Murderous Medicine: Six Strange and Horrifying Ancient Medical Treatments

The health-related subject has superior significantly in comparison to the place it was fifty many years ago, permit alone over 1,000 several years back. Even though modern-day technologies has allowed us to recognize more about the human body than ever before, medical professionals in historical moments had to make do with the machines and info they had. As a end result, individuals practiced some weird clinical remedies around time. Below are six of the strangest (and often deadliest) professional medical therapies recommended by doctors in historical instances. 

1.Bloodletting for Inside Harmony

A person historical healthcare therapy you may possibly have presently heard of is bloodletting. Historical medical professionals these kinds of as Hippocrates considered that people consisted of four “ humors,” or bodily substances. These substances had been black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. They thought that if any of these humors turned unbalanced, illness would occur. To get rid of the ailment, the humors had to turn out to be rebalanced. 

Health problems such as fevers had been often attributed to acquiring “too substantially blood,” so bloodletting was required to restore the humors again to their normal equilibrium. Physicians would typically decide on an very easily-available vein and make it possible for some blood to drain out of the sick person into a container for disposal. Some doctors later on turned to leeches to do the dirty work for them, leaving the leeches on the pores and skin of the patient to have their blood sucked out gradually by way of their pores and skin. 

While bloodletting has been about for above 3,000 decades, doctors have only stopped training it in the last few generations. Even George Washington was dealt with with bloodletting, which historians say probable contributed to his loss of life. 

A nun bleeding a affected individual beneath the eye of a doctor. Bloodletting as a health care therapy ongoing for hundreds of years, but has been widely discredited. ( Community Area )

2.Raw Veal and Badger Dung for Rabies

Historical Rome was recognized for its innovation, and medication was no exception to that. Roman physicians believed that they experienced identified a cure for rabies employing uncooked veal and badger dung. If a human being was bitten by a rabid animal, the medical professional would treat the wound by wrapping it in raw veal and feeding the affected individual a mixture of hog excess fat and lime. As if that wasn’t plenty of, they would also make the patient clean it down with a particular medicine created of boiled badger dung and wine to cleanse their method. Yuck!

Putting raw meat and excrement on a wound seems like an crazy medical treatment today, but in ancient Rome is was deemed a rabies remedy! (Javier Lastras / CC BY 2. )

3.Liquid Mercury for STDs (and Eternal Everyday living!)

Presently, we know how perilous liquid mercury is for our wellbeing. However, our ancestors weren’t so educated. Historic physicians throughout Greece, Persia, and China considered that liquid mercury was the remedy for a selection of diseases. In actuality, the historical Chinese have been so self-assured in their liquid mercury, that they thought more than enough of it could make you stroll on h2o and stay eternally . Quite a few men and women who thought in its powers at some point died just after consuming a massive selection of mercury pills. 

Liquid mercury’s most popular use, however, was in the remedy of STDs this kind of as syphilis. Simply because mercury was prosperous in managing these infections owing to its large metallic qualities, handful of observed the deadly side outcomes of the treatment method till the 20th century. A lot of persons who utilized this treatment method died of kidney and liver injury due to mercury poisoning, while other individuals developed most cancers later in everyday living. 

Contemporary drugs treats mercury as a harmful substance, but it was utilised as a typical clinical cure for millennia (Tavo Romann / CC BY 4. )

4.Poop Poultices for Pores and skin Disorders

Most of us would be reluctant to contact poop at all, enable by itself rub it on our open up wounds. But that is particularly what the ancient Egyptians did! Ancient Egyptian physicians  used human and animal feces to make balms and ointments to get rid of topical ailments and accidents. Some specialists would also use the feces of puppies, gazelles, and even flies to create ointment for precise conditions, which includes warding off bad spirits. 

Lots of cultures use feces in standard medication, while it’s nowhere in close proximity to as well known as it applied to be (DowntownGal / CC BY SA 3. )

5.Corpse Smoothie for Soreness Relief

You are going to be more grateful for Tylenol after this one particular. Some historical medical professionals thought that the continues to be of other people had healing attributes. All those coming in with a headache or stomachache in ancient occasions might have been recommended a liquid combination of human blood, bone, and even flesh to drink. Ultimately, distinct areas of the entire body had been attributed to healing particular conditions, such as the blood of fallen gladiators to address epilepsy. 

In the 12th century, “ mummy powder ” was designed of crushed mummified stays stolen from Egypt and utilised to develop a assortment of medicines. Corpse medication grew to become so common that some forms ended up even utilized for recreational needs or preventative medicine. The most frequent illustration of this was “ King’s Drops ,” which was an alcoholic beverage that contains crushed items of a human cranium. 

Macabre as it appears to be, numerous health-related therapies included a kind of cannibalism. Mummy powders and crushed skulls ended up bought to deal with different conditions. Quite a few apothecaries had cannisters of mummy powder like the 1 above. (Zinnmann / CC BY 4. )

6.Sulfur Fumigation to Heal Infertility

You’ve most likely under no circumstances nervous about your uterus operating away from you, but historic Greeks definitely believed in ‘ wandering wombs ’. In historic Greece, medical professionals considered that the uterus was its have sentient remaining that could move all over the body. If ladies did not appease the uterus by providing it youngsters early on, it may expand resentful and go away its rightful place in the lessen abdomen. This would then result in infertility and maybe a lot more serious ailments, this sort of as seizures or suffocation. 

To handle this infertility, medical practitioners believed they experienced to nudge the uterus into its proper spot in the reduced abdomen. At 1st, they would use mild treatment plans to shift the uterus back to the correct location, such as warm baths and abdominal massages. 

If that was ineffective, they would flip to far more drastic treatment plans, this sort of as fumigating the patient’s head with sulfur though rubbing their thighs with sweet-smelling fragrances. They believed that the uterus would go back again down to the accurate position by fleeing the foul sulfur odor at the top of the physique in preference for the sweet smell at the patient’s thighs. 

Men’s misguided beliefs in women’s ‘wandering wombs’ led to odd clinical treatment plans like sulfur fumigation. (Wellcome Collection / CC BY 4. )

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No Much more Mummy Powder

Obviously, medicine has appear a lengthy way considering the fact that historical situations. From bloodletting to sulfur fumigation, people have often taken weird avenues to find answers to our most sophisticated problems. The upcoming time you go to your health practitioner for a cold, try to remember it could be even worse: at least they won’t prescribe you poop ointment or a corpse smoothie!

Top rated graphic: Some of these ancient professional medical treatments will make you comprehend how the ‘mad doctor’ trope bought began. Source: vchalup / Adobe Stock

By Lex Leigh