Two things are often very true of the modern world. No one wants to get sick, and no one wants to see the doctor. Getting sick makes you feel bad, so that’s a given. But there is ample evidence that people in need of doctors avoid care for a variety of reasons ranging from nervousness to lack of access or lack of insurance and so on. And there’s also a certain percentage of people who think they can save time and frustration by managing their healthcare at home with some DIY methods. It just doesn’t always work out.
10. Using a Plunger for Constipation
Constipation is a symptom of numerous conditions. But regardless of the underlying cause it’s characterized by an inability to maintain proper bowel function such that going to the washroom is difficult or even impossible, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. It can get very serious if untreated for a long enough period.
In 2019, doctors wrote about a man who had been constipated for four days and sought to fix the problem on his own. Yes, there are plenty of at-home remedies for this condition but rather than use any of those, the 56-year-old chose to use the one tool we all associate with making stuck poop get unstuck: the plunger.
The patient had a history of both alcoholism and mental illness which might explain his dangerous choice. According to the paper it was the first time such an injury had ever been recorded. The man did not use the handle as you might think but rather he used the plunger as intended, sealing it and using forced air in an attempt to force out the blockage resulting in a serious perforation to the colon.
9. Self Infecting with Hookworms for Allergy Control
For some people, allergies can be brutal. Most people manage their seasonal allergies with medications that can last for a day or two at a time. You can also get shots from a doctor to help deal with symptoms. But what if you learned of another more permanent way to make symptoms go away? How extreme an allergy cure would you be willing to try?
People who suffer from parasitic infections often don’t demonstrate any allergy symptoms. This is because parasites, like tapeworms or hookworms, have an immunosuppressant effect on their hosts. The parasites don’t want to be fighting off your immune system, so they dial it back. That, in turn, prevents your body from overreacting to allergens which is what causes those annoying allergic reactions in the first place.
One researcher who noticed this, and had serious allergies, made himself the guinea pig in his own experiment. He infected himself with hookworms to see what would happen. For two years, with a hookworm happily living in his guts, he lived allergy-free.
It’s not a medically accepted treatment by any means and comes with many dangers, but researchers are hoping they can determine how parasites cause this reaction and duplicate it, minus the worms.
8. George Boole’s Wife Treated His Illness with Buckets of Water
George Boole was one of the most important mathematicians and logicians in history. Boolean algebra got its name from him. He taught himself Greek, German and French while he was still in his teens, so it’s safe to say his genius was diverse and impressive. However, neither he nor his wife was well-versed in medicine.
When Boole was 49 he was walking to work as a college professor and, for two miles, he walked in a cold rain. Then he lectured in his wet clothes. Shortly thereafter he came down with a bad cold and a fever.
In an effort to make him better, Boole’s wife believed the treatment needed to mimic the cause. So, while George was sick and bedridden, she continually tossed buckets of water on him. Needless to say, the cure failed and Boole died a short time later.
7. Bleach Enemas for Autism
If you haven’t had a daily dose of outrage today, this one ought to do it for you. In 2019, it was revealed that a small group of parents with autistic children were discussing ways to “treat” their children in private Facebook groups. One of these treatments, an alleged cure for autism, involved dosing the kids with bleach.
Autism is not an infection or virus that has a known cause or cure in the sense that something like food poisoning or a headache might. And, even if it did, bleach is toxic and not a cure for anything. That said, many of the parents in these groups still believed their children had infections, or viruses, or allergies, or were poisoned by something else. Most of us have heard the various conspiracies around autism over the years to get some idea of what might have been going on.
The “treatments” shared by parents ranged from dosing the kids with their own urine to turpentine to the very popular chlorine dioxide, or bleach, which could be administered as an enema, orally or in baths. That’s effectively a chemical torture.
One product being sold was called Miracle Mineral Solution, a strong sodium chlorite mix that needed to be mixed with citric acid to form industrial strength bleach. The FDA issued a warning about it back in 2010. Warnings were still being issued in 2019.
During the pandemic it was marketed as a cure for Covid. Colombian officials at that time linked it to seven deaths in America.
6. The Carolina Reaper Was an Attempt to Cure Cancer
Aside from cats and memes and a half dozen other choice items, if there’s one thing the internet loves it’s hot stuff. Just look at Hot Ones! Spicy is always popular. And while pepper farmers are always creating new and face-melting hybrids to destroy the human palate, the reason behind some of these peppers may not be what you think. In specific, the Carolina Reaper pepper wasn’t invented just to make you feel like your tongue was on fire.
