Medicine has come a long way since history was first recorded, and even farther in the past hundred years or so. People are living longer than ever, medicine is breaking new ground all the time, and technology is gaining ground even as we speak. More and more new medical treatments are being experimented with, and many old ones are being upgraded as we get better at keeping people healthy and strong. However, while we have come a long way, medicine still has some things to improve upon, and some medical treatments are either overused or just plain bogus—a few of which are still in use today.

Related: Top 10 Horrifying Ancient Medical Practices . . . We Still Practice

10 CT Scans Are Being Overdone for Profit

First, we should be clear about what a CT scan is for those who aren’t too familiar with it. A CT scan basically uses ionizing radiation to create an image of the internals of a part of the body that doctors need a better look at. While it may not be able to tell you what is going on if you just have a muscle strain or something of the like, in more serious matters, it can give doctors critical details. When you get one in the hospital, you probably think it is very important and accept the small amount of radiation exposure.

However, you might be alarmed to know that studies have found that hospitals are overusing CT scans and billing you, the state, or your insurance for a procedure you don’t need. This is especially problematic because it isn’t just low-level insurance fraud; it is harmful to others. CT scans expose people to radiation, so they are only supposed to be used on high-risk patients. Still, studies are finding the opposite. Worse, for those who think their part of the world might be exempt, studies have found it is a global problem.^[1]

9 Smoking Cigarettes to Improve Your Health

Today, we know that smoking cigarettes is really bad for your health and often leads to lung cancer and other health complications. They have become less and less culturally acceptable, more and more taxed, and many think they should just be banned entirely. Even those who smoke them regularly and make no excuse about it have no illusion as to the unhealthiness of their chosen habit.

However, it wasn’t that long ago that things were very different. In the early 1900s in the United States, people did not yet know that cigarettes were so unhealthy, and cigarette companies advertised to doctors directly. And they were not just trying to be stealthy about it either, as they would advertise directly to the consumer, stating that their brand was the best for treating affiliations such as sore throats. This may seem outrageous to us today, but at the time, the health information we have now was simply not common knowledge.^[2]

8 Children Were Once Given Liquid Heroin for Coughs

While today’s opioid crisis is quite serious and is affecting many parts of the world at the moment, at the very least, the world is currently taking it seriously. Everyone agrees that opioids are a problem and that we should be trying to restrict their use to only the most important medical uses for pain that cannot be resolved another way. However, it wasn’t long ago that heroin was sold as an over-the-counter cough remedy, and no one really cared.

Now, while it is actually an effective medical treatment for coughs, it is not recommended today for most coughs as it is incredibly addictive. For this reason, especially for children, most doctors recommend dextromethorphan instead. However, back in the early 1900s, Bayer was openly selling liquid heroin to be used for adults and children as a cough suppressant. Nowadays, we would never imagine giving liquid heroin to a child. Still, in the early 1900s, it was as normal as breaking out the children’s cough syrup because that was children’s cough syrup.^[3]

7 Tonsillectomies: Overused and Unnecessary in Most Cases

If you lived a few decades ago, there is a pretty reasonable chance that you got your tonsils taken out. Not long ago, at least in the United States, it was an extremely common procedure that was routinely performed on children. Parents would have the operation done on their kids due to things like frequent sore throats—which the procedure was supposed to help—and sometimes used as a matter of standard medical procedure.

Today, the number of tonsillectomies has gone down greatly, but it is still way too high. A study found that nine in ten tonsillectomies are actually not necessary at all. Many people are still doing it for things like frequent sore throats, but doctors say your children will grow out of this and that the risks of the operation often outweigh the benefits unless it is an extreme situation. This overuse is a problem because the complications can be an issue. Some are the normal ones, such as the risks of being put under, bleeding, and swelling, but infections are also common.^[4]

6 Phenylephrine Proven to Be an Ineffective Decongestant

Even those who claim they “never get sick” at least get a minor cold once in a while, and we all find ourselves in a situation where we may need to buy some medicine for congestion. If nothing else, even if you don’t get sick much, most people have occasional seasonal allergies and need a decongestant for that reason.

