When we look back at the strange world of medieval medicine, the collection of 10 medieval remedies can feel both baffling and fascinating; yet once we grasp the underlying beliefs behind each cure, their oddities start to make a surprising amount of sense.
Why 10 Medieval Remedies Matter
10 Swallows’ Gizzards For Epilepsy
This 14th‑century English physician John of Gaddesden recorded a “simple” that calls for the tiny red stones hidden inside swallow gizzards, to be hung around the patient’s neck as a protective talisman.
The timing of the stone removal was crucial: the physician instructed that the stones be plucked at midday, when the Sun’s warmth was at its peak and the Moon’s chill was at its lowest. The stones themselves were described as “hot,” mirroring the Sun, and the cure was thought to temper the excess fire or heat that medieval doctors believed sparked epileptic seizures.
In keeping with the ancient maxim “like cures like,” St. Hildegard of Bingen and her contemporaries saw the red, fiery stones as a symbolic antidote to the fiery disturbances of the brain, making the remedy less mystical and more a reflection of prevailing humoral theory.
9 Detect Thieves And Prevent Defamation With Marigolds
The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus includes an astrological recipe that calls for gathering marigolds while the Sun sits in Leo during August, then wrapping the blossoms in a laurel leaf and adding a wolf’s tooth. The resulting bundle, when placed under the bearer’s head at night, was believed to reveal any thief and silence any detractor, ensuring only peaceful words were spoken about the holder.
8 Mandrake Root For Depression
The mandrake plant, whose root eerily resembles a human figure, was thought to possess amplified magical powers because of this uncanny likeness.
To lift the spirits of a despondent soul, St. Hildegard advised digging up a mandrake root, allowing it to scream as it was pulled, then immersing the root in a spring for a full day and night to purge its evil. The cleaned root was then placed beside the sufferer’s bed, accompanied by a prayer invoking God’s creation of humanity from earth, asking the untouched earth to bring peace.
This ritual, which relies on spoken prayer and the plant’s presence rather than ingestion or topical application, illustrates the medieval conviction that words and symbolic objects could restore emotional balance without physical contact.
7 Banish Anxiety With Bear’s Hair
Anxiety was as common in the Middle Ages as it is today, and St. Hildegard’s Physica offers a direct remedy: take a few strands of hair plucked from between a bear’s ears and rest them upon the chest over the heart until they warm.
Take some hair from between the bear’s ears, and place it on your chest over your heart until it warms up. Immediately you will be peaceful and calm.
The bear’s renowned strength and serenity were believed to transfer to the anxious individual, granting them a steadier, calmer disposition through the simple act of contact.
6 A Unicorn’s Hoof To Detect Poison
If a patron feared that a meal might be laced with poison, the medieval remedy was to slip a unicorn’s hoof beneath the plate or cup. Should the dish be hot, the hoof would cause it to boil; if cold, the hoof would make it steam, thereby revealing the presence of toxins.
This uncanny ability was linked to the unicorn’s symbolic purity, which by the Middle Ages had come to represent Christ himself. The creature’s immaculate nature was thought to act as a divine detector, exposing any hidden danger in food.
5 For Testicle Ailments . . . .
If you’re experiencing problems with your testicles, St. Hildegard’s Physica provides a curious cure: burn a swallow’s egg inside its shell, grind the charred shell into a fine powder, blend it with chicken fat, and then anoint the afflicted organs with the mixture.
He should burn a swallow’s egg in its shell, and then grind it to a powder. Add some chicken fat, and mix. Anoint the testicles with the mixture.
The logic rests on the egg’s perfect balance of the four humors; once cooked, it was thought to embody an ideal equilibrium that could restore harmony to the testicular region.
4 Wear A Live Bat For Jaundice
For the yellow‑tinged affliction of jaundice, the Physica instructs the practitioner to gently stun a bat, then bind the living creature across the loins with its back facing the patient’s back. After a short wait, the bat is repositioned over the stomach and left there until it perishes.
In Galenic thought, jaundice stemmed from an excess of yellow bile, a “hot” humor. The bat—or alternatively a dead widderwalo bird—was believed to counter this heat, either by absorbing the excess or by providing a cooling influence, thereby rebalancing the body’s humors.
3 Lion’s Ear Hearing Aid
According to the Physica, a lion’s ear can serve as a remedy for hearing loss: hold the ear of a lion against the deaf ear until warmth transfers, then recite a prayer invoking the lion’s keen hearing and the living God.
Hold the ear of a lion on the deaf ear until that ear warms up from the ear of the lion. Also say, “Hear adimacus, by the living God, and by the sharpness of the lion’s strong hearing.”
This cure follows the “like cures like” principle, using the lion’s renowned auditory acuity to restore the patient’s own hearing through direct contact and spoken supplication.
2 Contraception
In the 11th or 12th century, the Italian physician‑author Trotula of Salerno compiled a treatise titled De passionibus mulierum (On the Diseases of Women). Among the many remedies, she recommended that a woman carry the womb of a never‑bred goat pressed against her naked flesh to prevent conception.
This advice also appears in the English remedy collection Bodley 591, illustrating how medieval practitioners employed symbolic animal parts—here, the sterile goat’s womb—as a physical barrier to fertilization.
1 Medieval Viagra
The medieval world was as preoccupied with sexual health as modern society, and Bodley 591 records a concoction that functions much like today’s Viagra. The recipe calls for a mash of fennel seeds, parsley, agarwood (lyngnum aloes), galingale, cassia cinnamon, cardamom, and other ingredients, all ground together, sweetened, and melted in a basin.
A man described as “cold in the body or porpis” would take a handful of the cooled mixture, place it in a glass, and drink it, hoping the blend would restore vigor and sexual function.
The manuscript boasts that this drink is “very good” and “holsom,” promising to restore a man’s potency with regular use.
1 + Faking Virginity
The Trotula also offers a practical, if unsettling, method for women to feign virginity: combine one or two ounces each of dragon’s blood, hematite, oak apples, Armenian bole (a type of clay), cinnamon, pomegranate rind, alum (the ingredient in styptic pencils), and mastic.
Mix this concoction thoroughly and insert it into the vagina. The mastic and alum create a sticky mixture that liquefies when warmed, producing a deceptive coating.
This mixture would give the appearance of a sealed hymen, allowing a woman to convince others of her virgin status despite having been sexually active.
Davanna Cimino, a writer and editor living on Florida’s Gulf Coast, can be reached on Twitter @davanna.