Guinness certified the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world in 2017 with an average Scoville rating of over 1.5 million. For some perspective, sriracha hot sauce is usually 1,000 to 2,500 at most. But Ed Currie, the man behind the Reaper, had another goal in mind for his pepper.
Currie comes from a family where cancer is common. His original goal for the Reaper was cancer treatment. Currie thinks capsaicinoids, the compounds that give peppers heat, can help cure the disease so he was developing new ones. Currie had been diagnosed with cancer in the past and has overcome thyroid and skin cancer. Since taking up eating hot peppers he’s had nothing come back, which fuels his belief he’s onto something.
5. Goat Wet Nurses Helped Stop the Spread of Syphilis
Once upon a time, goats were far more involved in child rearing than they are today. To be specific, they were sometimes used as wet nurses. Back in the times before bottles and formula, feeding a child was sometimes much harder than modern people think. If the mother was unable to breastfeed, options were very limited. Wet nurses were employed in many places but they weren’t always available or affordable either. And, on top of that, there was a complication when it came to something like syphilis.
If either a baby or a wet nurse had syphilis, they were a danger to the other. So goats were sometimes used to help stop the spread of the disease. A goat could be used as a wet nurse without fear of disease spread. This could limit the spread of the disease and also ensure babies got fed, which was basically a win-win.
4. A Teenager Cut Off His Own Hand To Treat His Internet Addiction
Internet addiction is a modern phenomenon and, according to one study, it’s huge. As many as 6% of the world’s population has an internet addiction. That’s about 468 million people. That’s more than the population of South America.
One teen in China took his internet addiction problem to extremes by trying to solve it in the worst way. He cut his own hand off.
Reports say the 19-year-old chose to do it right out of the blue after leaving a note for his mom that he’d be back soon. He lopped the appendage off, called a cab, and went to the hospital. Surgeons were actually able to reattach it but weren’t convinced he’d have full use of it again.
3. A Woman Tried to Treat Her Athlete’s Foot with Garlic
If you Google home or herbal remedies for any number of conditions, you’ll find garlic pop up frequently. It’s allegedly good for blood pressure, has antiseptic or antibiotic properties, and a lot more. But that doesn’t mean you can use it for anything, especially without insight into how or why it’s supposed to work. One thing you never want to try is to treat athlete’s foot with garlic.
A woman in England had been applying raw garlic slices to her infected toe for four weeks. Instead of killing the fungal infection, the raw garlic managed to burn the flesh across her toe in a way that’s absolutely terrifying if you see the photos.
Garlic contains diallyl disulfide. The compound caused the severe chemical burn, leading to red, blistered, and peeling skin across her entire toe. It can even happen to cooks who handle too much garlic at work.
2. A Man Tried to Cure His Back Pain with Semen Injections
There is a belief among a small number of people that our own bodies somehow produce medicine. Urine therapy has been practiced in many cultures for centuries but it’s also based on nothing scientific and has not been shown to have beneficial effects. In fact, quite the opposite, it can be dangerous. But if that’s a belief people hold, maybe it’s no surprise that there are some who might seek the benefits of other fluids.
In 2019, a man in Ireland ended up in the hospital after trying to cure his back pain with injections of his own semen. He’d been giving injections in his arm and developed cellulitis as a result. During their research, doctors determined the man apparently came up with the cure all on his own as there was no evidence of anyone else having tried it online.
1. People Consumed Their Own Relatives to Fight Tuberculosis
You’ll be hard pressed to find a more medically questionable story than this one from the last two centuries or so. This is how tuberculosis was dealt with in New England, at least for a short time, in the late 1800s. It involved vampires.
So TB is spreading in a small town at a time when people didn’t understand how diseases spread. If multiple members of a family fell ill, others suspected something else was linking them. In this case, a fully undead ghoul. In one case, a mother and eldest daughter fell ill and died. Then the next daughter passed. And then the son got sick. That’s four in one house, and that raised suspicions.
Believing the family cursed, the father agreed to let people exhume the corpses of his wife and daughters. The eldest daughter and wife had decayed as expected, but the other daughter had barely decomposed and still had blood in her heart. This was likely due to the fact it was winter when she died as the ground was too cold to bury her, so she was preserved. The town disagreed.
The girl was labeled a vampire. Her head was removed and her internal organs were burned. The ashes were fed to the son, believing it would lift the curse and fix the illness. So he consumed the burned remains of his own sister. He also died a short time later.