When most people think of strange medical conditions, what comes to mind is Tourette’s syndrome or albinism. But the world of ailments is seemingly infinite—just when you think you’ve heard it all, there comes.

10 Stone Man’s Disease

Medically known as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), Stone Man’s Disease is one of the rarest, most incapacitating genetic conditions. True to its common name, bone tissue begins to grow where muscles, tendons, and other connective tissues should be, effectively restricting movement. Individuals with FOP may even grow a second skeleton that will eventually turn them into living statues. Because the heart and other organs are made up of a different kind of muscle, they do not grow bone tissue.

Around the world, there have only been 800 confirmed cases, and there is no known cure or treatment other than painkillers. Those with FOP experience flare-ups randomly or following physical trauma—even something as small as an injection can cause bone to begin growing. But there is cause to remain hopeful. In 2006, the FOP gene was discovered, and clinical trials are currently active.

9 Progressive Lipodystrophy

Sometimes called reverse Benjamin Button syndrome, lipodystrophy makes sufferers look old beyond their years. In the case of 15-year-old Zara Hartshorn, she was once mistaken for the mother of her older, 16-year-old sister. But how? Inherited by a gene mutation or acquired through medications, autoimmune mechanisms, or other unidentified processes, lipodystrophy is characterized by the loss of fat tissue from beneath the skin. Most commonly, fat loss occurs in the face, followed by the neck, upper extremities, and trunk. This can cause dents, folds, and wrinkles in the skin.

So far, only 200 cases have been reported worldwide, mainly affecting women. There is no cure or treatment for lipodystrophy, besides insulin, face-lifts, or collagen injections (which eventually fade).

8 Geographic Tongue

Around two to three percent of the general population has map-like shapes that form on the tongue, hence the name of the condition. Because parts of the tongue are missing papillae, or tiny, finger-like projections, patches appear that look like smooth islands. The flat pattern on the tongue also changes quickly from day to day, depending on where the papillae have healed.

Geographic tongue is a harmless condition, with very few to no symptoms, though some people experience tongue discomfort or sensitivity to spicy foods. And the cause itself is a mystery. Several studies provide conflicting data on the link between geographical tongue and other diseases such as diabetes. However, there is the possibility of a genetic link, as it tends to run in families.

7 Gastroschisis

Now, instead of missing body parts, how about having most of your insides on the outside? Gastroschisis is a birth defect that prevents normal organ development. Typically, the abdomen will close around the organs as the fetus ages, but in these cases, the abdominal wall doesn’t do this correctly. Because of this, some of the fetus’s organs end up stuck outside its body.

In the United States alone, the chance of gastroschisis is 3.73 per 10,000 live births. In young mothers, the risk is increased. But while the survival rate was once just 50 percent, infants born with gastroschisis today have an 85–90 percent survival rate and few complications in adult life.

6 Xeroderma Pigmentosum

This genetic condition is responsible for an increase in sucky vampire jokes, as those affected by xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) have extreme sensitivity to ultraviolet light. A mutation that interferes with the repair of DNA is the cause of the condition. Symptoms usually first appear in early childhood, marked by severe sunburn after just a few minutes of exposure. Freckling of the face and exposed skin is common, as well as dry skin and changes in skin color.

Unfortunately, individuals with XP have a high chance of developing skin cancer. Without proper protection, nearly half of all children with XP develop some type of skin cancer by the age of 10. The eyes also become bloodshot, hazy, and irritated from UV exposure.

There are eight different types of XP, each with its own severity and symptoms. It is estimated that only one in 250,000 people in Europe and the US has XP.

5 Chiari Malformation

Those with Chiari malformation have a brain that’s too big for their skull. Their brain tissue, usually the cerebellum, pushes into the spinal canal. How rare is it? Just one percent of the US population has Chiari malformation, and it’s diagnosed not only in kids, but also adults. There are currently four discovered types—I, II, III, and IV. Type I is the most common and least severe while Type IV is the rarest and most severe, causing neurological problems that are often fatal. Not everyone with Chiari malformation shows symptoms—some show no symptoms until much later in childhood or adult life, and these are typically excessive headaches. For many, surgical decompression of the skull is necessary.

4 Alopecia Areata

This is an autoimmune disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks hair follicles on the head, resulting in patchy hair loss. Alopecia areata (AA) has two other forms. Alopecia totalis is the complete loss of hair on the scalp. Alopecia universalis is the rarest form of AA, which attacks all hair follicles, including head hair, eyebrows, leg hair, lashes, and so on. Strangely, in all three forms, hair can regrow randomly and unpredictably.

Even though it affects about 2 percent of the population, there is no cure or treatment, and no symptoms are reported other than itchy, sensitive skin during the early stages of AA.

3 Nail-Patella Syndrome

Does the thought of looking down at your fingers and seeing no nails send shivers up your spine? Those with Nail-Patella Syndrome (NPS) often have no nails, or nails that grow abnormally, split in half, or simply grow away from the nail bed. Another symptom is skeletal abnormalities that limit movement, the most extreme being the deformation or complete absence of the kneecap. Even stranger is the presence of iliac horns—small, flaring protrusions on the pelvic bone that can sometimes be felt through the skin.

At least one in every 50,000 people has NPS, but the symptoms are so diverse that it can make diagnosis very difficult, even within a family who share the condition.

2 Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy Type I

This disease is so rare that its prevalence is simply an estimate: two cases per one million people. Those with hereditary sensory neuropathy type 1 (HSN) suffer from a loss of sensation, usually in the legs, feet, arms, and hands. The ability to sense pain and temperature is affected, sometimes to the point where it is absent. Because HSN causes a loss of pain sensations, it is not unheard of for those with it to suffer from random fractures and even necrosis, which results in dead body tissue. People with HSN may even break their limbs or bite off a chunk of their tongue without feeling the slightest bit of pain. Not being able to feel pain can be life-threatening in many situations, and because injuries and wounds might be left untreated, ulcers and infections are common.

1 Myotonia Congenita

Have you heard about fainting goats? Cute, fluffy, and helpless. But they’re not the only fainting mammals in the animal kingdom. People can also suffer from myotonia congenita, the disease that affects myotonic goats. A genetic mutation, myotonia congenita affects the flow of chloride ions, which are responsible for letting the muscle know when to contract and when to release. This results in muscle stiffness after voluntary contractions, normally after long periods of rest, and can affect muscles in the legs, arms, jaws, and diaphragm. There is no cure, and treatment is only offered for the worst cases. Exercise and gentle movement after resting can help stiff muscles, but despite the occasional embarrassment, those diagnosed tend to live long, happy lives.

L.A. is currently a teaching assistant at Michigan State University where she studies serious gaming and human computer interactions. Her hobbies include gaming, writing, reading, and occasionally stick-figure drawings.

Many people already have a healthy fear of going to the doctor. Unfortunately, that fear may be well-founded, especially when you consider the horrific mistakes that happen every day in hospitals around the world. Most people have heard horror stories of medical instruments being left in patients, a common mistake that happens to an estimated 4,000 people every year in the US. However, there are many other medical and surgical errors that still happen to unsuspecting patients, often causing severe injuries or death.

10Surgery On The Wrong Person

This is a mistake that the National Quality Forum considers a “never event.” This means that it’s a serious reportable event (but not necessarily something that’s completely preventable) that is hoped to never happen in a hospital. But in many cases, the problem is preventable, like when surgeries are performed on the wrong person. Even with new protocols, there have still been reported errors in which the wrong patient has received an invasive surgery. In a prostate biopsy mix-up, one man had his healthy prostate removed while the man who needed his cancerous organ removed was left untreated.

One of the most horrifying examples in recent history was when a woman woke up just before her organs were harvested for transplant, like something out of a gory horror movie. Not only did they mistake her for someone else, they mistook a living person for a corpse. Luckily, the 41-year-old woman opened her eyes just as surgeons were about to remove the organs. Although the surgery was stopped in time, the fact that the surgical staff was about to remove organs from a patient who was still alive points to a plethora of mistakes that are horrendous to contemplate.

