Insane Old-School Medicine That’ll Make You Glad You Weren’t Alive Back Then

We definitely take our current medical advancements for granted until we are reminded of how backwards our healthcare was in times gone by.

With the discovery of groundbreaking medicine and our understanding and approach to mental illness, it’s easy to say we’ve come a long way. Just look at some of these alarming medical treatments that will make you glad you were born today.

Isolation for Mental Illnesses

Isolation was a common practice and a prominent course of therapy for mental illness from the 17th to the 20 century.

Asylums and institutions were built to treat people who were mentally ill but their main purpose was to hide its patients from society.

People with depression, schizophrenia or anxiety were often restrained and locked in a room, to become guinea pigs for psychological research and experiments.

Deadly Chemicals for Head Lice

Just the thought of head lice makes my head itch. You probably remember these nasty little insects that live in your hair and feed off your scalp causing an epidemic in elementary school.

Luckily for you, modern medicine invented medicated shampoo as opposed to DDT for treating those unwanted guests.

Rectum Gases for Tuberculosis

Before we could pin point the root of certain illnesses, we blamed them on sinful acts. Like the Consumption, which was a disease that you caught when you dressed provocatively, drank alcohol, smoked and masturbated.

The treatment: a cocktail of gases inserted in the rectum. Today the Consumption is known as Tuberculosis and is caused by bacteria of the lungs.

Boiling Water for Stomach Pain

Cholera is a bacteria disease that claimed thousands of lives in the 1800s. Its symptoms are severe vomiting and diarrhoea and doctors thought the best way to cure this disease was to pour boiling water on the patient’s stomach and bleed them with turpentine enemas and brandy.