Here's another funny but true story of how
tobacco smoke saved a baby's life.
"Apparently, Picasso had such a difficult birth that he was at first thought to be stillborn. Such was evidently the opinion of the midwife, at any rate, for she left him lying on a table in order to devote her attention to his mother. It was only thanks to the presence of mind shown by his doctor uncle, Don Salvador, that the baby came to life. Picasso himself heard the story told on many occasions in his childhood, and he delighted in repeating it himself. 'Doctors at that time,' he told Antonina Vallentin, 'used to smoke big cigars, and my uncle was no exception. When he saw me lying there he blew smoke into my face. To this I immediately reacted with a grimace and a bellow of fury'" (cf. Vallentin 1957, 7; Palau 1980, 27).