9Air Embolisms

The very air that keeps humans alive can also kill them during surgery. Air that is allowed to enter the bloodstream during surgery can cause a blockage in the circulatory system, an event known as a venous air embolism. Air embolisms in surgery are rare, but they still occur more often than they should. Air embolisms can cause a pulmonary embolism—or blockage in the lungs—which is the leading cause of preventable hospital-related deaths.

Venous air embolisms from catheters have a 30 percent fatality rate. Even people who survive can be left with permanent physical disabilities, such as severe brain damage. What is most frightening about air embolisms is that they can happen during very routine surgeries, yet are extremely deadly. For example, a seemingly simple dental implant surgery recently turned fatal when an oral surgeon gave air embolisms to five patients in one year, killing three of them. The air is thought to have been introduced into the patients’ bloodstreams through the hollow dental drill.

8Blood Transfusions

Receiving a blood transfusion during a hospital stay is common—it’s estimated that 1 in 10 hospital stays where a medical procedure is performed will involve a blood transfusion. Unfortunately, this routine aspect of medical care can also be extremely dangerous when mistakes are made, most commonly when the wrong blood is given to the wrong patient. Out of every 10,000 units of blood that are transfused to patients, it is thought that one of these units is the wrong blood for the intended patient.

The most common mistakes in blood transfusions revolve around identifying the blood and patient correctly. Blood can be incorrectly labeled when collected, the wrong blood can be dispensed, or medical personnel can administer the wrong blood during surgery or at the patient’s bedside. From July 2008 to July 2009, there were 535 blood transfusion errors reported through the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority alone. Fourteen of these mistakes resulted in serious adverse effects, and one patient died during surgery.

7Wrong Surgeries

One of the surgical mistakes that’s considered a “never event” is when patients receive the wrong surgery. In a study of medical lawsuits, 25 percent were for patients who received a different surgery than what they were scheduled for. Over a 20-year period, 2,447 lawsuits were filed for surgeries that were performed for the wrong procedure.

Despite all the safety procedures that have been put in place to ensure that wrong surgeries do not happen, they continue to occur more often than acceptable. One woman had her fallopian tube removed instead of her appendix, while another patient received a heart operation that was not needed. One of the most tragic stories is that of a pregnant woman who was scheduled to have her appendix removed in 2011. Instead, her ovary was removed, leaving the infected appendix inside her. The woman was readmitted to the hospital three weeks later when the mistake was discovered, but unfortunately, she miscarried and died on the operating table.

6Wrong Medication Or Dose

Most people assume that the medicine they receive from their doctor or pharmacist is the correct drug at the correct dose, but millions of people every day get the wrong prescription. Out of over three billion prescriptions that are annually doled out in the US, it is estimated that 51.5 million errors occur—that’s 4 out of every 250 prescriptions filled. The danger is twofold: Patients could receive harmful drugs that they don’t need, or they could not receive the drug that they do need. Either case can be fatal.

These medication errors happen at both pharmacies and hospitals. One tragic example is when two premature twins died due a nurse’s fatal mistake. The babies, who were born at 27 weeks at Stafford Hospital, were given a lethal dose of morphine—650–800 micrograms instead of the 50–100 micrograms they were supposed to receive.

In another fatal drug error, a 79-year-old man was given the paralytic drug pancuronium—one of the drugs used in lethal injections—instead of an antacid for his upset stomach at North Shore Medical Center in Miami, causing the man to become unresponsive within 30 minutes.

5Infections And Contaminated Medical Supplies

Most people go to the hospital to be treated for illnesses, yet this is also where many diseases and infections originate. Exposure to deadly illnesses through contaminated medical instruments or poor staff hygiene isn’t something you hear about too often, but it occurs with alarming frequency. Between 2012 and 2014, dozens of patients were exposed to the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from contaminated surgical instruments in at least four different hospitals in the US.

Infection from contaminated equipment is another “never event” and also one which is completely preventable. According to the most recent US Center for Disease Control’s Healthcare-Associated Infections Progress Report, preventable infections from hospitals in the US are improving but are still too prevalent. It is estimated that 1 in 25 hospital patients contract an infection while in the hospital, with about 75,000 people dying due to these infections every year.

4Misdiagnosis

It’s understandable that extremely rare diseases might be misdiagnosed. The popular TV show House was based on exactly that premise. However, there is no excuse when symptoms of common ailments are overlooked due to incompetence.

It is estimated that 80,000 Americans die each year from ailments that are misdiagnosed. One woman went to the emergency room complaining of neck pain and a headache, but was having trouble vocalizing her symptoms. The rushed emergency room doctor dismissed the issue as just a muscle pain, releasing her with only pain medication. The next day, the woman was readmitted to the same emergency room and died of cardiac arrest from the stroke she had apparently been having the day before. The doctor who had treated her the previous day admits that he should have recognized the signs of stroke, blaming himself for her death.

3Urgency

Anyone who has been to the emergency room lately knows how crowded they have become. However, you’d assume that those in need of immediate assistance would still receive the care they need. This is not always the case. Too often, patients are left untreated when the medical help they need is just down the hall.

One 39-year-old woman was admitted to a Bronx, New York hospital just before 5:00 AM after complaining of abdominal pain. Although the woman was listed as “urgent” and blood tests were drawn, she remained untreated until well into the afternoon. Finally, the physician in charge of her case ordered a CAT scan and noticed fluid accumulation. They brought the woman in for surgery to search for an embolism. She died on the operating table, 13 hours after she was admitted to the hospital for a treatment that she should have received within minutes. What makes this story even more tragic is that, if they had followed up immediately on the initial blood tests, they would have easily recognized that she had internal bleeding and she could still be alive today.

2In-Hospital Accidents

The Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHRQ) estimates that close to a million patients each year sustain a fall while they are under medical supervision in a hospital. The agency estimates that about one-third of these falls can and should be prevented.

The misuse of bed rails in hospitals and long-term care facilities is also a major concern. The FDA has documented almost 500 deaths from the use of bed rails, admitting that there are probably many more deaths that have not been correctly attributed to these devices. Patients who are very ill and have limited mobility can become wedged in between their hospital mattress and the bed rail, causing suffocation and strangulation.

1Operating On The Wrong Body Part

Surgeries on the wrong body part—such as amputating the wrong appendage or removing the wrong kidney—are some of the most common surgical mistakes. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study which estimated that 1,300–2,700 of these “wrong body part” surgeries are performed every year in the US—that’s about 40 per week. Even with precautions, such as physically marking the body before surgery, these inexcusable surgical errors still occur.

In Rhode Island, one hospital performed three brain surgeries on the wrong part of the brain in less than a year. All three incidences involved the same brain surgeon. In 2010, a man in Florida had his healthy kidney removed instead of his gall bladder, which was the intended organ. The surgeon was fined only $5,000 for his error.

Rebecca is a full-time freelance writer from Washington state. Visit her at her LinkedIn or view her freelance writing profile on Elance.com.

Medicine has changed a lot over the years, but you’d be surprised at the unconventional nature of some of the medical procedures we’re still using today. These are 10 of the most bizarre medical treatments of our times.

10Fighting Skin Cancer With Cryotherapy

Cryogenics is a specific area of scientific research that deals with extremely low temperatures. You’ve almost certainly heard of the recent fad of getting frozen in a cryogenic chamber in the hopes of being revived by superior technology in the future. As it turns out, cryotherapy also has uses in current medicine and is being increasingly used to cure diseases like skin cancer.

The process largely consists of putting liquid nitrogen on a piece of cotton and applying it to the affected area. The only catch is that the part of skin treated with this method cannot be looked at or studied under a microscope because the frigid nitrogen literally burns it, so it’s hard to get an accurate biopsy of the diseased tissue after the treatment. There are also a few side effects—for one thing, you can expect pain and blisters for days due to the burning. There could also potentially be scars, but a little disfiguration is nothing compared to an effective treatment for cancer.

9Rebirthing Therapy

Rebirthing therapy is precisely what it sounds like—a therapy in which you pass through a very tight area in order to recreate your birth. The idea is to make you feel the same way you felt back then, which is supposed to refresh your senses and make you experience the miracle of infancy again. The therapy involves being passed through pillows, which are pressed together by the therapists to replicate the birth canal. Breathing might become difficult in the middle of it, but that’s just part of the process.

