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Asthma is a respiratory condition marked by spasms in the bronchi of the lungs, causing difficulty in breathing. Today, flare-ups of asthma are typically self-treated through the use of an inhaler that delivers a type of medication known as a bronchodilator (commonly albuterol) which relaxes and opens air passages to the lungs to make breathing easier. Modern readers might be quite surprised to learn that a common remedy for asthma symptoms was once something that now seems the most unlikely of treatments — cigarettes: This revelation isn't so shocking as it might seem, though, because asthma cigarettes were very different than modern tobacco-based cigarettes — they were a delivery system for asthma medication used before the advent of albuterol and propellant-based inhalers. Back in the early part of the 20th century, when very few effective medications existed for the treatment of most medical maladies, doctors could offer little to asthma patients other than adrenaline injections. In that void, asthma sufferers commonly turned to a type of inhalation therapy dating to the early 19th century, one which involved the use of stramonium leaves: Products such as Page's Inhalers — cigarettes containing stramonium leaves and other ingredients such as tea leaves, chestnut leaves, gum benzoin, and kola nuts — were therefore a common treatment for asthma symptoms in the early 20th century: Despite the development of effective bronchodilating medications such as albuterol in the early 1970s, asthma cigarettes were still being recommended and used well into the 1990s:
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