With the old stuff falling out of favor because you don’t want people to think you are making meth, most people now buy over-the-counter products with phenylephrine instead. Unfortunately, this is a problem because an FDA advisory panel recently concluded that phenylephrine is not actually an effective decongestant. Now, you might imagine that it still works a little bit, but it is just not enough to be legally effective, or they wouldn’t have sold it for all these years. However, to make matters worse, the board also unanimously concluded that it was no better than a placebo.^[5]

5 Hydrogen Peroxide Causes More Harm Than Good on Wounds

While it is now falling out of favor due to more knowledge about the practice, it used to be quite common just a few years ago in many parts of the world to use hydrogen peroxide on wounds that are in need of cleaning. The bubbling and stinging is something most of us figured was killing the germs really well, and the visible sign of a product working has a powerful psychological impact on most people.

Now, you shouldn’t blame those who have used this practice recently, as this knowledge only came to light in 2010. Like rubbing alcohol, which you also should not use for wounds, it takes a few minutes to really kill the germs effectively. Hydrogen peroxide is corrosive and damages the skin, actually slowing healing and not helping it. If you want to disinfect a wound, soap and water should be used first, followed by a safer disinfectant like Neosporin.^[6]

4 Vitamin C Is Good for You but Not as a Cold Medicine

Vitamin C is one of the favorite cold remedies of many people around the globe. There are countless products designed to give you a hefty dose of vitamin C all at once, often being sold as a catch-all cold medicine. Some people will wait until they have a cold and then start freebasing orange juice like it’s their favorite drug and they haven’t had it in a week. Others will drink orange juice constantly, take supplements, and claim that by doing so, they are avoiding the pain of having colds altogether.

Now, like most things that people misunderstand, there is some truth behind it. Studies have shown that if you take vitamin C on a regular basis, then you can decrease the length of colds by up to 8% in adults and 14% in children. However, the rest of the claims people make about vitamin C are completely false. If you wait to take it until you already have the cold, there is no evidence it will have any effect at all. Also, while taking it regularly can lower the length of colds, there is no evidence that those who take it often have a lower incidence of colds.^[7]

3 Loose Stools? Reach for the Opioids

Today, we think of heroin and other opioids as one of the worst things on the planet and something that should only be used in extremely important medical situations when no other pain reliever will work. However, as we mentioned earlier, it was once treated in a more cavalier way by most of the world, to the point people gave it to kids for coughs or to help them sleep. Nowadays, we would find any use of it for minor maladies to be a gross misuse.

However, back in the day, starting with ancient Arabic doctors in early Iraq, opium was once used as a treatment for loose stools. This may sound strange, but remember that many people who use heroin or other similar drugs complain of having constipation, so this is where the idea came from—to use it as a fix for diarrhea. Now, while this does provide a rationale for the treatment of heroin for loose stools, that doesn’t mean it is a good idea. With what we know about addiction today, it is like lopping off your leg to clip your toenail.^[8]

2 Mercury as a Medical Treatment?

Today, we know that mercury is not at all safe for human consumption and should be avoided in all ways—from touch to inhalation and everything in between. We are so concerned about mercury today that countries have health advisories to avoid eating too much fish, especially bigger ones, to prevent the ingestion of too much mercury as a byproduct. However, the truth is that knowledge about the dangers of metals and heavy metals is really more recent, as it was only in the 1970s that leaded gasoline and paint fell out of favor.

Now, while it did take the world a bit less time to figure out the dangers of mercury than it did to figure out the issues with lead, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a blight on civilization for a long time. The use of mercury as a medicine started to fall out of popular use in the mid-twentieth century. Still, its use goes back to the earliest days in recorded history. And its history is of a medicine that people thought cured basically everything. It was used for syphilis, as an anti-parasitic, and as an anti-inflammatory and was even considered by some people to prevent aging.^[9]

1 A Large Portion of Antibiotics Are Wrongly Prescribed

Antibiotics are an important part of medicine, and while they were only discovered in the last few hundred years as a fully understood and synthesized item, that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist before that. People have been using items like honey and oregano as natural antibiotics for years, even if they didn’t understand exactly what they were doing. This means that many humans have a cultural idea about antibiotic medicines that often makes them think they are for colds in general, as it was common practice for so much of human evolution to use them as needed on an almost intuitive basis.

Unfortunately, this misunderstanding leads people to request antibiotics from their doctors way more often than they should. It causes doctors to overprescribe them as well. The data on antibiotic overuse estimates that about one in three prescriptions are actually not necessary at all. The problem here is that antibiotics are really only for serious bacterial infections, not for viruses or minor bacterial infections like colds. Overusing them makes bacteria more resistant and creates superbugs that are much harder to kill.^[10]

The world is full of con artists and frauds who are highly skilled at playing people. Some of their victims are too trusting, some too gullible. But sometimes even the best of us can get taken in by a fraud who just went above and beyond to convince us that they were legitimate. If someone says all the right words and has all the right credentials, who are we to question them? The problem is when those credentials are fake and they lead to some serious chaos. 