If that sounds a bit weird, law enforcement thinks so, too. The procedure has had its share of controversies, and quite a few people have reportedly died from it in the past—maybe because of the breathing thing we mentioned earlier. As it stands now, the therapy is illegal in Colorado and North Carolina.

8Symphysiotomy

Symphysiotomy is a procedure by which the pelvis of a pregnant woman is manually widened to allow for childbirth in lieu of a caesarean section. In places without apt medical equipment, saws are used to cut it wide enough for the child to pass through comfortably. That might sound like something from medieval history, but the procedure was widely used by Irish doctors between the 1940s and 1980s. The women were often not told in advance what the doctors intended to do, and the consequences were often horrendous. The victims weren’t able to walk, and they usually developed infections and back problems—basically, all the things you’d expect from having your body cut up with a saw.

The issue has only come to public light recently, and there are plenty of survivor groups fighting for justice even now. Some medical bodies have issued their apologies to the victims, and more survivors are now coming out with their stories in light of the increased media attention.

7Tooth In Eye Surgery

Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis is a procedure for blind patients with damaged eye tissue. It involves pulling one of your teeth out and implanting it in your damaged eye. And it works—the transplant is based on the idea that once the body senses a tooth instead of, say, a mechanical implant, the body won’t reject it. A part of the jawbone is surgically separated for the process, then they drill a hole through the tooth to hold a prosthetic lens.

Once the transplant is successful and it’s been accepted as a part of the body, the doctors can replace the tooth with an artificial hold. The procedure is not yet widespread, but it has helped a number of people regain their eyesight. The doctors who perform this surgery have had a fair rate of success, and it might be fairly common in the future.

6Malaria Injections

Julius Wagner-Jauregg was the first of the only three people to have ever received a Nobel Prize in the field of psychiatry. Wagner-Juaregg was also one of the few psychiatrists to treat his patients through biological means, such as infecting them with malaria to cure diseases like syphilis. He was one of the doctors in charge of the psychiatric asylums in early 20th-century Austria, where the patients were coming down with a range of illnesses like pneumonia and typhoid.

Inspired by these cases, he started experimenting with deliberately giving people malaria to see its effects on other, unrelated diseases, which largely turned out to be successful. Wagner-Juaregg was working at the same time as Sigmund Freud, who was also from Austria, and even though Freud never won a Nobel, his psychoanalytic approach to psychiatry became much more popular than Juaregg’s biological one in the rest of the world.

5The G-Shot

If you want your G-spot to perform better than it usually does, G-Spot Activation therapy is probably for you. The procedure is meant to make it easier for a guy to locate it by literally increasing its size. After numbing it with anesthesia, they inject the G-spot with chemicals to artificially increase its size for a healthier sex life. The criteria for getting the injection is quite strict, though—you should be a sexually functioning female who knows where her G-spot is, and you shouldn’t have any other problems, like allergies or a loose vagina.

The procedure is very brief, and you can probably get back to having sex within hours of getting the shot. It’s been surprisingly successful—in a study done on women who had gotten the procedure, about 87 percent were found to be satisfied with the results, with better orgasms, increased libido, and a general improvement in their sex lives.

4Laughter Therapy

We all know that laughter is good for the body, but you may not have known that raising your hands in the air and laughing like a maniac is an increasingly popular therapy in countries like India. The therapy is largely a result of the efforts of Dr. Madan Kataria in 1970s Mumbai, who can be credited with bringing laughter into mainstream medicine. Laughter therapy is usually done in groups, and Kataria set up the first “laughter group” 40 years ago. There are currently about 5,000 different groups around the world dedicated to just laughing together.

In places where it is the most popular, it’s not unusual to see a bunch of random people throwing their hands in the air and laughing loudly every evening at the local park. It’s not really a sham procedure, either—research does indicate that laughter helps the body produce more warrior cells to fight off diseases.

3Bee Sting Therapy

Getting stung by a bee isn’t a lot of fun, but apparently it’s good for you. Apitherapy is based around the idea of finding medical uses for bees, and some of that includes letting them sting you. Practitioners don’t even go through the trouble of injecting the bee venom with a needle—an actual, live bee is held near the skin by tweezers and forced to sting the patient. The bees are often raised by the patients themselves, and some treatments involve getting stung about 80 times a day.

Apparently, bee venom is beneficial against arthritic pain and inflammation, and has long been used against these ailments; the earliest examples of the use of bee venom come from the ancient Egyptians, who used it to treat arthritis. The patients often report positive results from the treatment, so it’s fast catching up as a viable therapy for problems related to pain, like multiple sclerosis and tendonitis.

2Desert Sand Therapy

In Siwa, an oasis in the city of Cairo, Egypt, it’s an ancient belief that the hot sand of the desert has some sort of medicinal properties, so travelers and locals routinely allow themselves to be buried in it to rid their body of skin problems and other diseases. First, they dig a hole in the ground in the morning, allowing it to absorb all the good rays of the Sun, and at about 2:00 PM the patient lies down in the Sun-soaked hole. It is believed that the hotter it is, the more effective the treatment will be.

Then they cover the whole body with sand except for the head, which is kept in the shade by blankets set on a couple of sticks. If the ground gets damp with sweat, the wet sand is replaced with dry, hot sand to keep the procedure going.

1Three-Parent Babies

Using three people to make a baby is a relatively new procedure, but it’s being increasingly seen as a legitimate practice. Though mired in controversy, several countries are currently in deliberation over whether or not they will allow three-parent embryos. The main draw is that it would give parents-to-be the ability to prevent genetic diseases from passing on to the offspring.

During the procedure, nuclear DNA from the mother is dumped into a donor’s egg, which has been cleared to leave only healthy mitochondrial DNA. The father’s sperm is added, and the baby is born with genetic material from the mother, father, and the donor. It works because only the mitochondrial DNA from a mother carries genetic diseases, so with that taken out of the picture, the baby is born healthy. Nuclear DNA carries the traits, like eye and hair color, so the baby will still effectively be the offspring of the true parents. The procedure is done through in vitro fertilization, and the embryo otherwise grows up normally.

As we mentioned, the procedure has had its share of problems. It raises questions on whether we should be tinkering with our original design, though it can really help the large number of people who suffer from genetic disorders. Researchers believe that three-way fertilization can revolutionize the medical field, but people opposing it say that if the procedure becomes widely accepted, the next step can only be human cloning—despite the fact that three-way fertilization doesn’t involve genetic modification.

You can follow Himanshu on Twitter, or check out his stuff over at Cracked.

For most of us, getting an X-ray, ultrasound, angiogram, CT, or MRI means walking into a windowless room that has more in common with a dungeon than a clinic. The technologist gives us a flimsy garb and contorts us in painful positions. We almost expect to find torches on the wall and an iron maiden in the corner. Here are 10 images that might make these procedures a little less scary.

10Bertha Roentgen’s Wedding Ring

In November 1895, physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen of Worzburg, Bavaria, was studying electrical rays when he discovered that they penetrated objects and projected their images on a fluorescent screen. When he put his own hand in front of the rays, he noticed that the image showed a contrast between his bones and his translucent flesh.

Roentgen realized the implications immediately—doctors could see a person’s anatomy and anything wrong with it without evasively opening the skin. He replaced the fluorescent screen with a photographic plate and captured the first X-ray image on November 8, 1895. The X-ray was of his wife Bertha’s left hand and her wedding ring (as pictured above).

The world was initially dubious about Roentgen’s discovery. The New York Times spurned it as a simple photographic technique that had already been discovered. Just a week later, however, the Times began to run reports about how Roentgen’s X-rays were in fact beneficial for surgical purposes. One of those reports were of a British doctor named John Hall-Edwards who was the first to use X-rays to diagnose a problem—a needle lodged in a hand. Roentgen received the 1901 Nobel Prize in physics, and his findings are now considered “one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science.”

