The Native-American Peace Pipe (or Pipe of Peace). Two Terms Often Used as Symbol, Idiom, and Metaphor: Difference between revisions

He was a longtime sufferer of bronchitis, and he patented and manufactured a pocket-size mentholinhaler and a large “Pipe of Peace,” steam inhaler using pine vapor to soothe the throat, c. 1909-1910. He claimed that it could relieve asthma, tinnitus, hay fever, and catarrh. It was also used to treat throat and chest problems such as bronchitis. Soothing vapours from water warmed with a few drops of “Dirigo,” made from Maxim’s own recipe, a mixture of liquid menthol and wintergreen oil, could be delivered right to the back of the throat via a long, swan-necked glass tube. After being criticized for applying his talents to quackery, he protested that “It will be seen that it is a very creditable thing to invent a killing machine, and nothing less than a disgrace to invent an apparatus to prevent human suffering.” Despite being an inventor his whole life, people found it hard to believe that this pipe would work. They accused Maxim of promoting fake medical practices. Eventually, word of its effectiveness spread, the inhaler became very popular and, by the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands had been sold.  

Writing about Maxim’s famous machine gun and his Pipe of Peace, in 2001, Stephanie Pain asked in “War and peace” (newscientist.com): “Had Maxim done with death and turned peacemaker?” “The words ‘Maxim’ and peace somehow don’t seem to go together.” And Paul Cornish asserted: “This [inhaler] was successfully marketed under a somewhat ironic appellation: ‘Sir Hiram Maxim’s Pipe of Peace’” (Machine Guns and The Great War, 2009).  

This pipe of peace is no peace pipe, but Maxim and the other man in this ad sure look like they’re smoking. Etsy.com offers an assortment of glass peace pipes that have an uncanny similarity to Maxim’s glass bulb. The comparison is not lost on me.