10. Fraudulent Pilots in Pakistan

In 2020 a plane crash in Pakistan killed 97 people. As part of the investigation into the cause of the crash, the airline began to investigate all of their pilots and discovered a truly harrowing statistic. About one third of all Pakistan International Airlines pilots were complete frauds. They had fake licenses and had no business flying planes.

The investigation determined that 262 pilots had either never taken a pilot’s exam and instead had paid someone else to take the test for them or cheated in some other way. In the end, 150 pilots were grounded.

The fatal crash in 2020 had been the result of pilot error though no one said specifically whether the pilots on board had real licenses or not. What was known was that air traffic control told them they were too high three times, but the pilots didn’t listen,and when they did try to land they didn’t lower the landing gear. Only two people survived.

This wasn’t the first time the problem had come up in Pakistan as a pilot two years earlier had caused a crash and the license he produced bore the date of a public holiday, outing it as a fake right away. 

9. British Eye Surgeon John Taylor

English surgeon John Taylor lived in the 1700s and his major claim to fame is that, as an oculist or eye surgeon, he was able to treat famous composers George Frederic Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach. He didn’t treat them well, mind you, but he did treat you.

After finishing some brief medical training as a young man, Taylor set up a clinic in his hometown and did so poorly that his patients burned it down and assaulted him. He went on the road after that, got some more education for at least four different schools, and managed to talk himself up enough to become the eye doctor to the king.

As his reputation grew, he traveled town to town performing pubic surgeries and then leaving before people took their bandages off. By all accounts his area of expertise was quackery more than any real medicine, but he talked a good game and had an impressive pedigree that made people believe him.

His client list grew and eventually he treated Bach who had been steadily losing his vision,possibly as a result of diabetes. Taylor blinded him right away, but he died just four months later, possibly due to a post-surgical infection. When he moved onto Handel, he used a needle to stab him in the eye and push his cataract out of the way so he could see past it. That was the idea anyway. It didn’t work. And none of this was done with anesthesia or antibiotics, of course, because they didn’t exist yet. 

Ironically, Taylor began losing his own vision as well, performed a surgery on himself, and then went totally blind as a result

8. Fake Deep Purple

If you’re a fan of classic rock, you know the band Deep Purple whose most famous song is arguably the heavy hitting “Smoke on the Water.” The band formed in the 1960s and were arguably some of the fathers of modern heavy metal. But there was also two of them for a short period of time which ended up leading to riots from fans who were not pleased by the confusion.

A man named Rod Evans had been the lead singer of Deep Purple when the band came together and auditioned singers to find the perfect front man. He was gone within a year. The band’s name was registered in the UK, and they even formed a company under the name in 1971. But in 1980 a different band registered the name Deep Purple as a trademark in the US. Rod Evans was in this band, but the rest of the musicians were actually from a knock off version of Steppenwolf. 

The fake Deep Purple was formed by a management company that was just looking to capitalize on the name. Fans were not aware that they were getting a fake Deep Purple and when the band took the stage in Texas, crowds threw bottles and the show ended in 40 minutes. It got worse at later dates with some shows ending in riots. The scheme came to an end when the real Deep Purple got word and sued Evans for $672,000.

7. Fake Cop Doug Smith 

You’ve probably heard stories of people pretending to be cops before. It happens quite a bit actually and usually takes the form of someone conducting traffic stops. In those cases it’s a regular joe acting alone trying to dupe the public into thinking they’re a cop. What’s much more unusual is what Doug Smith did. 

Douglas J. Smith was hired as a police captain in Robbins, Illinois. The town had endured an almost unbelievable level of police incompetence sand corruption to that point. The prior chief had retired after being arrested for drunk driving. Sheriffs had investigated the town because it was reporting so few crimes and discovered evidence lockers full of untagged guns and unprocessed rape kits dating back decades. Smith was meant to set things straight. But he did not.

Smith faked his credentials to get his job. Not only that, the badge he supplied, allegedly from his job in Los Angeles, was actually the badge that belonged to the character Joe Friday from the show Dragnet. He was fired within three months after it was determined he had never worked as a police officer in any of the previous places he’d claimed to.