9Moving X-Rays Of The Heart And Digestive System

Things moved quickly after Roentgen’s discovery. Almost immediately, scientists worked to merge X-rays with cinematography—essentially moving X-rays. The first to produce one was John Macintyre, a throat surgeon and electrician at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. Macintyre already had the distinction of setting up the world’s first X-ray department, and his unit would later be the first to X-ray a foreign object (a halfpenny lodged in a child’s throat). That unit also was the first to detect a kidney stone with an X-ray.

In 1897, Macintyre presented a short film at the London Royal Society demonstrating what he called a cinematograph. He had X-rayed a frog’s leg since it required less energy to penetrate than a human leg. He then X-rayed it every 300th of a second as he flexed and extended the leg. He then spliced them together. Later, he filmed a human’s beating heart. He also fed a patient bismuth and filmed his stomach as he digested it (see video above).

These X-ray movies are now called “fluoroscopy” and are used to film the placement of heart catheters, the digestive and urinary systems at work, and surgical procedures. In 2013, 1.3 million fluoroscopic procedures were performed in the United Kingdom alone.

8Major Beevor Hunts For Bullets

Within months of Roentgen’s discovery, X-rays were used on the battlefield. They were first used during the Abyssinian War when Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1896. Lieutenant Colonel Giuseppe Alvaro used an X-ray machine to locate bullets in the forearms of Italian soldiers. Those X-rays have since been lost to history.

A year later, X-rays were again used in the field during the Greco-Turkish War. Those films have also been lost. Despite multiple successes, the military was slow to appreciate the use of X-ray for their wounded.

In June 1897, war broke out between India and Afghanistan. Britain sent soldiers to the Tirah plateau to open the mountain passes. Major Walter Beevor purchased X-ray equipment and set it up at a field hospital at Tirah. He took more than 200 X-rays in the field including the one above of an Indian soldier’s elbow with a bullet lodged in it. Beevor even located a bullet lodged in General Woodhouse’s leg.

The next year Beevor made a presentation at the United Services Institution—from then on, Britain brought field X-ray units onto the battlefield. Other countries slowly followed suit.

Like many other technologies, X-ray imaging benefited from its use in war. One of those advances was in portable units. Marie Curie and her daughter Irene drove 20 X-ray units in the back of vans to the battlefront during World War I.

Today, mobile X-ray machines are brought to a patient’s bedside, taking radiographs of them when they are too sick to be moved to the hospital’s radiology department.

7Proof Of The Damage Caused By Metal Corsets

In one of the earliest known uses of medical imaging to raise public awareness of a problem, French doctor Ludovic O’Followell X-rayed the torsos of several women with and without corsets. The films clearly show that tight metal corsets narrowed the ribcage and displaced internal organs. O’Followell did not advocate the banning of corsets—merely the development of more flexible ones.

And that’s exactly what happened. O’Followell’s films, along with the opinions of other physicians of the time, influenced the industry and society to adopt less-restrictive corsets.

The question that later experts asked was whether O’Followell should have used X-ray radiation to prove his point. Back then, X-ray units required the subject to be exposed to radiation for lengthy periods of time. In 1896, an X-ray of a man’s forearm required 45 minutes of exposure. The first dental X-ray took 25 minutes.

The women in the X-rays above were exposed twice—both with and without a corset—and in the most radiation-sensitive parts of their body: the chest (breasts and sternum) and the abdomen (reproductive organs).

The dangers of X-ray radiation exposure was already well-known. In the first year of testing X-rays, a Nebraska doctor reported cases of hair loss, reddening and sloughing off of skin, and lesions. Clarence Dally, while working on X-rays for Thomas Edison, repeatedly exposed his hands to radiation for at least two years. He had both arms amputated before dying of cancer in 1904. One by one, the pioneers of the field—John Hall-Edwards, Marie and Irene Curie, and Wilhelm Roentgen—all died of radiation-induced diseases.

But the world was slow to realize the dangers of unnecessary X-rays. Women had their ovaries irradiated as a treatment for depression. Radiation was used to treat ringworm, acne, impotence, arthritis, ulcers, and even cancer. Beauty shops irradiated customers to remove facial hair. Water, chocolate, and toothpaste were spiked with radiation. Between the 1920s and the 1950s, many shoe stores had fluoroscopes—called Foot-o-scopes or Pedoscopes—that X-rayed customers’ feet to show how well their shoes fit.

While X-rays are much safer today and are almost never used for non-medical purposes, unnecessary medical X-rays still pose some risk. One study showed that 18,500 cases of cancer worldwide are the result of medical X-rays, and in America 0.5 percent of cancer deaths are attributable to X-rays.

6The Very First Catheter

While working as a surgeon at the August Victory clinic, Werner Forssmann developed a theory that a flexible tube (catheter) could be inserted in the groin or arm, through the veins that feed blood to the heart, and directly into the heart’s atrium. Forssmann believed that the heart’s volume and the blood’s flow rate, pressure, and oxygen content could be measured with this catheter. Medicine could also be directly injected to the heart in an emergency.

Most experts believed the catheter would get tangled among the surge of blood and the beat of the heart. Therefore, his superiors at August Victory would not sanction experiments conducted by the rookie doctor.

Undeterred, Forssmann convinced a fellow resident to insert a needle into his left arm. Then, Forssmann advanced the catheter up the resident’s cephalic vein, through the bicep, past the shoulder, and into the heart. It took a total of 60 centimeters (2 ft) of tubing. He then walked down to the X-ray department and took a picture to prove the catheter was in the resident’s heart. He later performed the procedure several times on himself.

Unfortunately, Forssmann’s colleagues derided this procedure as a mere circus stunt. Discouraged, Forssmann moved on, becoming an urologist. He was unaware that his contribution was gradually being recognized for its importance (by 2006, 3.7 million heart catheterizations were performed annually in the United States alone). So he was quite puzzled when he received a phone call in October 1956, informing him that he’d won the Noble Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He simply responded, “For what?”

5Hyperphonography

One of the drawbacks of X-ray technology is that it only images dense anatomical structures such as bones and foreign bodies (like bullets). Another drawback is that it uses radiation that could harm a baby in the womb. The medical world needed a safer way to image less-dense structures in the body.

The answer came from a tragedy: the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. In order to better detect icebergs, Reginald Fessenden patented devices that emitted directed sound waves and measured their reflection in order to detect distant objects. His sonar was capable of detecting icebergs from a couple miles away.

World War I erupted at the same time, and German U-boats threatened Allied shipping. Physicist Paul Langevin developed a hydrophone that used sound waves to detect submarines. On April 23, 1916, a UC-3 U-boat became the first submarine detected by hydrophone and sunk. After the war, the technology was used to detect flaws in metals.

In the late 1930s, German psychiatrist and neurologist Dr. Karl Dussik believed that sound could measure the brain and other parts of the body inaccessible by X-rays. Dussik became the first to apply sound diagnostically. Unfortunately, much of his work was performed in Austria—it wasn’t until after the war, when he repeated and expanded his work, that the world heard of what he called “hyperphonography.”

A decade later, Scotland obstetrician Ian Donald borrowed an industrial ultrasound machine and tested it on various tumors. Donald was soon using the machine to detect tumors and monitor fetuses.

4The First CAT Scan

One limitation of X-ray images is that everything between the X-ray tube and the film appears on the image. Pathologies such as tumors can be hidden by tissues, organs, and bones that lie above or below it.

The 1920s and ’30s saw the development of tomography. This took an X-ray at a certain level of the body, blurring anything above and below it. It did this by moving the X-ray tube (and film) while exposing the image. It could cut across all three planes of the body: sagittal (left to right sides), coronal (front to back), and axial or cross-sectional (feet to head).

In 1967, Godfrey Hounsfield, a scientist working for EMI (Electric and Musical Industries), thought up an axial tomographic scanner. EMI was also the record company that sold 200 million Beatles records. Using their Fab Four funds, EMI funded Hounsfield for the four years it took for him to develop a prototype.

His scanner used sensors instead of film, and the patient was slid through moving tubes and sensors at a proscribed pace. A computer then reconstructed the anatomy. Hounsfield’s invention was thus dubbed a computed axial tomographic scan or CAT scan (now simply CT scan).

