Funny cigarettes were touted as a treatment for asthma in the 19th century.

Allergists urge asthma sufferers to stay away from smoke, whether from tobacco or other sources. But that wasn’t always the case. In Medical History (April), Mark Jackson recalls a time when doctors advised asthmatic patients to light ­up.

In the 19th century, many sufferers treated their asthma by smoking the stalks and roots of jimsonweed, known as stramon­ium. In 1835, one doctor endorsed stramonium as an asthma treat­ment that had the added benefit of producing “a grateful forgetfulness and a balmy oblivion, like opiates.” An 1860 asthma treatise advocated smoking stramonium each night to “keep the disease at bay.” By the end of the century, many companies were marketing stra­mon­ium cigarettes or stramonium powder that an asthmatic could burn in a bowl, inhaling the ­smoke.

The stramonium prescription largely died out by the middle of the 20th century, as doctors concluded that smoke worsens bronchial inflammation. But there may have been something to the treatment: Some of today’s asthma inhalers administer atro­pine, an alkaloid derived from stramonium.