People who lived in the past had some pretty crazy ideas about the world, and among the most bewildering were the 10 insane medical notions that shaped their everyday lives. From ridiculous diet hacks to supernatural explanations, these beliefs made the Salem Witch Trials and Flat Earth Theory look as tame as a folded blanket.
10 Insane Medical Practices Unveiled
10 The Tapeworm Diet
Just over a century ago, cultural pressures pushed women toward extreme slenderness, yet shedding weight rapidly proved challenging for many. In response, the health trade marketed diet capsules allegedly infused with live tapeworms. It eventually became clear that, although tapeworms can indeed trim the waist, they also bring on diarrhea, nutrient shortages, sleeplessness, and overall malnutrition.
Modern scholars still debate the factuality of the practice. The sole proof consists of vintage ads and anecdotal whispers. Nonetheless, those promos reveal a clear demand for tapeworm‑laden pills, irrespective of their genuine contents. While U.S. law now forbids the commercial sale of tapeworms, internet marketplaces still list them as slimming aids, and unsuspecting buyers inevitably suffer adverse health effects.
9 Bat Blood Cures Blindness
The humid, swamp‑filled banks of the Nile plagued ancient Egyptians with frequent ocular infections. To counter this nuisance, physicians devised a remedy that involved dripping the blood of bats directly into the afflicted eyes.
The reasoning, while odd to modern eyes, made sense to the Egyptians: nocturnal bats were presumed to possess superior vision, so their blood was thought to carry restorative visual powers. Contemporary science, however, reveals that bats see poorly and rely on sonar rather than sharp sight.
8 Having Sex With Virgins Cures STDs
By the sixteenth century, syphilis swept across Europe as a dreaded scourge. Observers recognized its transmission through sexual contact, yet a grotesque misinterpretation emerged: the supposed cure involved intercourse with a virgin.
The prevailing belief held that syphilitic sufferers were tainted by immoral deeds, while virgins embodied an unblemished purity capable of cleansing the infection. Consequently, even into the nineteenth century, afflicted individuals pursued virgin partners as a remedy, only to witness the strategy backfire as the disease spread further.
Simultaneously, mercury was hailed as a panacea for the pox. Patients immersed themselves in mercury baths and applied mercury salves, frequently succumbing to lethal mercury poisoning. Though mercury persisted as a syphilis treatment well into the twentieth century, its true effects were severe dental decay, neurological injury, and mortality.
7 Cannibalism Cures Everything
Bizarre as it may appear, Renaissance Europe witnessed a surprisingly widespread practice of employing prepared human flesh as a remedy for a myriad of conditions, from epilepsy and nausea to the ordinary cold. Members of the elite—royalty and clergy alike—consumed human meat and massaged human fat onto their skin. Culinary curiosities even included marmalades infused with human blood, sometimes served uncooked as a luxurious libation. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such macabre therapies rivaled the popularity of traditional herbal cures.
This grim culinary trend likely traced its roots to ancient Greek and Roman doctrines. Greek physicians, adhering to Galenic theory, posited that disease resulted from bodily imbalance, remedied by ingesting healthy organs matching the afflicted region—such as powdered skull fragments for headaches. The Romans, on the other hand, pioneered the consumption of human blood to treat epilepsy, convinced that the vitality of prematurely deceased individuals could be harvested by drinking the plasma of fallen gladiators.
The European descent into cannibalism progressed incrementally. Initially, they powdered the remnants of pilfered Egyptian mummies, then moved to ground skulls, and ultimately progressed to the consumption of actual human flesh. The primary sources were deceased beggars, lepers, and condemned criminals. Echoing Roman thought, practitioners believed that ingesting these bodies would transfer the lost years of the victims to the patient. This belief endured for an extraordinary span, yet by the eighteenth century the notion of cannibalism as legitimate medicine largely faded.
6 Women Had Roving Uteruses
The concept of a migratory womb stemmed from ancient Greek theory, which imagined the uterus roaming within a woman’s body to chase pleasant aromas while fleeing offensive ones. Moreover, excessive labor and prolonged sexual abstinence were believed to provoke the womb’s wandering.
Proponents claimed that a roaming uterus triggered a spectrum of physical and psychological maladies, collectively labeled “hysteria.” Manifestations encompassed fatigue, headaches, vertigo, choking sensations, suffocation, and heartburn. While men exhibited comparable symptoms, their genitalia were never implicated. To remedy the errant womb, physicians suggested either enticing it home with fragrant vaginal suppositories and the ingestion or inhalation of foul odors (occasionally even feces), or alternatively, inducing pregnancy.
