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People were always sick, and it was often difficult to find out the causes of diseases. Naturally, humanity managed to “break a lot of wood” before achieving results in the field of healthcare.
However, even in the relatively recent past, there were absurd and even dangerous treatments 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. Africans also used this method.
The ancient Greeks used chicken manure to lighten their hair, and the British in the 17th century “treated” baldness with it. The Indians added the dung of their sacred animal to any potions and potions.
The danger of such methods is that many bacteria, including pathogens, live in manure. So often people were poisoned and infected, and did not even know what and why.
9. radium water
When radioactivity was discovered, no one studied its effect on the body. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the world was shocked by radium fever. Naturally, she did not pass by medicine either.
It is not known who and when decided that radium is good for the body. But soon it began to be considered that this element is capable of treating literally all diseases.
In 1918, the homeopathic remedy “Radithor” was published. The bottle contained distilled water containing one microcurie each of radium-226 and 228.
With prolonged use of this “medicine”, the element accumulated in the bones. People died from radiation sickness, osteoporosis, tumors.
8. Tapeworms
In the twentieth century, these parasites were used for weight loss. Eating meat with tapeworm larvae has become a new and effective diet.
Tapeworms living in the human body consume part 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 one really begins to lose weight.
But along with the weight, it loses vitality and beauty. Such a diet is deadly, but in the past, mankind believed 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 carried out on the subject of the influence of LSD and ecstasy on the human psyche. More than 40 thousand patients participated in the experiments. It was noticed 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 XNUMXth century, John Brinkley, one of the richest doctors in America, who also had no medical education, proposed a “revolutionary” way to treat impotence and infertility in men.
For a large amount of money, he transplanted goat testicles into them. He made a fortune from the many implants he performed. But his patients not only did not get rid of problems, but acquired new ones. Among them is just the same impotence, as well as infection with various infections.
5. Intimacy with virgins
The myth that syphilis or gonorrhea can be cured through contact with virgins dates back to the XNUMXth century. In some African countries, this misconception still exists.
Virgins have always been credited with some kind of “magical” properties, but it is obvious that such a “treatment” has the opposite effect and certainly does not cure sexually transmitted diseases.
4. Paraffin
As early as the beginning of the XNUMXth century, people made attempts to treat wrinkles and increase breasts. For this purpose, doctors used paraffin. They injected it under the skin as implants and also to smooth out wrinkles.
This practice soon ceased, as infections were constantly introduced during operations, and paraffin formed painful lumps under the skin.
3. Mummy Powder
In the past, there was a fashion for the use of preparations containing powder from corpses. An English monarch in the XNUMXth century drank a mixture of alcohol and powder from the royal skull, and from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century, people drank diluted powder from Egyptian mummies.
He allegedly healed coughs, headaches and even stomach ulcers. Often, instead of ground mummies, people drank powder from ordinary murdered slaves, and instead of healing, they received poisoning and stomach pain. It is surprising how long the fashion for such a “treatment” has existed.
2. Mercury
The first mentions of this “medicine” are found in the XNUMXth century, and then it was used until our century. Only at the end of the XNUMXth century, doctors began to abandon the use of drugs with this toxic substance.
Even Paracelsus treated the “French disease” by rubbing mercury ointment into the legs. Healers suggested that their patients inhale mercury vapor, carry it in a bag, swallow and inject with this metal.
Mercury was also used to treat syphilis. It has been proven 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 many people in a small dose. Arsenic was mainly used as a poison. Death from poisoning with this substance was long and painless. The man just faded away.
Also, the element was used in paints, wallpaper and even cosmetics. From the early 18th century until the mid-19th century, arsenic was used as an ingredient in medicines for arthritis, diabetes, malaria, and syphilis. Naturally, the use of drugs based on it led to the death of patients.