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An advert for the medical devices. Image credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?
Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas , in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe. Despite having no medical benefit whatsoever, the practice was popular, and enema kits lined the Thames like lifebelts, ready to be used as one final humiliation for somebody who was crap at swimming.
This practice ended sometime after when it became apparent that it didn't really work, given how the anus famously isn't really connected to the lungs, but doctors weren't quite finished with having a poke around in the general area to see what happens just yet.
Dr Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators , created in the s, were not marketed as a sexual object, but as a serious medical tool β and we're sure they were used as such.