On October 1, 1971, Hounsfield used his invention for the first time. He located a woman’s brain tumor as seen here. The oval on the left side of the film (her right frontal lobe) is the tumor. Later, after the surgeon removed the tumor, he remarked that it “look[ed] exactly like the picture.”

3The First MRI Scan

In a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, the machine creates a static magnetic field that aligns all of the patient’s protons in the same direction. Short bursts of radio waves then misalign the protons and, once the radio waves are shut off, a computer measures the time it takes for the protons to realign. The computer then uses these measurements to reconstruct the image of the patient’s body.

While CT and MRI machines look similar, they are very different. CT scans use potentially hazardous radiation while MRI does not. An MRI can also visualize soft tissue, organs, and bones better than CT. It is used especially when the doctor wants to see the spinal cord, tendons, and ligaments. On the other hand, CT is better to see bone, organ, and spine damage.

Physician Raymond Damadian first conceived of a whole-body MRI scanner in 1969. He began testing his theories and published an article in Science Magazine in March 1971. In September of that year, Paul Lauterbur, a chemist at State University of New York, had an epiphany about the very same thing, and even bought a notebook to document his “invention.” Lauterbur later admitted that he had watched a graduate student reproduce Damadian’s experiment, but did not believe it would work.

In March 1972, Damadian filed a patent for his idea. That same month, Lauterbur’s scanner produced an image of test tubes. A year later, Lauterbur published his findings and his image in Nature. He did not refer to Damadian’s critical contributions. In 1974, Damadian’s patent was accepted.

Then on July 3, 1977, Damadian and his team took the first scan of a human. None of his staff wanted to climb into the machine, so Damadian did it himself. When it didn’t work, they speculated that the doctor was too big. One of his graduate students, Larry Minkoff, was thinner and climbed in. The above image is of Minkoff’s chest.

A fight then erupted between Lauterbur and Damadian over who invented the MRI. Despite the fact that Damadian held the patent, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1988, and was acknowledged as the inventor by President Ronald Reagan, the 2003 Nobel Prize went to Lauterbur. Despite the Nobel committee being able to name up to three recipients of the prize, Damadian was snubbed. His supporters claim he was ignored because he was an outspoken Christian and advocate of creationism which was frowned upon by academia.

2Laparoscopic Surgery

Surgeons have been removing things from people’s abdomens for centuries, but the entire abdomen always had to be opened. This made the patient susceptible to infections and required long recovery times. But in 1901, a Russian gynecologist introduced laparoscopy—surgery done not through a large opening but through one or more small slits or holes. This came to be called “key-hole” or “Band-Aid” surgery.

Laparoscopes allowed the surgeon to use one eye to look directly into the abdomen or chest with a device that resembled a small telescope. Instead of using their hands, they utilized scissors, forceps, clamps, and other tools on long rods that were inserted through adjoining holes in the abdomen.

Unfortunately, this meant that the surgeon had to contort his body in order to view the laparoscope. One surgeon remembered he had to lie on the patient’s thigh in order to remove her gallbladder. After 2.5 hours, he was physically exhausted. For that reason, laparoscopy saw only limited use.

In the late 1970s, Dr. Camran Nezhat, an obstetrician and gynecologist, attached video equipment to laparoscopes and operated watching a television monitor. The equipment was initially big and bulky, but Nezhat embraced technology that streamlined equipment and magnified the images. This allowed everyone in the operating room to watch what the surgeon was doing. As Nezhat put it, surgery went from a “one-man band” to an “orchestra.” Nezhat’s early videos are not available, but the above video is of a laparscopic removal of a gallbladder by another surgeon.

Nezhat believed that most surgical procedures could be done laparoscopically rather than with huge evasive holes in the patient’s body. Many others could not believe that complicated surgeries could be done this way and were hostile to Nezhat’s claims. His procedures were called “bizarre” and “barbaric.” When others embraced laparoscopy, they too were ridiculed. But by 2004, when the New England Journal of Medicine recommended laparoscopy, Nezhat had officially ushered in a revolution in surgery.

13-D And 4-D Ultrasounds

For 30 years, ultrasounds were limited to two dimensions, where equipment would send a sound and then measure the echo. Millions of parents have tried and failed to glean from these black-and-white images just what their baby looks like. This is because 2-D scans go right through the baby’s skin, visualizing their internal organs instead.

Since the 1970s, investigators had been working on 3-D ultrasound for babies. This sends the sounds in different directions and angles, catches the facial features and skin of the baby, then reconstructs the echoes in much the same way CT scanners do. In 1984, Kazunori Baba at Tokyo’s Institute of Medical Electronics was the first to obtain 3-D images of a baby in the womb. But the quality of the image and the amount of time that it took to reconstruct the image (10 minutes) made it unsuitable diagnostically.

In 1987, Olaf Von Ramm and Stephen Smith patented the first high-speed 3-D ultrasound that increased the quality and reduced the processing time. Since then, there has been an explosion in ultrasounds, especially with the addition of 4-D versions where the parents can see their baby move. Boutiques have even sprung up that offer 3-D and 4-D video keepsakes—for a hefty price tag naturally. While there are no documented negative effects from these ultrasounds, a debate now rages over whether a diagnostic tool should be used in such a recreational way.

Steve is the author of 366 Days in Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency: the Private, Political, and Military Decisions of America’s Greatest President.

People who lived in the past had some pretty crazy ideas about the world. There was a time when no one was safe from being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, and people refused to sail across the Atlantic for fear of falling off the edge of the world. Today, we can laugh at our ancestors for actually believing this junk, but their beliefs about medicine and the human body make the Salem Witch Trials and Flat Earth Theory look as normal and boring as a folded blanket.

10The Tapeworm Diet

A little over 100 years ago, society started giving women the idea that they need to be super thin, but it wasn’t easy for all women to drop the pounds fast. The medical industry saw fit to help these women with diet pills containing tapeworms. It took everyone a while to realize that while tapeworms do cause weight loss, they can also cause diarrhea, vitamin deficiencies, insomnia, and malnutrition.

Today, no one is sure if this practice really existed. The only evidence of tapeworm diet pills are old advertisements and rumors. However, these advertisements do indicate that whether or not these diet pills actually contained tapeworms, people wanted them to. Although the sale of tapeworms is now banned in America, there are reports of people buying tapeworms as diet aides online. Inevitably, these people just end up getting sick.

9Bat Blood Cures Blindness

The tropical, marshy environment along the Nile River made eye infections a common problem among the ancient Egyptians. They had to concoct some sort of cure to combat this complaint, and one of the solutions was dripping bat blood into their eyes.

The logic behind this cure isn’t actually all that crazy. The Egyptians thought since bats flew around at night, they must have had fantastic eyesight, and their blood might contain magical, eyesight-restoring properties. Of course, we now know that bats have horrible eyesight and only know where they are going thanks to echolocation.

8Having Sex With Virgins Cures STDs

By the 1500s, syphilis had become a big problem all across Europe. People soon realized that the disease spread through sex. Their understanding went badly wrong, however, when it was decided that the way to get rid of syphilis was to have sex with a virgin.

People believed at the time that those who had syphilis were diseased by their sexual misconduct and virgins possessed a powerful purity. As a result, by the 1800s, people infected with syphilis were having sex with virgins as a cure. The fault in this method soon became apparent when even more people contracted syphilis.

Mercury was also believed to rid people of this pox. They bathed in mercury and rubbed mercury ointments onto their skin, often resulting in death from mercury poisoning. Nevertheless, it was used through the 20th century to cure syphilis, but all it really did was cause tooth loss, nerve damage, and death.

7Cannibalism Cures Everything

As crazy as it sounds, it was shockingly common in Renaissance Europe to use cured human flesh as a cure for countless ailments, including epilepsy, nausea, and the common cold. Many people, including royals and priests, ate human meat and rubbed human fat on their bodies. Some even crafted delectable marmalades made with human blood. Sometimes they didn’t even bother cooking the blood and drank it like a fine wine instead. Treatments that involved human blood and flesh became almost as popular as herbal medicines in the 16th and 17th centuries.

