9. The enema is a valuable medical tool but was incredulously used historically to rectally inject boar’s bile to cure constipation or blow smoke to reverse the effects of drowning
The enema, or clyster, is a medical syringe designed for the purpose of injecting fluid into the lower bowel via the rectum; most commonly used in modern medicine to clean a bowel prior to an examination, enemas are also used today in extremis as a mode of re-hydration or medicinal stimulation. However, diverting from the legitimate medicinal uses of the enema, by the Medieval period the device was used increasingly inanely and for the most peculiar of reasons. Employing a clyster-style syringe with a pump-action bulb constructed from the bladder of a pig, a concoction of a variety of supposed curatives, most popularly boar’s bile but also including other favorites such as honey, soap, or baking soda, would be rectally injected into the patient to cure an increasingly expanding list of ailments, ranging from constipation to the common cold; this explosion of use was widely documented by contemporaneous satirists, who mocked 16th century physicians claiming that their prescription for anything was “clyster, bleed purge or purge, bleed, clyster”. King Louis XIV of France reportedly believed in the medicinal properties of the enema so greatly that he is recorded as enjoying over 2,000 during his reign, some allegedly administered whilst he sat upon his throne.
Even more bizarrely, by the 18th century “tobacco-smoke enemas” were in use as a means of resuscitating drowned persons, a technique semi-adapted from North American indigenous use of tobacco as a stimulative tool against cold or drowsiness. By the 19th century, belief in the medical effectiveness of literally blowing smoke up people’s backsides had become so entrenched within English society that ready-to-use kits were provided by The Royal Humane Society of London and placed at regular intervals along the banks of the Thames River in a manner akin to the modern availability of defibrillators.