Society required more than two millennia to abandon the wandering womb doctrine. Although the notion largely vanished from medical textbooks during the Enlightenment, hysteria continued to be treated as a legitimate condition for centuries thereafter. By the eighteenth century, the ailment was reattributed to women’s supposedly impressionable and compromised brains—a belief that lingered well into the mid‑twentieth century.
5 Penises Should Be Cultivated Like Houseplants
Historically, physicians relied on the “theory of humors” to interpret health and bodily composition. This model posited that the four universal elements—earth, air, water, fire—mirrored four bodily qualities: cold, dry, moist, and hot. Men were thought to possess a warm, dry constitution, purportedly fostering penile growth, whereas women were deemed cold and moist, akin to icy marshes, and thus unsuited for such development.
One might assume that the ancient Greeks—renowned for geometry and democracy—would recognize that flora thrive under sunlight’s warmth and adequate hydration, yet they apparently overlooked moisture’s role in this analogy. Moreover, the notion that vaginas possess frigid temperatures is biologically inaccurate.
4 Spiderwebs Combat Malaria
Centuries ago, malaria ravaged populations with alarming fatality rates and lacked an effective remedy. Prior to the introduction of quinine and contemporary drugs, sufferers turned to the notion that ingesting the delicate protein filaments excreted from spider abdomens could defeat the disease.
Naturally, they did not simply gnaw on raw webs—a barbaric notion. Instead, apothecaries encased spider silk within tablets for malaria patients. Predictably, the treatment proved ineffective, prompting physicians to advise consuming whole spiders sautéed in butter alongside the web pills, a method that likewise failed. Italians even promoted a peculiar remedy: transporting a live spider sealed within a walnut shell, which offered no benefit.
Fortunately, modern medicine has abandoned the need to ingest arachnids or their silk for malaria. Following quinine’s arrival in Europe during the 1600s, the spider‑web cure fell into obscurity.
3 Smoking Tobacco Cures Asthma And Cancer
Upon reaching the Americas, Europeans encountered tobacco, noting indigenous peoples inhaling it during sacred rituals and for therapeutic reasons. They transported a modest supply back to Europe. By the mid‑sixteenth century, transatlantic routes enabled mass shipment, and smoking quickly became a continent‑wide craze.
Within decades, tobacco’s popularity exploded. Even faster, advocates proclaimed it a divine medicinal herb capable of resolving every illness, despite no empirical proof. Physician Nicolas Monardes asserted that tobacco could remedy thirty‑six conditions, cancer among them, while the public also believed it alleviated asthma. Such convictions persisted well into the 1920s.
Medical professionals only began documenting smoking‑related health hazards in the 1930s. Several decades thereafter, research conclusively linked tobacco use to the onset and worsening of numerous diseases, notably asthma and cancer.
2 Elves Cause Illness
Whether you picture Santa’s industrious elves or forest dwellers baking treats, your charming mental image of elves is about to be shattered. In medieval Europe, such benign portrayals did not exist because many believed elves allied with the devil, intent on afflicting humans with disease by firing miniature arrows.
Despite the terrifying notion of demonic elves brandishing tiny bows, multiple cultures embraced this belief. Scandinavians spoke of dark elves sowing relentless mischief, chiefly spreading lethal illnesses. The English shared the conviction that elves induced disease, while the Scots asserted that elf‑shot arrows triggered internal agony and could plague both humans and livestock. Victims of these “elf‑shots” underwent exorcism‑style treatments: herbal smoke to drive out spirits, fervent prayers, and consumption of holy water to repel elf‑borne ailments.
1 The Healing Properties Of Dog Poop
Undoubtedly, each of us has endured a scratchy throat and searched for any balm to ease the irritation. Yet few could imagine ingesting canine excrement as a remedy, though in the Middle Ages this was a surprisingly prevalent cure. Practitioners hunted for white dog feces, ground the desiccated material into a fine powder, and blended it with honey to coat a sore throat.
While the therapeutic efficacy remains uncertain, the hazards of eating dog waste vastly exceed any conceivable gain. Potential side effects encompass nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fever, and even hemorrhagic diarrhea. It’s remarkable that any descendants of medieval Europeans have survived to the present.
Research notes credit Julie Battin, a student at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, for documenting this peculiar practice.