European cannibalism was probably inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Greeks, who followed Galenic medicine, believed illnesses caused an unbalanced body and the only way the body could regain equilibrium was if the sick person ate healthy body parts corresponding to their particular ailment. For example, if you had a headache, you could nibble on some powdered skull to stop the pain. Meanwhile, the Romans started the trend of drinking human blood to cure epilepsy. They believed that untimely deaths left unused energy and life in the body, which could be captured by drinking the blood of fallen gladiators.

European folks eased themselves into cannibalism slowly. First, they ate the powdered remains of stolen Egyptian mummies. Later on, they consumed pulverized skull powder before finally upgrading to eating human flesh. They mostly ate the bodies of dead beggars, lepers, and executed prisoners. Just like the Romans, they thought they could gain the years that should have been left of these people’s lives. This idea persisted for an astonishing length of time, but in the 1700s, most people finally stopped calling cannibalism “medicine.”

6Women Had Roving Uteruses

The belief of the wandering womb originated from the ancient Greeks, who thought uteruses traveled around women’s bodies to follow good scents and run away from bad ones. Overwork and sexual abstinence was also thought to contribute to the womb’s movement.

The wandering womb was said to cause an array of physical and emotional ailments for women, which were were lumped under the catch-all term of “hysteria.” Symptoms of hysteria might include lethargy, headaches, vertigo, choking, suffocation, and heartburn. Even though men were acknowledged to have similar symptoms, it was never considered that their sexual organs were the cause. There were two solutions for troublesome traveling womb: One could lure the womb back home by inserting pleasant-smelling vaginal suppositories and smelling or swallowing something nasty (sometimes including feces), or simply get pregnant.

It took society well over 2,000 years to finally let go of the idea of the wandering womb. Even though the concept had mostly faded from medicine by the Enlightenment, hysteria was still regarded as a genuine phenomenon hundreds of years later. By the 1700s, the disease was blamed on women’s suggestible and damaged brains. This idea persisted until the mid-1900s.

5Penises Should Be Cultivated Like Houseplants

Back in the day, people used something called the “theory of humors” to explain medical conditions and the state of the human body. The theory was that since the world was composed of four elements (earth, air, water, and fire), there were four corresponding states of the human body (cold, dry, moist, and hot). Men were believed to have warm, dry bodies, which allowed them to grow penises. Women, however, were cold and wet like frigid swamps, so they lacked the proper conditions to grow penises.

You would think that the ancient Greeks—the same civilization that introduced geometry and democracy—would have known that plants grow best with warmth from the Sun and moisture from water, but they seem to have ignored the importance of moisture with this belief. Furthermore, vaginas are not exactly known for their icy temperatures.

4Spiderwebs Combat Malaria

A few hundred years ago, malaria was a devastating diagnosis with a high mortality rate and no known cure. Before quinine and modern medicines were implemented, people decided that the answer to the yellow fever was consuming the silky strands of protein that come out of spider abdomens.

Of course, they weren’t just sitting around gnawing on spiderwebs—that would be barbaric. Instead, they tucked the webs inside tablets to give to people who were suffering from malaria. Surprisingly enough, this did absolutely nothing, so to make the spiderweb cure more potent, sick people were instructed to eat actual spiders in butter in addition to the web pills. Somehow, that also failed. The Italians had a particular cure for malaria that was just as bizarre and ineffective: carrying around a spider enclosed in a walnut shell.

Luckily, people no longer have to eat spiders and their webs to cure malaria. After quinine was first introduced to Europe in the 1600s, the ineffective spiderweb cure became obsolete.

3Smoking Tobacco Cures Asthma And Cancer

When Europeans arrived in the Americas and first made contact with the natives, they found tobacco. They observed the natives smoking tobacco during religious celebrations and for medical purposes, so they took a small amount back to Europe. By the mid-1500s, the Europeans figured out how to ship enough tobacco from the New World for mass consumption, and everyone decided they should smoke it.

Tobacco became wildly popular in only a few decades. It took even less time for people to decide that it was a sacred healing herb that could cure all of their ailments, despite a lack of any supporting evidence. One doctor, Nicolas Monardes, claimed that tobacco could cure 36 different health problems, including cancer. People even thought smoking cured asthma. These ideas prevailed through the 1920s.

Doctors didn’t start noticing that smoking caused health issues until the 1930s. A few decades later, they finally figured out that smoking caused and exacerbated many diseases, including asthma and cancer.

2Elves Cause Illness

Whether you’re more familiar with the elves at Santa’s workshop who build toys or the ones who live in trees and bake delicious cookies, every image you’ve ever had of elves is about to be destroyed. These quaint and innocent renderings of elves wouldn’t have existed if you lived in Europe during the Middle Ages. That’s because people believed that elves were in league with the devil and sought to make humans sick by shooting them with tiny arrows.

As horrifying as it is to imagine demonic elves wielding miniature bows of destruction, more than one group of people believed this. Scandinavians believed in dark elves who created endless mischief, mostly spending their days causing devastating diseases. The English also believed elves caused disease, while the Scottish believed that arrows shot by elves caused internal pain and had the ability to afflict livestock in addition to humans. Those afflicted by elf-shots were treated as though they were possessed by a demon: They smoked herbs to expel evil spirits, prayed, and drank holy water to banish diseases caused by elves.

1The Healing Properties Of Dog Poop

It’s safe to say that all of us have had a sore throat at some point in time, and we have all sought some sort of relief. It’s also probably safe to say that none of us have ever thought of swallowing dog poop to relieve a sore throat, but this was a fairly common cure in the Middle Ages. People actually searched for white dog poop, crushed the dried poop into a powder, and mixed it with honey to soothe a scratchy throat.

Although the treatment’s effectiveness is unknown, the risk of consuming dog feces far outweighs any potential benefits. It includes the possibility of nausea, vomiting, abdominal pains and cramps, fever, and even bloody diarrhea. It’s pretty amazing that anyone of European ancestry is even alive today.

Julie Battin is a student at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.

The medical world evolves almost daily. New vaccines and treatments are developed at an unbelievable rate, and millions have been successfully treated worldwide for all types of ailments. However, a medical mystery sometimes presents itself to doctors and completely baffles them.

10 The Woman Who Can Hear Her Eyes Move
Lancashire, England

Julie Redfern from Lancashire was playing the popular computer game Tetris eight years ago when she heard a funny squeaking sound. She couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, until she realized the sound occurred every time she moved her eyes from side to side. Julie was hearing the sound of her own eyeballs.

In the years that followed, Julie became aware that she could also hear her blood coursing through her veins. Her own chewing was so loud to her that she missed out on the conversation around the dinner table. Perhaps the worst of it all came when her condition became so bad that her eyes would literally shake in their sockets when her office phone rang.

Julie was diagnosed with SCDS (superior canal dehiscence syndrome). This is a very rare medical condition that causes the bones in the inner ear to lose density, resulting in very sensitive hearing.

Doctors only became aware of this medical condition during the ’90s. A pioneer surgery was performed on Julie. Her doctors successfully restored normal hearing to one of her ears, which has given her hope that the other ear can be cured as well.

9 The Boy Who Doesn’t Feel Hunger
Cedar Falls, Iowa

Twelve-year-old Landon Jones woke up one morning in 2013 without his usual appetite. He felt very faint and couldn’t stop coughing because thick phlegm blocked his chest. His parents rushed him to hospital where doctors discovered an infection in the boy’s left lung. They wasted no time in treating Landon and the infection was soon handled.

However, his appetite didn’t return when he got back home. Because of the lack of will to eat or drink anything, Landon rapidly lost weight. Before his family knew what hit them, Landon lost 16 kilograms (36 lb).

Doctors are at a loss as to what is causing Landon to lack hunger and thirst. In the year since Landon’s infection, his parents have taken him to medical experts in five different cities with no success. All they know is that Landon might well be the only person on the planet with this condition.

Landon now has to be reminded on a constant basis to eat and drink. Even his teachers have gotten into the habit of making sure he ingests food and water during school hours. Doctors are currently working to figure out whether Landon might have a dysfunctional hypothalamus, which is the part of the brain that controls hunger and thirst. They are also looking into the medication that Landon is on that controls what doctors call absence seizures. The exact cause of Landon’s illness remains unclear at this stage.

