The history of medicine is filled with stories of strange tonics, outlandish remedies, and curious “cures.”
Once upon a time, cigarettes were thought to treat asthma! Heroin was once used to treat the common cold.
And those are just a couple of many such remedies that, in hindsight, seem absolutely absurd
Check out these terrifying medical treatments from the past, dating back to the late 1800s.
Strong black coffee and herbal ‘cigarettes’ were once popular treatments for asthma, which used to be thought of as a psychosomatic condition brought on by stress.
The ancients used various herbal remedies derived from horsetail, thorn-apple, and deadly nightshade, available as “asthma cigarettes”.
When the plague broke out in the 1300s, some of the more surprising cures doctors tried included arsenic and sitting in the sewers.
Another mode of treatment was bloodletting. The idea that bad blood caused illness and could be removed by taking it out has been around since the ancient Egyptians and has remained popular through the famous physician Galen until the Renaissance.
For well over 20 years, as late as 1939, the goat-gland treatment was regarded as a breakthrough of the first importance. Backed by some questionable theories, it made its creator Dr John Brinkley a multimillionaire.
Ancient Babylonians opted for cures involving magic to solve their problems. One such treatment, in this instance for grinding your teeth, was sleeping with a human skull nearby – as well as kissing it several times a night – to remove spirits trying to get in contact.
Bizarrely, it was once thought that drilling a hole on your skull could cure a headache. A Bronze Age skull discovered on the banks of the Thames a few years ago shows how far back the age-old cure stretches.
One surviving medical text from ancient Egypt counsels rolls of lint for a broken nose. The idea was to put the rolls in the nostrils along with bandages on the outside. The most amazing part is modern science doesn’t offer much by way of a better alternative.
In the 17th Century Sir Kenelm Digby developed the idea of the “powder of sympathy” — a copper sulphate mix which was applied to both the injured person and the object that caused the injury, for instance a sword.
A make-it-yourself remedy to ease a sore throat once included the strange ingredient of Album graecum (which is dried dog dung), as written in the book “The Popularization of Medicine, 1650-1850.”
The Victorians had tips and advice for getting through all aspects of life. Among the many instructive books published at the time, was one advising to hang a dead mole around the neck of a baby to ease its teething pain.
The “tapeworm diet” appeared in the early 20th century. Once thought to be an effective way to lose weight, but some tapeworm species are linked with malnutrition, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anemia and other health risks.