High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The tobacco smoke enema, an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum by enema, was a medical treatment employed by 18th-century European physicians for resuscitating drowning victims and other purposes. The stimulation of respiration through the introduction of tobacco smoke by a rectal tube was first practiced by the North American Indians. In 1745, Richard Mead was among the first Western scholars to recommend tobacco smoke enemas to resuscitate victims of drowning. One of the earliest reports of resuscitation by rectally applied tobacco smoke dates from 1746, when a seemingly drowned woman is reported as being successfully revived after, on the advice of a passing sailor, the stem of the sailor's pipe was inserted into her rectum and air was blown into the pipe's bowl through a piece of perforated paper.