The Cookie or the Cigarette?

 This is why I so enjoy going down the rabbit hole of research.

In my work in progress, one of my characters, Lawrence, third footman, started out as a Welshman with a lilting voice, in his mid-20s.

A problem arose. I had set my story in Sussex, England in the year 1917.
England was in the middle of WW1. And draft age was between 18--41. So why wasn't Lawrence off in the trenches?

(I had to raise and lower the ages of several other male characters.)
I chose asthma. That was one of the few ailments that would keep him out of the war.
So much for the lilt. But I could work with the short breath and wheezing of an asthmatic. He's an excitable boy, prone to conspiracy theories.

But then I thought: how did people treat asthma in 1917, well before modern inhalers?
I researched, and found an answer: CIGARETTES.

Yes, cigarettes. Proust used them for his asthma, as a matter of fact. From a letter to his mother:
"Yesterday after I wrote to you I had an attack of asthma and incessant running at the nose, which obliged me to walk all doubled up and light anti-asthma cigarettes at every tobacconist’s I passed, etc. And what’s worse, I haven’t been able to go to bed till midnight, after endless fumigations, and it’s three or four hours after a real summer attack, an unheard of thing for me."

But these were not nicotine delivery devices. They were medicine delivery instruments, mainly stramonium cigarettes. Datura stramonium (also known as jimsonweed), a type of flower akin to deadly nightshade, has anti-spasmodic properties and relaxes the air passages.

One brand which first came on the market in the 1880's (and remained there until the 1950s) was Page's Inhaler Cigarettes:

"Users were instructed to 'exhale the lungs of air, then after taking a mouthful of smoke, inhale the air into the lungs through the mouth allowing the smoke to go down with the air filling the lungs.'
Users were warned to "discontinue use if rapid pulse or blurring of vision appears." The label also warns that the inhalers are 'not to be taken by elderly people except on competent advice.'"

I then learned that datura was often cultivated in English gardens for the treatment of asthma.
This meant that I should make the relationship between the footman Lawrence and the head gardener Lessie stronger. The former depended upon the latter for his drug.
Of course, there were side effects. Datura stramonium was a narcotic, among whose possible side effects were delirium and hallucination.

PERECT for a young man with a tenuous grasp on reality. I now have all the grounding I need for the character.
But I'm left wondering: was a cookie really responsible for Remembrance of Things Past, or was it a cigarette?