People were always sick, and often finding out the causes of illness was difficult. Naturally, mankind managed to “break a lot of firewood” before achieving health outcomes.
However, even in the relatively recent past, absurd and even dangerous methods of treatment existed that now surprise us with their stupidity. Below are some of these methods.
10. Manure
Even the Egyptians used crocodile dung as a means of female contraception, introducing it into the vagina. This method was also used by Africans.
The ancient Greeks used chicken droppings to lighten their hair, and the British in the 17th century “cured” baldness with its help. The Indians added the dung of their sacred animal to any potions and potions.
The danger of such methods is that many bacteria live in manure, including pathogenic bacteria. So often people were poisoned and infected, and did not even know what and why.
9. Radium water
When radioactivity was discovered, no one investigated its effect on the body. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the world was shocked by radium fever. Naturally, she did not go past medicine either.
It is not known who and when decided that radium is good for the body. But it soon became believed that this element was able to treat literally all diseases.
In 1918, the homeopathic remedy Radithor was published. The bottle contained distilled water containing one microcurie of radium-226 and 228.
With prolonged use of this “medicine”, the element accumulated in the bones. People were dying from radiation sickness, osteoporosis, and tumors.
8. Tapeworms
In the twentieth century, these parasites were used for weight loss. Eating meat with larvae of tapeworms has become a new and effective diet.
The tapeworms living in the human body consume some of the food inside it. Tapeworms use vital nutrients. From the fact that in addition to your own body you have to supply the parasite with food, the infected person really begins to lose weight.
But along with weight, it loses vitality and beauty. Such a diet is deadly, but in the past, humanity thought otherwise.
7. LSD and ecstasy
These psychedelics have long been widely used in the treatment of mental disorders such as depression or schizophrenia.
From the 50s to the 60s of the last century, numerous studies were conducted on the effects of LSD and ecstasy on the human psyche. The experiments involved more than 40 thousand patients. It was noted that these drugs only aggravate the condition of patients. LSD and MDMA increase anxiety and cause psychosis, even in healthy people.
After the publication of the results of the study, the 70s, psychoactive substances were banned as medicines.
6. Goat testicles
At the beginning of the twentieth century, John Brinkley, one of the richest doctors in America, besides not having a medical education, proposed a “revolutionary” method for treating impotence and infertility in men.
For a large sum of money, he transplanted them with goat testicles. On the many implantations performed, he earned a fortune. But his patients not only did not get rid of problems, but acquired new ones. Among them, just impotence, as well as infection with various infections.
5. Intimacy with virgins
The myth that using contacts with virgins can cure syphilis or gonorrhea appeared in the 16th century. In some countries in Africa, this misconception still exists.
Some “magical” properties have always been attributed to virgins, however, it is obvious that such a “treatment” has the opposite effect and certainly does not cure sexually transmitted diseases.
4. Paraffin
Back in the early twentieth century, people made attempts to treat wrinkles and enlarge breasts. For this purpose, doctors used paraffin. They injected it under the skin as implants, as well as to smooth out wrinkles.
Soon, this practice stopped, because infections were constantly introduced during the operations, and paraffin formed painful lumps under the skin.
3. Mummy powder
In the past, there was a fashion for the use of drugs containing powder from corpses. The English monarch in the 17th century drank a mixture of alcohol and powder from the royal skull, and from the 16th to the 19th century, people drank divorced powder from Egyptian mummies.
He allegedly healed for coughs, headaches and even stomach ulcers. Often, instead of frayed mummies, people drank powder from ordinary slaves killed, and instead of healing, they received poisoning and abdominal pain. It is amazing how long a fashion for such a “treatment” has existed.
2. Mercury
The first mention of this "medicine" is found in the XVI century, and then it was used until our century. Only at the end of the 20th century, doctors began to abandon the use of drugs with this toxic substance.
Paracelsus also treated the “French disease” by rubbing mercury ointment into his legs. Doctors suggested that their patients inhale mercury vapor, carry it in a bag, swallow it and inject it with this metal.
Syrup was also treated with mercury. It is proved that it really suppresses pale treponema - the causative agent of the disease. However, people still died, but not from syphilis, but from severe poisoning and its consequences.
1. Arsenic
Arsenic is a rather controversial element. Some of its compounds are safe or even necessary in treatment, while others are capable of killing a lot of people in a small dose. Arsenic was mainly used as poison. The death from poisoning with this substance was long and painless. Man just gradually faded away.
Also, the element was used in paints, wallpaper and even cosmetics. From the beginning of the 18th century until the mid-19th, arsenic was part of the drugs for arthritis, diabetes, malaria, and syphilis. Naturally, the use of drugs based on it led to the death of patients.