.
So if you want to try out your skills of resuscitation on the Australian population, have a go, the institutions, authorities and experts above seem to get a great deal of enjoyment, satisfaction and profit out of it.
It is probably as true to say, what you see, hear and eat may be just as toxic as what comes out the other end, not just what you blow into it, whichever end you want to treat or in between. Beware of many things, but if you don’t want to die from drowning in a sea of government and corporate misinformation, data and devices, it may not be a good idea to invest in one of these or donate it to your local surf lifesaving club.
Beware of your information choice and sources, the distance between promotional advertising and propaganda is shorter than between the mouth and bowel. Science is a complex animal and social intelligence is never guaranteed, we are far more easily manipulated before we even open our mouths or start to think.
Surprising in this day and age don’t you think, more than 250 years later – what science and history can teach us!
Once you’ve mastered this one, keep an eye out for the next instalment on the phrase, ‘Big bag of wind’.
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