One of the perks of modern living is the convenience of contemporary medicine. In other words, you won’t find a doctor prescribing a live chicken rub to cure your ailment. Yet, sanity sometimes lags behind a handful of astonishing medical practices. Here are the ten medical treatments you won’t believe are still in use.
10 Medical Treatments That Still Surprise Doctors
10 Bee Venom Therapy
Officially called apitherapy, the use of bee venom to treat conditions such as rheumatism dates back millennia, possibly to ancient Greece. You’d assume it would have been retired centuries ago, but that’s not the case. Hospitals worldwide now employ bee venom for arthritis, tendonitis, herpes, and more. Some physicians prescribe extracted venom, while others literally sting patients with a live bee. Recent Western research even explores bee venom as a potential cancer cure. So perhaps the practice isn’t as far‑fetched as it sounds.
9 Maggot Therapy For Dead Tissue
Maggot debridement, or maggot therapy, has popped up throughout human history, especially during wartime. “Debridement” means removing dead tissue, and maggot debridement does exactly that—by introducing live maggots into a wound. Though it sounds barbaric, the method is resurging in modern medicine and is even covered by some insurance plans. It’s typically applied to post‑surgical wounds that struggle to heal.
8 Intestinal Parasites For Allergies
Although not mainstream (and hopefully never will be), a number of physicians have revisited the age‑old claim that hookworms—an intestinal parasite—can treat allergies. Since the 1970s, researchers noted an odd correlation: regions with high hookworm prevalence exhibit virtually no allergies or autoimmune disorders. Scientists are now probing the phenomenon by intentionally infecting volunteers. Some adventurous individuals, like the man who trekked African restrooms barefoot hoping for infection, have tried it themselves, proudly declaring, “…my feet were very itchy, so I felt very confident that I was infected.”
7 Burning Leaves For Facial Paralysis
Chinese practitioners are reviving a fiery cure: burning moxa leaves to treat ailments ranging from facial paralysis to brain atrophy. The method involves placing rolls of dried moxa on the ears, mouth, or cheeks, igniting them, and letting the smoke waft across the face. Occasionally walnuts are tucked into patients’ eyes to help restore Qi, according to specialists in Jinan, China.
6 Trepanation To Relieve Cranial Pressure
Trepanation—drilling a hole directly into a skull—has been practiced since cave‑people times. Archaeologists discovered a 7,000‑year‑old burial site with circular skull openings, and examples appear throughout every era. Originally performed with flint, later steel, the procedure has evolved from creating a single large aperture to stitching together several smaller ones, even scraping bone layers away. Today, surgeons employ trepanation to treat subdural hematoma, a condition where blood pools beneath the skull and around the brain.
5 Eating Live Fish For Asthma
The Bathini Gauds, an Indian family, have been administering live fish as an asthma remedy for over 160 years, and they continue today. The protocol: the patient swallows a live fish together with a secret medicinal ball, then adheres to a strict 45‑day diet. The family claims millions have been cured, attracting half a million visitors annually. They argue the fish must stay alive to scrub the throat as it wriggles down. The Indian Medical Association, however, threatens legal action unless the secret ingredients are disclosed.
4 Thalidomide Repurposed For Cancer
Thalidomide earned infamy in the 1950s as a morning‑sickness remedy for pregnant women, only to cause over 10,000 birth defects within a few short years. The FDA quickly banned it, ordering pharmacies to destroy their stock. Decades later, the drug has made a comeback: the FDA now approves thalidomide for treating bone‑marrow cancer. Modern protocols rigorously screen for pregnancy before prescribing, ensuring the tragic history isn’t repeated.
3 Electroconvulsive Therapy
Born in 1938, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) delivers a brief electrical shock—sometimes several hundred volts—to trigger a seizure. Early use waned due to side effects like confusion, muscle aches, bone fractures, and memory loss lasting months. In 2001, the American Psychiatric Association revived the technique, and today ECT is primarily employed for chronic depression, remaining legal in most nations, though only a few thousand treatments occur annually.
2 Lobotomy And Modern Lobectomy
Lobotomies, the notorious 1930s brain‑cutting procedures, were once touted as cures for schizophrenia and other mental disorders. A famous psychiatrist used a hammer and ice pick, inserting the tool through the eye socket to sever frontal‑lobe connections. By the 1950s, drugs supplanted the practice, yet fringe surgeons kept it alive—France performed lobotomies until 1986, and a U.S. psychiatrist experimented with burning dime‑size holes in 1995. Today, a refined version called a lobectomy is occasionally used for severe epilepsy.
1 Exorcism For Just About Everything
If any “medical” treatment should be extinct, it’s exorcism. Yet many still believe in demonic possession, opting for ancient rituals over modern therapy. Strangely, there are anecdotes of exorcisms alleviating diseases, especially mental ailments. Since psychiatry still grapples with the intangible, a strong belief in the cure—whether it’s a placebo effect or genuine spiritual intervention—can sometimes produce results. The debate continues: demon or mind?
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