There is a Scottish prayer that goes like this, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!” The same could be said about “modern” medicine over the years.
Everything was “state of the art” at one time. Thankfully, as the knowledge base of humans grows we learn from experience. Here are some medical treatments that at one time, were the bees’ knees in the medical world.
We begin at the end, with tobacco enemas. This was a treatment in the 19th Century. Liquid tobacco enemas were used to treat hernias. Tobacco smoke enemas, administered with the medical equivalent of a garden hose, were used to treat abdominal cramps, typhoid, respiratory failure as well as headaches and colds. I guess it’s the reverse of lighting your farts…, ‘nuff said.
Mercury was used to treat leprosy and syphilis in the 1500’s. I imagine it was an extension of the philosophy, “Fight fire with fire” because mercury has toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems as well as on the lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes. However, when you’re being driven insane by syphilis and literally falling apart with leprosy being treated with one of the top ten chemicals of major concern to the World Health Organization maybe isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Desperate people do desperate things when they’re trying to save themselves from dying. That’s true even today.
The FDA was created in 1906 in part because of the patent medicine craze that swept across the United States. If one were suffering from hay fever one could purchase, over the counter mind you, Allen’s Cocaine Tablets – guaranteed to cure your hay fever. Kopp’s Baby’s Friend was a croup cure whose main ingredient was morphine, which was liberally administered to infants. Laudanum was sold by the bucket as a pain medication, it contained at least 10% opium. Heroin was prescribed for coughing and since most men smoked, there was lots of coughing. All these “medications” and more could be had, without prescription and without any sort of consumer protections or warnings until the advent of the Food and Drug Administration.
Bloodletting used to be a common procedure. The belief was that an imbalance of “humors” – fluids in the body – caused disease and by bleeding a person that balance could be restored. Of course, the trick was not to bleed the person too much or too often. In George Washington’s last illness, probably pneumonia, he asked his doctor to bleed him. Martha (Washington’s missus) wasn’t too thrilled by this idea but one doesn’t contradict the man who was Father of the Country, the General who won the Revolutionary War and the First President under the US Constitution all rolled into one. This treatment had worked for Washington in the past, or so he believed, but alas this time it was not to be. Washington died at the age of 67 at home in Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799. He lost 40% of his blood to the bloodletting treatments. That can’t have been good for him, regardless of whatever else was wrong with him medically.
Maggots were used to “clean” wounds. Surgeons noticed maggots feeding on flesh and how that sped debridement of the wound thereby allowing it to heal better and more quickly. Believe it or not, that treatment is still used today. However, today instead of placing maggots right on the raw wound and letting the little buggers have at it, now they are placed in sterile mesh bags, but both the principle and the results are the same as when the treatment was first used in the American Civil War, 1861-1865.
In the 19th Century the “pelvic massage” was introduced to cure female “hysteria”. Hysteria was believed to cause bloating, anxiety, fainting spells, insomnia and a host of other ailments so the cure was to apply a “steam powered electromechanical medical instrument” to the proper region of the body. Today we call the “steam powered electromechanical medical instrument” simply – the “vibrator”. Women flocked to the treatment and, like aspirin, the relief was only temporary so…(you know)
Almost all men have had difficulty with getting it up on occasion. As men get older, that condition become more chronic. Hence, Viagra – the little blue pill, the wonder drug that keeps men active into their dotage, just ask 84 year old Al Pacino who recently had a child with his 31-year-old girlfriend. But in the 19th Century, men who were flaccid got into bathtubs filled with electrodes for electric shock therapy. Some men had a rod that conducted electrical currents inserted into their urethra and then submitted to being zapped continuously for five to eight minutes, twice a week. That treatment was supposed to restore sexual health. All I can say to the men who went through that for sex is, I hope she was worth it.
Leeches have long been used in medicine. In the 19th Century leeches were used to treat anything from smallpox to cancer. For example, leeches were placed on the skin, above the stomach, to cure indigestion. From 1820-1850 as many as 60,000 leeches were being used in the United States in medical procedures on an annual basis; so many leeches in fact that they were in danger of going extinct. The leech is still sometimes used in 21st Century surgery to assist in organ transplants as well as plastic surgery. In both cases, the leeches help to alleviate blood clots that could complicate the surgery and the patients’ ability to recover successfully.
In the 1920’s, cigarettes were marketed as a cure for asthma. In a way cigarettes do stop asthma. After all, death ends everything that ails a person. As Francis Bacon once observed, “The remedy is worse than the disease.”
Rheumatoid Arthritis is a painful disease. In 1899, in Australia, “whale hotels” were marketed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The patient would go down to the shore where there was a beached, dead whale. The whale would be cut open and the person would submerge themselves inside the whale for two hours or so. The treatment was supposed to relieve pain and inflammation. People swore up and down that it worked. Upon reflection, what else were they going to say after sitting in whale blood, guts and goo for a couple of hours? Looking foolish is bad enough without it being futile as well.
Halloween decorations, costumes, haunted houses and movies can all be scary. However, there’s nothing as terrifying as real life.