Almost anything that may seriously affect the body or psyche has a therapeutic option in modern medicine. In most instances, you may obtain a doctor’s prescription for an oral medicine for whatever is making you ill or giving you pain or suffering these days. If a more intrusive treatment is needed, it is almost seldom anything we haven’t heard of (or seen on “Grey’s Anatomy”). But it hasn’t always been this way. Remember that penicillin, the first genuine antibiotic, was not found until 1928. People attempted all kinds of rustic home cures and strange-sounding methods before medical research could verify the effectiveness of specific medicines or therapies. Here are some bizarre medical treatments that people thought were normal.
Bizarre Medical Treatments That Were Once Normal
Getting Rid Of ‘Bad Blood’
“Bad blood” has a different connotation today. Medical practitioners used the term literally, thinking that ill individuals had blood that was really “bad.” As a result, they practiced bloodletting. Practitioners would cut open a vein to drain blood or even use leeches to suck the blood right out of the skin to rid the patient of the diseased blood within. According to History, bloodletting (also known as phlebotomy) was popular far into the nineteenth century and was used to treat anything from a sore throat to the plague.
Getting Rid Of ‘Bad Blood’
Mercury Drug
Mercury, which is now recognized to be highly hazardous, was previously extensively employed to treat illness. The ancient Persians and Greeks used it topically and administered it as an oral medicine to grant them everlasting life. Clearly, it didn’t work (Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang was one mercury victim, allegedly dying after ingesting “immortality” mercury tablets). Mercury was also utilized to treat sexually transmitted illnesses such as syphilis until the early twentieth century.
Mercury Drug
Python Bile
Animal bile was previously utilized by Chinese doctors to cure a variety of ailments. (If you’re not acquainted with bile, it’s a yellow, orange, or green aqueous fluid produced by the liver’s “exocrine” secretion.) Python bile was used to cure a variety of illnesses, including colic, hemorrhoids, dysentery, gingivitis, and “ulcers of the external female genitalia,” according to the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
Python Bile
Drilling Holes Into The Skull
One of the first kinds of surgery was trepanation, which included cutting holes in the skull to treat illness. While we don’t know when or how this practice began, History adds that it may have been a tribal rite or a means to expel bad spirits from the sick and mentally ill. It may also have been a more traditional operation performed to treat abscesses, blood clots, epilepsy, and migraines. It’s completely depressing, no matter where it originated from.
Drilling Holes Into The Skull
Elephant Bile For Bad Breath
The mighty elephant provided another source of animal bile utilized by ancient Chinese physicians and pharmacists. The bile in this instance was diluted with water and used to treat halitosis (foul breath). It was also used to treat a variety of eye disorders and infectious skin conditions, according to the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
Elephant Bile For Bad Breath
Cocaine Treatment
Cocaine was made illegal in the United States in 1914, but before that, it was extensively used to cure a variety of illnesses ranging from depression to toothache. Cocaine has a “long and illustrious history as a medication and local anesthetic,” according to a study published in the Journal of Substance Abuse. Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist, and creator of psychoanalysis were one of the most renowned — and vocal — supporters of cocaine as a treatment for mental illness. However, he was “almost wrecked” by his own cocaine usage, and withdrew his support.
Cocaine Treatment
Snail Slime Skincare
According to the University of Oxford, a cure for warts used to include putting a black snail’s slime over a wart and then hanging the snail from a thorn. Warts perished along with the snail (apparently). It had to be done nine nights in a succession to guarantee that the wart was fully removed. A big black slug was employed instead in certain areas of England, but it was all about the slime.
Snail Slime Skincare
Ironing Hemorrhoids
In medieval times, doctors burned out severe hemorrhoids with a hot iron. Ouch! This procedure is shown in all its painful splendor in a 14th-century picture housed by the Institution Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine in Montpellier, France.
Ironing Hemorrhoids
Sleeping Beside A Human Skull
Doctors in Babylonia thought that some diseases were punishments from the gods for previous misdeeds. However, when it came to curing illnesses, physicians relied on magic rather than science. According to History, nighttime teeth-grinding might signify that a dead relative was attempting to reach you. Sleeping close to a human skull for a week was recommended as a cure to expel the ghost. Not only that but the tooth-grinder was also instructed to kiss and lick the skull seven times each night.
Sleeping Beside A Human Skull
Heroin Cough Syrup For Kids
In the 1890s, the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer marketed heroin as a cough, cold, and pain reliever. According to an anti-Bayer monitoring organization, the firm urged parents to give their children heroin to cure coughs, colds, and “irritation” as late as 1912. One Spanish commercial for “Heroina” to treat bronchitis in children depicts two unattended toddlers reaching across a kitchen table for a bottle of the opiate, while another depicts a mother spoon-feeding it to her ill child. The commercial claims that “la tos desaparece” (“the cough vanishes”).
Heroin Cough Syrup For Kids
Malaria To Treat Syphilis
Julius Wagner-Jauregg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927 for his “discovery of the therapeutic efficacy of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica.” In other words, he discovered that malaria-induced fevers might aid in the treatment of syphilis. The (apparent) issue was that a significant proportion of patients died from malaria, which is fatal.
Malaria To Treat Syphilis
Animal Poop Ointments
Animal excrement was a particularly repulsive treatment for illness and injuries in ancient Egypt. The feces of dogs, flies, donkeys, and gazelles were utilized to cure and ward off evil spirits (maybe because of the stench?). It also sometimes resulted in tetanus and other diseases. However, there is some evidence that the microflora found in some kinds of animal excrement has antibiotic qualities, thus these therapies may have been successful to some degree.
