Blowin' smoke
Posted by ESC on January 16, 2002 at
In Reply to: An amazing followup posted by bob on January 16, 2002
: Got this by email:
: I recently read
your posting on the origin of "Blowing smoke up my ass". I
: don't post on
the internet, but I thought you might be interested in some
: information from
Jan Bondeseson's new, relatively scholarly book "Buried
: Alive, The Terrifying
History of our Most Primal Fear". Apparently, it has
: not always been easy
to determine if someone is truly dead. This is a quote
: from Mr. Bondeson's
book:
: "Antoine Louis had also proposed another method of testing life, or
at least
: stimulating the vital spark in the apparently dead person: with
a powerful
: bellows, he administered an enema of tobacco smoke. One of the
pipes of
: this remarkable apparatus was thrust into the anus of the apparently
dead
: person; the other was connected, by way of a powerful bellows, to a
large
: furnace full of tobacco (reference 5). Such enemas of tobacco smoke
were
: thought to be very beneficiel and were used to try to revive not only
people
: presumed dead but also drowned or unconscious individuals. In 1784,
the
: Belgian physician P.J.B. Previnaire was given a prize by the Academy
of
: Sciences in Brussels for a book on apparent death, which described and
:
depicted an improved bellows for enemas of tobacco smoke, which he called
:
Der Doppelblaser (reference 6). These enemas were regularly used well into
:
the nineteenth century, particularly in Holland; modern science has
: discerned
no physiological rationale for their use, except the pain and
: indignity of
having a blunt instrument violently thrust up one's rear
: passage must have
had some restorativbe effect (reference 7)."
: The text is accompanied by patent
illustrations of the Doppelblaser witht he
: following explanation, "The fearful-looking
Doppelblaser, an apparatus for
: administering enemas to ttest the viability
of cprpses, described in Dr.
: P.J.B Previnaire's Abhandlung Uper die verschiedenen
Arten des Scheintodes
: (Leipzig, 1790)."
: Another illustration bears the
caption, " A brave German doctor administers
: an enema of tobacco smoke to
a corpse in this curious late
: eighteenth-century plate. From the author's
collection."
: I leave it to you and the discussion board to determine if this
could be the
: origin of this phrase. Although the topic is somewhat distasteful,
I
: recommend Mr. Bondeson's book (ISBN 0-393-04906-X). Please don't use my
:
name if you choose to post any of this.
: Sincerely,
: [name withheld]
Here I was getting ready to accuse Bob of blowing smoke. But there actually is such a book -- available on Amazon.com
- Cynical The Fallen 01/17/02