8 The Girl Who Was Mysteriously Paralyzed
Tampa, Florida

About a month and a half before Christmas 2013, nine-year-old Marysue Grivna’s mother took her to hospital to get a flu shot. This year, the little girl will be celebrating Christmas confined to a wheelchair and unable to express herself as vocally as she could last year.

Just three days after receiving the flu shot, Marysue struggled to get up in the morning and was unable to speak. Terrified, her parents rushed her to hospital. They were shocked when doctors diagnosed their daughter with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. Known as ADEM, the disease begins when the immune system attacks myelin, which encases nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The white matter inside the brain and spine become extremely vulnerable without the myelin. Once this covering is broken through, paralysis and blindness can occur.

Doctors cannot confirm or deny the parents’ accusation that the flu shot Marysue received is the cause of her illness. Carla and Steven Grivna have done extensive research and refuse to believe the vaccine isn’t to blame. Medical experts confirmed that the exact cause of ADEM is unknown and that the results of several tests done on Marysue are all inconclusive when it comes to determining the manner in which the girl contracted the disease.

The future looks bleak for Marysue, even though doctors believe there is a slight chance her symptoms might be reversible. Her father has taken to carrying his daughter everywhere, unable to help her in any other way.

7 The Girls Who Cry Stones
Yemen

At the beginning of this year, Yemeni father Mohammad Saleh Al Jaharani was astonished when his eight-year-old daughter Saadia started crying tiny stones instead of tears.

Saadia is one of 12 children born to Mohammed from two wives. She is the only one of her siblings with this strange condition. No one has been able to give Saadia a diagnosis, nor can doctors find anything out of the ordinary with her eyes.

Another girl in the same region is the only other confirmed case of crying stones. Fifteen-year-old Saboura Hassan Al Fagiah experienced the same tiny stone tears. She also suffered from a distended abdomen and would become unconscious for hours at a time. Saboura was treated in Jordan and seems to have recovered.

The same is unfortunately not true for Saadia. All the doctors she has seen are unable to help her. The locals in her village whisper that the girl might be possessed or under a spell.

Her father confirmed during an interview that Saadia also cries normal tears at times and that the stones mostly appear during the late afternoon and at night. Luckily, she is in no pain even though up to 100 little stones sometimes appear in one day.

6 12 Girls With The Same Mysterious Symptoms
Le Roy, New York

In what many people would dismiss as an incident of mass hysteria, 12 girls from a high school in New York shared an experience that left medical doctors searching for an explanation.

After taking a nap one day in 2011, one of the students, Thera Sanchez, woke up with uncontrollable limbs and vocal tics. Something like this had never happened to her before, especially not the strange verbal outbursts that made her seem like she was suffering from Tourette’s syndrome.

Stranger than this was the fact that 11 other girls from Sanchez’s high school developed the same symptoms. A neurologist diagnosed all the girls with a conversion disorder. In other words, he believed the incident to be a case of mass hysteria. Others doctors believed that stress was the main factor causing these strange symptoms. Two mothers, including Thera’s mother, have challenged the doctors’ findings. Even though health officials made sure nothing at the school itself was making the girls sick, the two mothers were not given proof of the investigations conducted by these officials and are unsatisfied with their findings.

Thera was still twitching, stuttering, and suffering from uncontrollable verbal outbursts weeks later during a media interview. To date, no satisfactory explanation has been given for the incident.

5 The Girl Who Didn’t Age
Reisterstown, Maryland

By the time Brooke Greenberg passed away at the age of 20, she had never learned to speak and had to be pushed around in a stroller. Even though she was getting older, her body refused to age. At the time of her death, Brooke’s mental capacity was that of a toddler. She was still the size of a baby.

Scientists and doctors are still unable to come up with an explanation for Brooke’s medical condition. Brooke was a “miracle” baby since birth. She survived several stomach ulcers and a stroke. She also made it through a brain tumor that caused her to sleep for two weeks. When she finally woke up, the tumor was gone. Doctors were mystified.

The way Brooke’s body developed over the years was also very strange. At the age of 16, she still hadn’t lost her baby teeth, but her bones were thought to be the same as those of a 10-year-old (except in size, of course). Her hair and fingernails continued growing normally. She was able to recognize her siblings and express happiness.

A retired medical expert from the University Of Florida Medical School, Richard F. Walker, has made it his life’s mission to find out what causes this medical mystery known as Syndrome X. He is also studying similar cases including a young girl of eight who weighs only 5 kilograms (11 lb) and a 29-year-old whose body resembles that of a preadolescent boy.

4 The Woman Who Regained Her Sight
Auckland, New Zealand

New Zealand native Lisa Reid had no hope of ever regaining her sight after she lost it at age 11. Then, at the age of 24, she accidentally bumped her head and woke up the next morning with her sight restored.

As a child, Lisa was diagnosed with a tumor that pressed down so severely on her optic nerve that she lost her sight. Doctors could do nothing for Lisa, who learned to deal with her condition and got herself a guide dog.

Indirectly, Ami the guide dog helped Lisa regain her sight. One night in 2000, Lisa knelt down on the floor so she could kiss her beloved dog goodnight. She struck her head on a coffee table while attempting to reach Ami.

Nothing happened right away except perhaps a slight headache, but when Lisa woke the next morning, it was no longer dark. She could see as clearly as she could before she lost her sight. Fourteen years later, Lisa still has her sight.

3 The Boy Who Can’t Open His Mouth
Ottawa, Canada

Lockjaw is common in dogs, but a similar case in a newborn baby perplexed doctors at an Ottawa hospital earlier this year.

Little Wyatt couldn’t open his mouth to cry when he was born in June 2013, and he spent the first three months of his life in hospital while doctors tried to figure out how to help him. Unable to assist the little boy in unlocking his jaw, doctors finally sent him home and confirmed to the baby’s parents that there was no glaring reason for their son’s condition.

During the following months, Wyatt nearly lost his life on six occasions due to choking and the inability to gulp air through his closed mouth. His saliva builds up in his mouth and blocks his airway because he is unable to drool like most babies.

In a controversial move, medical experts have implemented the use of Botox to try and relax Wyatt’s jaw and this helped the little boy to open his mouth slightly. However, the problem still needs resolving as the dangers associated with this condition are likely to increase as he grows older.

This June, Wyatt had to eat his birthday dinner through a feeding tube directly into his stomach. His parents have also recently noticed that their baby doesn’t blink both his eyes at the same time. Ongoing tests are currently the only hope his parents have to find a solution.

2 The Woman With A New Accent
Ontario, Canada

A funny feeling of confusion and weakness prompted Rosemarie Dore to head to the nearest hospital back in 2006. She was suffering a stroke on the left side of her brain.

Before she was admitted to the hospital, everyone was used to Dore speaking in her native southern Ontario accent. Everyone was amazed when one day she suddenly started speaking with an eastern Canadian accent. As hard as she tried to speak normally, she couldn’t stop the accent from coming out. Doctors determined that on top of the stroke she suffered, Rosemarie Dore also had foreign accent syndrome, which most likely resulted from the brain trauma.

Further investigation into her condition revealed that Dore’s speech actually slowed down and started to change just before she had the stroke. Doctors believe that she still has the ability to speak in her normal accent, but the process of instructions from her brain to her mouth is not working the same way it used to and it therefore feels more natural to speak in the new accent.

Experts who have done extensive research on this medical condition noted that there were about 60 confirmed cases of foreign accent syndrome worldwide. One of the first was a woman from Norway who was injured by a bomb fragment that struck her on the head during the Second World War. Just after the injury, she suddenly started speaking with a German accent.

1 The Girl Who Feels No Pain
Big Lake, Minnesota

When she was very little, Gabby Gingras constantly stuck her fingers in her own eyes. One of her eyeballs eventually had to be removed. She also maimed three of her fingers by chewing on them.

Gabby suffers from an extremely rare medical condition that causes her to feel absolutely no pain. By the age of seven, she was required to wear a helmet and protective glasses to keep herself safe. In a documentary made when she was four, video footage shows the little girl banging her head into the sharp edges of a table without showing any signs of discomfort.

