Crucifixion for schizophrenia and heroin for cough are the strangest treatments

Do you remember how the media was in a fever when the Ebola epidemic broke out in West Africa in 2015? Scientists and authorities were preparing for the worst, raising money and developing protective suits. Both in Africa and in the USA, panicked citizens were ready to resort to any, the craziest ways to treat a dangerous disease — bleach injections, "nanosilver", string concerts, cobra hearts and porcupine eyeballs.

We offer to recall the most strange and bizarre methods of treating diseases known to the history of medicine.

In 1665-1666, one hundred thousand people died of the plague in London — 20% of the capital's population. No one knew why the disease started — just in case, the authorities ordered the killing of cats and dogs. It is possible that this decision prolonged the epidemic, since the animals controlled the number of rats. The authorities also ordered round-the-clock maintenance of fires in homes and kindling bonfires to purify the air. Londoners were forced to smoke tobacco. But this did not save from the epidemic.

"Put leeches — open the blood, // Put leeches — let the blood. // There was a simple method, there was a lich method — // But how many mistakes happened to them!" wrote Kipling. Bloodletting was the most important tool in the arsenal of doctors from ancient times until the XIX century. Although it helps to slightly reduce pressure and thus bring relief, bloodletting greatly weakens the body and thereby deprives it of the opportunity to successfully fight diseases itself.

If bloodletting did not help the patient, it is worth trying to squeeze out another fluid from the body. Uniform sweat release is provided by pipes laid in orderly rows with hot water under the mattress.

Due to poor nutrition and overweight, many Europeans of the XVIII–XIX centuries suffered from arthritis. Prior to the invention of modern anti-inflammatory drugs and steroid hormones, there was no adequate therapy for arthritis. For example, they tried to pour water into patients (through a hose) in the hope that the liquid would squeeze toxic substances out of the body.

The concept of "mental illness" in a certain sense was invented in the XIX century, when society was building boundaries between "norm" and "pathology". Until psychotropic drugs were invented, and exorcism was already considered a superstition, they tried to influence patients in the strangest ways.

Another means of treating mental disorders, in its structure and method of action, more like an instrument of torture.

From the epidemic of the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1920, 50 to 100 million people died — more than on the fronts of the First World War. There were cities where neither doctors nor gravediggers remained alive. Progress has helped to produce new means of prevention — from high-tech materials, but with a dubious level of protection.

Tuberculosis (consumption) is a disease that has left a deep mark on the European culture of the XIX century: from the "Hero of our time" and "Idiot" to "Traviata" and "Bohemian". Before the invention of the antibiotic streptomycin in the 1950s, consumptives were most often treated with good air.

A hundred years ago, heroin was considered a healthier alternative to morphine (from which it was synthesized). During clinical trials, volunteers stated that they felt like "heroes" (hence the name of the substance). But already in 1913, when hundreds of heroin-addicted patients accumulated in hospitals in a terrible condition, pharmaceutical companies refused to use this drug.

Before the mass vaccination against polio, many children — victims of the disease — were forced to spend whole months inside box respirators ("artificial lung" devices). At the acute stage of the disease, the virus paralyzes the chest muscles, preventing breathing.

The popularity of useless and even quack methods of treatment in the XX century has not weakened — on the contrary. Here is just one of countless examples: the "vitameter" of the Brazilian doctor Octavio Felix Pedroso (Octavio Felix Pedroso). According to the inventor, the device is able to diagnose and cure any disease by correcting the condition of the blood passing through the lungs.

Unfortunately, there is no information about the composition of these cigars in the available archives.

The colonization of America by European settlers led to outbreaks of deadly epidemics among Indians deprived of immunity to diseases of the Old World. Smallpox alone killed several million indigenous inhabitants of North and South America. Desperate Indians tried to cure themselves with the help of means that turned out to be deadly. So, residents of Oregon built such "sweatshop huts" on the banks of rivers. The stones heated in the fire were placed inside the hut, which was then covered with a blanket that did not allow the hot air to escape. The sick Indians first sweated profusely, and then ran out of the hut and threw themselves into the cold river.