After World War I, the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service tried desperately to save their jobs and reputations by trying to find civilian uses for chemical weapons, including shit like killing crows, and booby-trapping bank safes.

In 1924 and 1925 researchers in the CWS used bad science in an attempt to prove war gasses could be used as cures for common respiratory ailments… In May 1924 the CWS sealed President Calvin Coolidge into a gas chamber and pumped in low levels of chlorine gas to cure his cold.

Respirine was, fortunately, a scam. Basically primitive Vick’s Vapo-rub.

Analysis showed that the article consisted principally of calcium compounds incorporated in petrolatum, and that it contained no available chlorine.