Snuff is popular today-but people use it by putting a pinch of it between the gums and teeth-this leads to cancer eventually.
In the 18th century, the method of use was to inhale a pinch into your nose, which would provoke a sneeze-does anyone still do this? Was the objective to sneeze, or dod you get the nicotine high this way?
It was to provoke a sneeze. In those days tobacco was not smoked or even known to contain anything that would give the consumer any sort of high or other reaction, other than to sneeze.
Sneezariums became popular up to the 1890s, as many would go there for hours to enjoy a good dose of sneezing (which was thought to thin the biles in the brain, which we now know as snot, and help with other ailments).
It wasn’t until J. Scott Marlboro in 1893 first attempted rolling it into paper and smoking it that he realized it’s more pleasant and presumably healthier effects.
Apparently there is a niche market for videos showing these people sneezing. I’ve even heard claims that these films are illegal!
Older members of the ethnic-Chinese community in Thailand still use it. The wife’s uncle is in his 80s, and he’s let me try some. Sneezing doesn’t seem to be part of it though.
These snuff films are very illegal, not to mention those victimized by induced sneezing.
Old fashioned snuff was showing up in head shops in the 70s. I don’t understand the point really. It would come in this little can with a nesting top and bottom, you would rotate the top of the can to expose a little hole in the bottom part to get the powder out. In the 9th grade there was this kid Jeff Miller who was playing Russian Snuff Roulette, blindly rotating the can, sticking it under his nose and taking a huge snort. In the middle of class he hit the hole, his face turned bright red and he had to run out of class gagging. Maybe you got some kind of buzz from absorbing nicotine through your nasal membranes, but maybe the point is to amuse other while you shove crap up your nose.
Interesting, but still confusing. We got tobacco from the Native Americans, who smoked it in pipes. Why did people just start shoving the crumbs up their nose?
Extreme Sneezing has been having a resurgence as a sport recently, garnering its own Facebook page. I don’t know if snuff is employed by its participants, though. Terry Pratchett, the famous author, mentioned Extreme Sneezing in his novel Making Money, but did NOT mention it in his novel Snuff, so go figure.
To sneeze, obviously.
I hope you realized I my entire post was a joke. 
Thus the origin of “Pipe dream:” “To sneeze, perchance, to dream.”
Also the latin phrase “Ca-choo diem” aka “Sneeze the Day”
I’ve been doing ancestry. com lately and found that a relative on my maternal grandmothers side ran a sneezarium back in ye olde London town in the 1800s. We don’t know much more than that.
People were into this at Ren Faire about 30 years ago; the goal was not to sneeze, as you wanted the tobacco to stay where it was in your nose and produce the buzz-like effect.
Sneezes or not, it did produce some epic boogers.
Are you saying there was no nicotine delivery?
In the old sneezariums of the day (very cool about your ancestry Drunky!), the idea was for the snuffer to snuff enough snuff as to sneeze so violently into another snuffee’s face, thereby letting it absorb through their dermis, eyes, open sores or any other topical means of entering the bloodstream.
This, unfortunately, led to the affliction they dubbed sneezonoma. A dreadful disease that produced brown stains and painfully oozing pustules about the face and neck—which ultimately led to the demise of the sneezarium in August of 1892.
You must have read Woodson’s history of the sneezarium. Most current scholars consider him kind of hack. One of the main downfalls of the sneezariums was, of course, the spread of tuberculosis, along with members of high society being afflicted with cancer of the face.
I broke the link in your post, DrunkySmurf, as you asked.
Woodson a hack? Come on, the years he published the tome on the sneezarium happened to be smack dab in the middle of the ten years he played football for the Steelers. Had he forsaken football for academia we would be living in a very different world today.
Are you stalking me? How many threads are you going to pop into just to defend Woodson? Read some Carmichael and get back to me. I’m not sure if Woodson fumbled more in academia or on the field.
Far be it from me to stand in the way of intelligent, um, discourse, but on the off chance the OP was serious here is an article.
Snuff is good for a sneeze
That will open one’s peepers,
But so will black pepper
And a whole lot cheaper.