How cigar smoke saved the life of Pablo Picasso
October 25th, 1881, is a day that not only changed the world of art forever but the world at large, by being the birth date of one Pablo Ruiz Picasso.
There really isn’t more that can be said about the man, both in a positive or negative sense. His many talents and his many flaws have been picked over for a century now. However, one wonders who or what could have taken his place as arguably the joint most famous painter of all time with Van Gogh, had he never been born that late October day 145 years ago. This is something worth thinking about because a world without Pablo Picasso isn’t actually the crazy hypothetical you might think it is.
Not because child mortality rates were a lot higher at the time of Picasso’s birth, either. He was born to a middle-class family in Málaga, Spain, that would have had access to a higher standard of healthcare than most. Some births just take a turn for the worst no matter how well looked after the mother and baby are, and for longer than anyone would have liked at the time, it looked like the newborn Pablo was going to be nothing more than a horrible statistic.
After Pablo arrived, the midwife immediately noted that he wasn’t responsive. Neither was he breathing. At that point, the midwife knew that there was very little to be done for the newborn and instead turned her attention to his mother, María. As you can imagine, her family was present for the birth of her son, including her brother-in-law, Salvador Ruiz Blasco. At this point, the young Picasso was viewed as a lost cause until Salvador attempted to do something about it.
You see, this was the late 19th century, and most births were still carried out at home. Thus, there were several (quite literal) old wives’ tales that were passed around to help with tricky births. One of which was one that sounds absolutely bonkers today, and that’s to blow cigar smoke directly into the baby’s face.
Perhaps he was out of options, perhaps he was desperate, but Salvador frantically lit up one of his stogies, got right up in his newborn nephew’s face and blew a cloud of disgusting cigar smoke into his lungs.
The newborn baby started awake, coughed and then burst into tears. He was alive.
What makes this all the more incredible is that Salvador wasn’t just there to support his sister-in-law; Salvador Ruiz Blasco was a doctor. He was assisting in the birth, so perhaps he knew something most didn’t about the efficacy of the cigar smoke method. More likely, he was just trying something so he could say to María that they tried everything. However, against all odds, the gambit worked, and little Pablo was born.
17 days later, he was baptised under the full name Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso – one wonders why they couldn’t find space to pay tribute to the uncle who saved his life with a name that long. Perhaps that was a part of Pablo’s life that everyone wanted rid of as soon as possible.
After all, he had so much more to give with time.