When your doctor hovers over you with a 16-inch needle or writes a certificate for a drug that will make you go broke, it's hard not to ask questions. Of course, the disease does not blame demon possession anymore, infection control is the best it has ever been, and vaccines have saved the world from some terrible diseases. But even today, nothing is perfect. Unhealthy people still get misdiagnosed, incorrect treatments are given, and greedy corporations have been sinking their teeth in the pharmaceutical industry.
Scary stuff, but you know what's even scary? Try to look at some of the medical operations, treatments, or prescriptions of the past. Across cultures, through the centuries, unhealthy (but innocent) people have spent good money to undergo treatments that were far worse than the original state. If you thought getting shots of lidocaine was bad, imagine if you lived in a time when the gums were cut open, the tongues were cut off, and the crocodile dung was used as a contraceptive. Ouch.
1 Back when the stutter has been treated with mutilation
The history books contain many big names who have lived with stuttering troubles, including Moses, King George VI, and Marilyn Monroe. Despite the way this condition is common, stammers often still have to deal with bullying. This is pretty horrible, since stuttering itself is often caused (or aggravated) by anxiety and / or emotional trauma, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Although doctors today treat stuttering patients with compassion and understanding, doctors of the past have responded in unimaginable brutal ways. For example, the Los Angeles Times lists the language blisters and electrical shocks among disturbing treatments stuttering received. The worst operation of all was invented in 1841, according to the International Stuttering Association, when a Prussian surgeon named J.F. Dieffenbach pioneered the horror film technique of cutting off a triangular corner of the tongue of people without general anesthesia. The first time he did that was a poor 13-year-old boy. Although this bloody technique seems to have been popular for a while, people have finally realized how much it has been ineffective, much to the relief of stutters around the world.
2 Before Viagra, there was a goat testicle farm
Never underestimate the desperation of a man you-know-who does not-you-know-what. While impotence treatments ran the gamut of mystical rituals to metal reels to today's little blue pill, probably the worst period in phallic health was those years in the 20th century when a quack doctor offered to transplant testes of goat on your body, according to the vice.
This goat doctor was John Richard Brinkley, and when he was not performing risky operations, he was running an unsuccessful campaign for the governor of Kansas. Brinkley was infamous for using populist and growing rhetoric to rip off countless men by coming to his hospital and mutilating his genitals. And no, stapling goat balls on a human does not work, as if you really needed to ask. Unfortunately, far too many men with virile anguish have fallen for Brinkley ball-Oney, and the Kansas doctor has scored millions of dollars.
Fortunately, the story did not end there. The Arkansas Encyclopedia says against Brinkley eventually caught up to him, and in 1941 he was sued in bankruptcy. This legal battle ended Brinkley's career, but she did not repair the victims who had suffered from her treatments. And the poor goats?
3 A ridiculously restrictive "rest cure"
Rest is a good thing. Yes, even if you are a workaholic, it is good to sometimes crash on the couch with wine and Netflix. On the other hand, the pioneering "rest cure" of Silas Weir Mitchell in the Victorian era was anything but restful. According to the female body in Western culture, Mitchell's rest cure was primarily used to treat women who were perceived to be "nervous" or "hysterical" or perhaps too "independent" ... basically any woman who was not docile and servile to men. Remember, it was the 1800s, and societal norms were sexist as hell.
Although the rest cure was promoted as being good for the spirit and good for the blood, it was usually nothing more than a crazy power trip for male doctors, performed on non-will female patients . A woman prescribed a rest cure was mandated to six weeks (or more) of forced bed rest, according to the London Science Museum. The patients were not allowed to sit down, could not use their hands, and were toiletned by the nurses by the pelvis. Friends and family members were forbidden to visit. A steady stream of fat dairy products has been pushed into a patient's mouth, often by force.
Basically, the rest cure has been designed to turn adults into infants. Women free to think were at high risk of being prescribed a rest cure, and some of the most famous victims included feminist Charlotte Perkins Gomez and author Virginia Woolf.
4 Brushing teeth with tobacco paste
Brushing your teeth every morning and night could be one of the most boring rituals in 21st century life, but at least our mouths are not festering decks of decay, cavities, and disease. Toothpaste is the magic bullet of the dental industry, and no matter which brand you press on these bristles, you can be reasonably sure that it helps preserve your teeth.
Unless you clench a tube of toothpaste filled with tobacco. Yes, tobacco: the same thing in cigarettes, which is about as bad for dental health as rubbing your teeth with cotton candy every night. As reported by Indian newspapers, a bad misconception spread throughout India for decades that tobacco was an excellent ingredient to put in your toothpaste or dental powder. Not surprisingly, the practice of using tobacco toothpaste (better known as "Creamy Snuff") has proven to be as addictive as cigarettes, especially among male school children, according to VM tobacco. Sivaramakrishnan and the nut Areca. Tobacco toothpastes were finally banned in India in the 1990s.
5 Teething babies were "soothed" with a knife
Teething is never fun, either for the child or the parent. Dentists today do not make much noise on this natural process. It happens, it sucks, and then it's done. However, the dental industry of past centuries has not always had such a kind perspective on these issues. Back in the good old days of A.D. 117, according to the British Dental Journal, Soranus of Ephesus suggested that when your child started to teeth, the correct answer was to rub the rabbit brain on the child's gums. Yes, it really happened, and for whatever reason, this bizarre practice lasted for centuries.