Animal Poop Ointments
Sulfur To Womb
Ancient Greeks had some fascinating theories about female anatomy. They thought a celibate woman’s uterus might escape from its position in the body and wander about as it pleased, causing hysteria, convulsions, and asphyxia which was particularly odd. This belief persisted and women were encouraged to marry early. If a womb had already begun to migrate on its own, physicians would occasionally “fumigate” the patient’s head with sulfur while applying sweet-smelling lotion between her legs to urge the womb to travel away from the disagreeable odor and toward the perfume fragrance in order to settle back where it belonged.
Sulfur To Womb
Brush Teeth With Urine
According to Smithsonian, Roman doctors (and poets) thought urine was a great teeth whitener. This is due to the presence of ammonia, which is renowned for its stain-removing abilities. Fortunately, mouthwash available for purchase nowadays is much more pleasant.
Brush Teeth With Urine
Arsenic For Fevers And Headaches
Despite its severe toxicity, arsenic has been utilized for hundreds of years to cure a variety of illnesses ranging from fevers and headaches to blood disorders. It may no longer be used to treat minor illnesses, but it still has a role in contemporary medicine. Arsenic trioxide (Trisenox) was reintroduced onto the market in 2003 for the treatment of certain hematological malignancies.
Arsenic For Fevers And Headaches
Raw Veal To Cure Rabies
Raw veal was used to cure rabies in ancient Rome, which was described as “a terrible, but not necessarily deadly, madness” by John Douglas Blaisdell in his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation. Anyone bitten by a crazy dog had their wounds sliced open and smeared with raw flesh. Following that, the sufferer was forced to eat lime and hog fat and drink a combination of wine and boiling badger dung (there’s that animal feces again).
Raw Veal To Cure Rabies
Boiled Carrots For 2 Weeks
In his late-1740s book “Primitive Physick: or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases,” British preacher John Wesley suggested a simple treatment for asthma: a week of eating nothing but boiling carrots. “It seldom fails,” he wrote. But how many can eat carrots for two weeks? According to Health, beta carotene-rich vegetables such as carrots and leafy greens are suggested as part of a balanced diet for individuals with asthma, but you may consume a variety of other foods as well. To be clear, just eating veggies will not heal your asthma.
Boiled Carrots For 2 Weeks
Heart Palpitations Vs. Vinegar
Vinegar was also suggested by John Wesley (of “cooked carrots for a fortnight” fame) as a treatment for heart palpitations. He suggested drinking a pint of cold water first, followed by putting a cloth soaked in vinegar to the exterior of your body (around the heart area, presumably). What was the end result? He wrote, “Be electrified.”
Heart Palpitations Vs. Vinegar
Therapeutic Electricity
Wesley took his love of electricity a step further with his toothache cure. Electrotherapy, which was first used to treat diseases such as epilepsy, paralysis, impotence, and tapeworms, was first introduced in the early 1700s. Some individuals also received electrotherapy sessions for overall well-being. It certainly puts intravenous vitamin infusions into perspective, doesn’t it?
Therapeutic Electricity
‘Corpse Medicine’
If you had headaches, muscular cramps, or stomach ulcers in ancient times, you may have been given a dosage of so-called “corpse medicine,” which was a mixture of human flesh, blood, or bone. Surprisingly, this has been a widespread practice for generations. According to History, as late as the 17th century, King Charles II of England enjoyed a drink known as “King’s Drops,” which was composed of crushed human skull and wine.
‘Corpse Medicine’
Abracadabra Malaria
Serenus Sammonicus (the personal physician of Roman Emperor Caracalla) proposed in the early third century AD that the phrase “abracadabra” might cure malaria. He recommended malaria sufferers to wear amulets engraved with the mystical word “abracadabra” in his book “Liber Medicinalis” (“The Book on Medicine”).
Abracadabra Malaria
Ground Liverwort Will Cure Rabies
Richard Mead, an early 18th-century physician, offered another intriguing rabies treatment. The following instructions were published in 1735 in “Gentleman’s Magazine”: Take half a pint of cow’s milk with ground liverwort (a tiny flowerless green herb) and black pepper every morning for four days. After that, the patient had to take a cold bath or swim in a cold spring or river every morning for a month while fasting.
Ground Liverwort Will Cure Rabies
Get Rid Of Bible Cysts With A Corpse
Lorenz Heister, a German anatomist, proposed various therapies for Bible cysts (also known as Ganglion cysts) that develop on the hand or wrists in the 1700s. Heister suggested attaching a bullet that had killed an animal to the cyst or caressing it with the hand of a dead man. A less morbid alternative was to strike the cyst with a thick book — thus the name Bible cysts.
Get Rid Of Bible Cysts With A Corpse
Smoking Will Cure Asthma
People thought that smoking helped alleviate asthma episodes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marcel Proust, the renowned French writer, was a fan of this one. According to a study published in the journal Medical History, “therapeutic smoking” has its origins in most ancient civilizations, from India to South America.
Smoking Will Cure Asthma
Saffron For Depression
“The Red Book of Hergest,” a Welsh medieval book, includes several odd herbal treatments, including one for “sadness.” You “will never be unhappy” if you add saffron (a spice produced from the flower of Crocus sativus) to your meal or drink, according to the legend. However, there was a caveat: don’t eat too much of it or you may “die of bliss.”
Saffron For Depression