UNTIL THE TWENTIETH CENTURY,
smoking cigarettes and pipes was one of the only ways of introducing
medications directly into an asthma patient's bronchial tubes
and lungs. Patients smoked several different medicinal substances
to treat their asthma, including nitrate powders, tobacco, cubeb,
and plant-derived stramonium. By the late 1800s, experimenters
were working on other methods to deliver medications into the
lungs using air or steam instead of smoke.