6. A Fake Forensic Psychologist 

Psychologists and forensics experts are a staple on court TV dramas and movies. You can see them on Law and Order every other week. They’re also valuable witnesses in real life, too, provided they’re who they claim to be. Gene Morrison had been called on by courts to give expert testimony as a forensic psychologist for 27 years. He was a fraud, and he’d bought his credentials through the mail in 1977. 

Over the years, Morrison made £250,000 from the government to work on cases on their behalf. He would contract some of the work out to real experts then take credit for it while charging more money. He even insisted on being called doctor during trial after he was caught.

Thanks to his lack of real expertise, the courts had to go back and review around 700 cases.

5. Australia’s Fake Lawyer

Dennis Jensen has been warned by Australian authorities that he will face extended jail time if he continued to pretend to be a lawyer. He was already sentenced to three months.  This came from him advising a client accused of rape to contact the alleged victim despite an injunction against doing so. His terrible legal advice, owing to the fact he’s not a lawyer, got his client more charges. 

Fake lawyering is a new career path for Jensen who previously made headlines as a fake cancer doctor whose patient died of ovarian cancer since he has no medical training either. He gave her a corrosive and illegal salve to eliminate the cancer which caused severe damage to her stomach.

4. The Fake Surgeon 

Fake doctor stories are, tragically, not that uncommon, but India’s Om Pal is a next level fraud. He had stolen the credentials of a real doctor and proceeded to work as a doctor for an entire decade. During that time he performed surgeries, despite not being qualified to do so. According to him, he performed 70,000.  His medical training was as a paramedic.

In a bizarre twist, the fraud came to light when someone tried to extort him for being a fraud and he told the police about it. 

3. Jean-Claude Romand, the Murderous Fake Doctor

Some people will tell a lie and then, in an effort to conceal it, tell more and more lies. This can spiral out of control and in many cases the liar gets caught out and will suffer some personal or professional consequences. But a small percentage of these people spiral even further down. When lying isn’t enough, they will resort to violence to hide the truth at all costs.

Jean-Claude Romand claimed to be a doctor, but he was not. He spent 18 years living that lie pretending he worked for the World Health Organization. He made money by duping friends and family with fake investments. 

In reality, Romand was in med school but never took the first year exams. Instead, he repeated his first year 12 times. When his lies were about to be exposed, Romand went on a killing spree. He killed his wife and then made his kids breakfast and watched a cartoon with them before killing them as well. Then he proceeded to his parents’ home and killed them, taking out anyone who could expose him as a liar.He even killed his parent’s dog. 

He tried to kill himself in a fire but was rescued and later convicted of the murders.

2. Missionary Renee Bach

The urge to be charitable and altruistic is arguably not something enough people have and the world would be a better place if more of us helped one another. That said, you need to know how to help people before you try, and Renee Bach missed that part of the equation. 

Bach was a missionary who, at just 19 years old, headed to Uganda to help the children there after doing some missionary work in high school. She set up a charity called Serving His Children in a house she had rented in a place called Jinja. Soon she was serving up to 1,000 hot meals, twice a week to local children. But at some point she went from feeding the hungry to treating them.

Locals say Bach wore a white lab coat and carried a stethoscope. Parents would bring sick and malnourished children to her for treatment, and she would take them in despite having no medical training at all. Children were dying on a weekly basis. 

Bach wrote in her blog about treating the children, including administering IVs and oxygen. There was no mistaking that she had taken their medical care as her responsibility. In the end, 105 children died and Bach was sued by some of the parents for misrepresenting herself leading to the deaths of the children. She settled the case, paying $9,500 each to two mothers with no admission of liability. 

1. Annie Dookhan, the Fraud Lab Tech

In 2017, Massachusetts courts had to drop over 21,000 drug convictions thanks to Annie Dookhan. Dookhan worked as a lab tech at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute where she doctored lab results, forged signatures, and tampered with evidence to apparently just improve her overall standing as the best tech in the lab. Her falsified data led to all of the convictions which had to be thrown out.

Co-workers discovered she’d been padding her resume, claiming credentials she didn’t have like a Master’s degree. She removed the lie after getting caught, but then put it back later. Ironically, Dookhan did have the necessary skills to do her job, as the education she did have was adequate. But something compelled her to lie and go beyond the limits of reason. She spent three years in prison for her troubles.