Un mode par excellence de résurrection des noyés : la fumée du tabac et la persistance des pratiques autochtones dans la France du XVIII e siècle

In the mid-nineteenth century, tobacco smoke enemas became the preferred method for reviving drowned people in major European capitals. The origins of this practice remain elusive. The proponents of this technique, first proposed in 1740 by René Antoine Ferchault Réaumur, did not provide any theoretical rationale for its effectiveness. Instead, they referenced an anecdote suggesting that the practice began when a soldier, witnessing a grief-struck husband beside his drowned wife, offered his pipe to blow tobacco smoke into her intestines. Such a process was reportedly observed among the Mi’gmaq and described by trained surgeon Dièreville in his 1708 publication Relation du Voyage du Port Royal de l’Acadie ou de la Nouvelle France. Like physicians of the time, historians interested in this resuscitation practice have overlooked its roots in Indigenous knowledge. However, during this Age of Enlightenment, as medicine was becoming increasingly Cartesian, it was tobacco — the sacred plant of American Indigenous peoples — and its smoke evoking the soul and vital breath, which was believed to possess the power to revive drowned people.