It’s no wonder the average life expectancy is higher than it was hundreds of years ago after you do a little research on ancient medical techniques. You’ll also wonder how the hell we went from bloodletting and ointments made of animal crap to robot surgery.
If the actual practice of medicine throughout its history doesn’t terrify you, the pictures used by physicians surely will:
Are those lungs or an egg hatching some sort of alien?
D’aww these cadaver models were probably in a relationship.
RIP Chewie? 😥
So, basically no sane child ever wanted to be a doctor after looking through anatomy books in school – which left it to the nuts. Maybe that explains why medieval medicine was so terrifying.
Anywho, whatever your ailment, there was a technique that probably wouldn’t work:
The flayed cat
Members of thefeline family would need to pray to the cat god they didn’t lose one of their nine lives if they noticed a human suffering from a sore throat.
If you suffered from this side effect of a common cold you would be instructed to kill and flay a fat cat. Wait. It gets better. After cleaning out its innards, you’d stuff it with the grease of a hedgehog (what?), bear fat, sage, virgin wax (huh?) and fenugreek (come again?) Then you’d roast this sore-thoat-killing version of a turducken, and rub it on your body.
K.
Trephination
You might think twice about complaining about your migraine if you existed between 6500 B.C. and the 18th Century. Yup, it literally took thousands and thousands of years for us to figure out drilling a hole through a human skull doesn’t cure a damn thing.
Trephination was a surgical intervention used to treat everything from headaches to epilepsy for God knows what reason. The scariest part of this horrific medical treatment from our history aside from the fact that morphine didn’t exist? People survived.
“It literally took thousands and thousands of years for us to figure out drilling a hole through a human skull doesn’t cure a damn thing.”
Bloodletting
Another medical treatment that lasted far too long was bloodletting. Originating in ancient Egypt, doctors performed this surgery for thousands of years, and mighty (dumb) Hippocrates’ theory that illness was caused by an imbalance of your four basic humors – black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm – was the culprit.
Naturally this led to the popular cure-all. Doctors would nick a vein and drain, baby, drain, or release leaches onto the patient’s body for a nice feeding.
By getting rid of all that bad blood, the patient would obviously feel better. There’s a Taylor Swift joke in there somewhere, but ehhhhh.
This practice was so popular and widely accepted as effective and worthwhile that barbers even listed it among their other routine services, like haircuts and shaves.
Cannabis now, cannibalism then
You’re likely familiar with all the controversy surrounding medicinal marijuana, but it doesn’t compare to the disputes that would arise from this disturbingly common medical practice of yesteryear. Affectionately called “corpse medicine,” this cure is exactly what it sounds like. Doctors would literally prescribe the flesh and bones of dead people to cure a damn headache or tummy ache.
In fact, people were so sure consuming dead human parts would cure any ailment they would attend executions in hopes of swiping a nice refreshing jug of blood.
So next time you complain about vaccines or that you can’t take drink while on antibiotics, think about all the progress we’ve made and remember the poor, poor souls who were patients before your time.
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