Some of the craziest things were once accepted as medical science, and it's likely that much of what we believe today will be disproved, as we're already seeing the beginning of it with the COVID vaccinations of 2020. The history of medicine and doctors is full of cures that did more to kill you than to cure you.
The ancient Egyptians, Africans, and Europeans all thought that epilepsy and mental illnesses could be cured by drilling a hole into your skull. This would release the demons from your head, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you could keep the skull fragment they removed as a lucky charm. More recently, during the lifetime of many of us, lobotomies were performed on mentally ill patients.
Back in the day, people could go to the barber for a haircut and some nice, healthy bloodletting, which was used to cure all sorts of maladies, such as fevers, colds, and even cancers.
Fortunately, the poor often couldn't afford to avail themselves of some of the nuttiest cures, and thus enjoyed a better chance of survival. In 1685, King Charles II of England suffered either a stroke or some sort of kidney dysfunction. All the royal doctors were summoned, and they embarked on a treatment regimen that would have killed several healthy people. First, there was the bloodletting. Then, they induced vomiting, followed by an enema. When these didn't work, over the course of the five days it took the king to die, the best doctors in the land filled his nose with snuff, let out some more blood, singed the king's shaved scalp with burning irons, daubed his feet with pigeon poop, drilled a hole in his skull, applied heated cups to the skin, which formed blisters, and then applied more enemas, let out even more blood, and fed him the gallstone from a goat. Despite the best that medical science had to offer, the king did not survive.
The ancient Egyptians, Africans, and Europeans all thought that epilepsy and mental illnesses could be cured by drilling a hole into your skull. This would release the demons from your head, and if you were lucky enough to survive, you could keep the skull fragment they removed as a lucky charm. More recently, during the lifetime of many of us, lobotomies were performed on mentally ill patients.
Back in the day, people could go to the barber for a haircut and some nice, healthy bloodletting, which was used to cure all sorts of maladies, such as fevers, colds, and even cancers.
Fortunately, the poor often couldn't afford to avail themselves of some of the nuttiest cures, and thus enjoyed a better chance of survival. In 1685, King Charles II of England suffered either a stroke or some sort of kidney dysfunction. All the royal doctors were summoned, and they embarked on a treatment regimen that would have killed several healthy people. First, there was the bloodletting. Then, they induced vomiting, followed by an enema. When these didn't work, over the course of the five days it took the king to die, the best doctors in the land filled his nose with snuff, let out some more blood, singed the king's shaved scalp with burning irons, daubed his feet with pigeon poop, drilled a hole in his skull, applied heated cups to the skin, which formed blisters, and then applied more enemas, let out even more blood, and fed him the gallstone from a goat. Despite the best that medical science had to offer, the king did not survive.