Not coarse enough? Well, in 1500, a surgeon named Ambriose visor came up with the idea not so joyful to decide the gums of a child with a sharp knife to get small teeth, which sounds like something from the cenobites in Hellraiser would come with. Then, in 1764, Dr. John Thibaut not only affirmed the gum's nightmare, but also recommended putting leeches behind the children's ears. Although these horror stories could make the average person swear off entirely dentists, to quote Seinfeld, it is fair to say that the dental industry ditch leeches long ago, so they have come a long way.
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6 The Nazis thought that Crystal Methamphetamine was healthy
Throughout history, there would be no regime as hideous or evil as the Nazis. However, while everyone knows that the moral values of Nazi Germany were completely perverted, their health practices were just as sick. For example, NPR points out that in the 1930s, a pharmaceutical company in Berlin started selling a popular drug called pervitin, which was said to boost your alertness, make you perform better, and generally overload your day. Sounds great, does not it? Pervitine was sold across Germany as the best coffee substitute ever, and German soldiers loved the tablets so much that they affectionately dubbed "Chocolate Tank" and "Salt Pilot," according to the Atlantic.
The problem? Pervitin was actually Crystal Meth, one of the most toxic drugs on the planet. But Nazi Germany was so fascinated by pervitine that the drugs were freely distributed to the troops, which meant that a number of Gestapo soldiers became meth heads. The biggest meth fan of all, however, could have been Adolf Hitler himself. According to the freelance, Hitler's manic hypochrondia led to him doing a lot of bizarre treatments, and at the end of his life he received regular crystal meth injections.
7 Swallow a tapeworm to lose weight
Unhealthy eating habits are still around today, but they used to be a whole lot creepier. For example, the BBC says that advertisements were found from the early 1900s promoting tapeworms. You know, those parasitic worms that grow about 50 feet long and live in your stomach? Yes. It should be obvious why this is a horrible idea, but in the early 20th century, some people so badly wanted a beach bod that they legitimately swallowed pills containing tapeworm cysts, thinking that the worm digest their food for them. Aside from the fact that such a procedure is incredibly dangerous, the vice points out that there is also no guarantee that it would have caused weight loss, as many types do not actually do that.
So, instead of losing weight, many diet tapeworms probably experienced the following symptoms: uncontrollable outbursts of diarrhea, vomiting, headaches, permanent brain damage, eye damage, meningitis, dementia, anemia, epilepsy. .. almost worth it, though, yes?
8 Frightening birth control methods of the past
As long as humans loved to hit, they tried to figure out how to do it without the main side effect, the offspring. Nowadays, science has come up with a lot of effective methods, from IUDs to implants, but back in the old days, contraceptives were skit-themed. For example, the Mental Silk describes how women in medieval times actually attached weasel testicles broken around their necks or wore amulets made of earwax mule, which sound more like ingredients in a dark magic infusion than effective medical treatments. One of the least hygienic birth control methods of the past involved inserting a ball of crocodile manure and cluster honey. There were also methods involving donkey dung and elephant dung, in case you were afraid to ask.
Throughout all of this, people were trying to figure out how to make male condoms work, according to Esquire. Animal intestinal condoms finally hit the scene for good in the 1500s, and rubber condoms made their proud debut in the 1800s. The world of birth control (not to mention the prevention of STDs) has been much happier ever since.
9 Use insulin to put you in a coma
Today, people diagnosed with schizophrenia are usually treated with a combination of medication and psychosocial therapy, according to the Mayo Clinic. However, the journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says from the 1930s to around 1960, the dominant treatment was DICT: deep insulin coma therapy, where patients were induced into a coma on an almost daily basis by heavy injections of 'insulin.
Even at the height of its popularity, insulin coma therapy has never produced effective results, but the treatment has had the support of powerful people in the facility. Most of the negative results were probably swept under the rug, according to the psychiatric bulletin, but there were enough confirmed deaths and brain injuries that a brave doctor named Harold Bourne finally sounded the alarm in 1953. The request for Bourne for more evidence to go to war with the powers-that-be, and although he was blacklisted at the time, his critics eventually led to the treatment falling out of practice, saving thousands of lives. Decades later, the scare of DICT was famous in the 2001 movie A Magnificent Mind, which shows the mathematician John Nash during the proceedings.
10 They tried to repair the bad behavior by cutting people's brains
"Lobotomy" is a scary word in its own right, but it is much more frightening to understand how prevalent (and harmful) lobotomies really were in the mid-twentieth century. Back when the procedure was invented in 1936, it was never intended to become so popular. The Guardian said lobotomies were originally meant to be used as a last resort for those with serious psychiatric illnesses, only to be performed if any other treatment had failed. But in the 1940s, lobotomies came into the hands of an American doctor named Walter Freeman, and things went awry.
Freeman turned the lobotomy of a Moonshot into a medical circus show, happily lobotomizing just about all those brought to him, healthy or unhealthy. ReBelles children? Check. Grand parents? Check. Freeman cut off the brains of people with no apparent regard for the consequences, sometimes even showing off for spectators by picking ice from both the patient's eyes at the same time. From Freeman 3,400 lobotomies, 14 percent died, and the vast majority were either paralyzed or put into a permanent vegetative state. Very few continued to live normal lives. In the mid-1950s, lobotomies were eventually replaced by more humane procedures like psychoanalysis, therapy, and drugs, but not until about 40,000 lobotomies had been done in the United States, according to Wired. Horribly enough, countries like the United States and England still have not quite banned lobotomies, although the USSR proscribed them as early as 1950, and Japan and Germany followed suit.
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