Don’t blow smoke up my ass

September 14, 2013 11:11 PM

A medical enema device used for Blowing smoke up the ass.
posted by homunculus (25 comments total)

Well, it looks like the latest innovation came some time ago, so I don't know how much new research there will be before this thread is closed. But here's a nice tune about the joys of tabacco to hold you over:

Tobacco, No.3
posted by homunculus at 11:32 PM on September 14, 2013

The whole up the ass thing always seemed ridiculous to me anyways. Why blow smoke when you can get medicine drug?
posted by mannequito at 11:39 PM on September 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

Man, my ex-wife once blew smoke up my ass while at the same time pulling the wool over my eyes.

Hell of a woman, she was.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:42 PM on September 14, 2013 [19 favorites]

As discussed on QI, the comedy/educational show hosted by Stephen Fry.
posted by tychotesla at 12:05 AM on September 15, 2013 [3 favorites]

Is there a similar device for blowing sunshine up one's ass?


I could certainly use an alternative source of vitamin D.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:53 AM on September 15, 2013 [9 favorites]

The first time I heard about this, complete with a period illustration of a policeman reviving a fainting victim on the street with a glass pipe, I was absolutely certain it was a hoax. Surely, I thought, this is a gag retcon origin tale of a crass modern figure of speech; a much cleverer version of those stupid etymologies of the word "fuck" other kids told you in grade school. It took Stephen Fry to convince me it was real.
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:56 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

So, oddly enough, "blowing smoke up my ass" apparently has nothing to do with this. The phrase "blow smoke" is an ancient one, meaning, as you expect, "to deceive," and then was intensified in the 1950s to "blow smoke up my ass" and the related "blow sunshine up my skirt." Neither phrase appeared concurrent to the medical device.

It's sort of like discovering the phrase "Scot free" has nothing to do with Scottish people (which it doesn't; the word is Old Norse for "tax") or the "pull the wool over someone's eyes" actually doesn't refer to wool (it doesn't; "wool" was slang for wigs).

Or maybe they do. Phrase origins are uncertain things. Maybe somebody old in the 50s remembered somebody trying to revive a drowning victim with a tobacco bellows and invented the phrase. That's the sort of image that will stay with you.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 1:05 AM on September 15, 2013 [7 favorites]

It sounds silly, but on reflection it's not completely insane, if perhaps ineffectual. The idea would presumably be to use nicotine as a stimulant (it gives you an adrenaline kick among its other effects), but without introducing it through the lungs. Short of an injection, administering the drug rectally seems to be the best way.
posted by cx at 1:40 AM on September 15, 2013

With blends like these, who needs enemas?
posted by chavenet at 3:04 AM on September 15, 2013 [14 favorites]

Our hero in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet gets this treatment, but not for drowning.
posted by Segundus at 4:10 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Clyster pipes, which were used for enemas in general, go back much further (and even get a mention in Shakespeare). A form of the pipe was used in giving tobacco enemas. Tobacco was definitely treated as a medicine when it first arrived in Europe.

James I wrote that tobacco was generally vile, and only useful in treating syphilis, since both came from the Americas.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:32 AM on September 15, 2013

If I wanted smoke blown up my ass, I'd be at home with a pack of cigarettes and a short length of hose.
posted by 445supermag at 6:37 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

This says:

Plant geneticists have established that tobacco's ‘centre of origin’, i.e. the meeting place between a species’ genetic origin and the area in which it was first cultivated, is located in the Peruvian/Ecuadorean Andes. Estimates for its first date of cultivation range from 5000-3000 BC.

It conveniently leaves out that it was discovered in a van down by the river!

And "Mayan tobacco enema" is more than a suggested search term. Tobacco was sniffed, chewed, eaten, drunk, smeared over bodies, used in eye drops and enemas, and smoked. It was blown into warriors’ faces before battle, over fields before planting and over women prior to sex, it was offered to the gods, and accepted as their gift, and not least it served as a simple narcotic for daily use by men and women.

I'm seeing a business plan here.
posted by petebest at 9:01 AM on September 15, 2013

And a coffee, yeah.
posted by petebest at 9:15 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh god I am laughing so hard I'm crying. I followed "petebest's" coffee enema link above. Didn't check the vid but scrolled to the comments. This one, FTW!

Kevin McMahon 5 months ago
The best part of waking up is Folgiers in your buttttttt :)

Yes, I am 5 years old.
posted by skepticbill at 9:47 AM on September 15, 2013 [3 favorites]

We went to a hookah bar last night and I wondered out loud (maybe a little too loud) if anyone had invented a hookah with a dildo at the end of it.

Now I feel vindicated. A little.
posted by jake at 10:35 AM on September 15, 2013

He made this!
posted by oceanjesse at 10:40 AM on September 15, 2013

Who knew blowing ass smoke was so steampunk?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:41 AM on September 15, 2013

I really regret that this was not from Antiques Roadshow. I'd like to see how that would play out.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:27 PM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

I once read a claim (in a student union newspaper in Australia, so perhaps take it with a grain of salt) that in pre-revolutionary France there was a fad among the aristocracy for having lemonade enemas, administered by a functionary whose title was, of course, “limonadier”. A Google search for “limonadier” is unhelpful.
posted by acb at 12:54 PM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

21 comments and not a single reference to politics.

MeFi, you a disappoint.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:47 PM on September 15, 2013

21 comments and not a single reference to politics.

Mefi, I applaud your restraint.
posted by louche mustachio at 2:18 PM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Only 21 comments before someone has to bring up politics. MeFi, you look nice in that shirt.
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:30 PM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Only 21 comments until a comment referencing the number of comments before it. MeFi, you are meta.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:19 PM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Only 21 comments before we have 26 comments.

MeFi, I thought you could count.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:25 AM on September 16, 2013 [2 favorites]