There is no cure for hereditary sensory autonomic neuropathy, the genetic disorder Gabby suffers from. In 2005, Gabby and her family were invited by Oprah to appear on her talk show. Here her parents spoke of the fear they experienced daily. They mentioned one incident when Gabby had broken her jaw and because she couldn’t feel it, no one noticed it for a month.

On top of all this, Gabby’s body doesn’t have the ability to regulate temperature the way a normal person’s body does. Gabby is now 14 and living a relatively normal life. Her parents are still keeping a close eye on her, and Gabby herself makes sure to stay within her limitations.

Estelle lives in JHB, South Africa. She hopes that someday answers will be found for all the medical mysteries out there.

Most of the treatments on this list are prescribed by proponents of so-called “natural medicine.” However, more often than not, they are simply quacks, a term derived from the Dutch word quacksalver, which means “hawker of salves.” Tim Minchin, an Australian comedian and musician, summed it up best: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” That’s not to say that research into alternative medicine shouldn’t be done; rather, once a form of alternative medicine has been proven ineffective, it should be discarded as a viable treatment.

10Laetrile

A chemical sibling of amygdalin, a substance commonly found in the pits of apricots and other fruits, as well as almonds, Laetrile is often purported to greatly assist in the treatment of cancer. First created in the middle of the 20th century (the exact origins are unknown), it was allegedly synthesized by a man named Dr. Ernst T. Krebs Jr. However, at least a dozen separate experiments have been done on the substance, with no anti-tumor evidence produced.

The most common rationale for the reason for Laetrile’s “effectiveness” is that cancer cells have a certain enzyme which is not as present in regular, healthy cells. Therefore, the medication, which basically consists of cyanide poisoning, affects only the cancer cells. However, this is categorically false, and a number of cases of death due to cyanide poisoning have been documented. Because of this danger, and due to the fact that it is ineffective as a treatment, Laetrile has been banned from being transported into the US, though it is still used throughout the world.

9Colloidal Silver

Colloidal silver is a popular treatment for a number of serious illnesses, such as cancer, HIV, herpes, and other bacterial and viral infections. Basically, a colloidal substance consists of microscopic particles suspended in a liquid. It’s usually taken orally, although some colloidal silver products are salves or injections. (In fact, topical drugs containing silver have been shown to actually benefit burn victims.) Research has been done to examine the claimed effectiveness of oral colloidal silver treatments, but so far no benefits have ever been observed.

The most common side effect of the oral ingestion of colloidal silver is the buildup of silver in a person’s body tissues, which normally results in a condition known as argyria. Usually untreatable and irreversible, argyria doesn’t pose a serious health risk, but it does create a cosmetic problem: The sufferer’s skin, eyes, and internal organs will all become discolored, normally a sickly blue. Excessive amounts of colloidal silver can also result in kidney damage and various neurological problems.

8Yohimbe

Extracted from the bark of a species of evergreen tree native to western Africa, yohimbe has long been a traditional aphrodisiac for the local inhabitants. Touted by “experts” as having beneficial antioxidant properties designed to prevent heart attacks, it can actually lead to medical complications, including increased heart rate or kidney failure. Brought over to Europe at the end of the 19th century, Western medicine used the extract for treating impotence, a popular idea which persisted until other medications, such as Viagra, were introduced.

Unfortunately, the evidence for whether or not it even helps with impotence is spotty at best. Numerous trials have come up with either inconclusive or contradictory data. That not only makes it worthless as a treatment for its primary use, it turns it into nothing more than a potentially life-threatening placebo.

7Aveloz

Aveloz is an herbal extract made from the sap of a Brazilian shrub. For nearly 2,500 years, practitioners of folk medicine have used it as a remedy, thanks in no small part to its corrosive properties. Relatively obscure until the 1980s, aveloz has now become a much more popular extract. Often diluted into water or tea, the chemical makeup has never been analyzed, as it was long seen as an afterthought in the fight against alternative medicine hucksters.

Its proponents claim that it can kill tumors, whether taken orally or used on the skin. (It is supposed to be highly effective against cancers on the face.) Unfortunately, the sap can actually burn the skin, mouth, and throat of anyone desperate enough to use it. Not only is aveloz useless as a treatment for cancer, some studies have shown that it may actually promote the growth of tumors. However, showing again why research is important, certain extracts of the family that aveloz belongs to have shown antileukemic properties.

6Colonic Irrigation

Colonic irrigation, also known as colon cleansing, is a procedure in which liquid—sometimes water and sometimes other substances, such as coffee—is shot through a tube into a person’s rectum, often in high quantities. Its proponents often claim that colonic irrigation “detoxifies” the body, suggesting that nearly all diseases originate in the colon. For most of humanity’s history with medicine, the colon, thanks to its duties in our waste system, has been seen as the bane of our existence. In fact, a form of colonic irrigation dates back to the ancient Egyptians.

However, doctors have been fighting public perceptions about colonic irrigation for years, although there hadn’t been many studies on the practice. Recently, a new study done by Georgetown University has concluded that it is worse than useless. During the procedure, kidney and liver failures occur, as well as rectal perforations. After a number of them, patients can lose the ability to even have bowel movements, rendering them forever dependent on enemas.

5Germanium

Sold under a number of different names, including vitamin O or germanium sesquioxide, germanium is a metalloid, similar to tin or silicon. Commonly used in fiber-optic systems or in solar cells, tiny amounts of organic (meaning not man-made) germanium can be found in a few plants, which is where proponents get their reasoning for its necessity in the human body. Luckily, the amounts found naturally in our foods don’t appear to have any negative effect.

Hyped as a cancer cure as well as a treatment for a number of other diseases such as asthma, diabetes, and hepatitis, germanium has been outlawed for import for human consumption in the United States by the FDA. Various studies have been undertaken, and only one single case study has shown anything to suggest that germanium helps cure cancer. Proponents claim that it also stimulates the body’s production of interferon, an anti-cancer compound, and certain types of white blood cells. It’s actually been shown that chronic use of germanium, even at the recommended dosage, has led to kidney damage and death.

4Escharotics

Otherwise known as black or yellow salves, escharotics are any number of ointments made of corrosive agents which are claimed to be able to “draw out” the cancer in a person’s body. Some of them are even used as treatments for various STDs. Given their name because of the trademark scab they produce (known as an eschar), they have been used for at least a few hundred years, if not even longer, and they were very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.

While there have been some substances proven to be effective in treating superficial skin cancers, standard treatment is preferred because the cure rate is nearly 100 percent either way, and standard treatments do little or no damage to the nearby area. On the other hand, escharotics often burn normal tissue, usually resulting in unnecessary scars. In addition, nearly all escharotics on the market have no scientific evidence proving their effectiveness, with a multitude of reports of damage caused by their use.

3Chelation Therapy

While it is proven to be helpful with heavy metal poisoning, especially mercury or arsenic, chelation therapy makes this list because practitioners of alternative medicine utilize it for a number of disorders and diseases, including autism. The procedure involves injecting a chemical that binds with heavy metals and allows them to be flushed out of the body. At-home chelation kits are extremely risky, as the procedure, even when performed in a hospital, can have any number of complications, especially with the kidneys. In addition, children are at a higher risk for complications since they are often the ones who are targeted for its unfounded use as a treatment for autism.

A recent study at Baylor University concluded that chelation is not only ineffective in curing autism, but it is also incredibly dangerous. Its use as a treatment stems from the groundless theory that mercury is the cause of autism. To make matters worse, chelation therapy can remove helpful metals, such as calcium, from the body, further harming those who are given it thanks to useless studies which had any number of issues.

2Cellular Medicine

The brainchild of a quack named Matthias Rath, cellular medicine is touted as the study of “the role of micronutrients as biocatalysts in a multitude of metabolic reactions at the cellular level.” Promoting his own special vitamin pills, Rath’s organization has been sued in a number of different countries, with various governments condemning his claims. Touted as a cure for cancer as well as AIDS and a number of other diseases, cellular medicine has never been proven to be effective at anything. A few studies involving things like huge doses of Vitamin C have failed to show any promise in treating cancer or any other disease.

One of Rath’s biggest and most public failures was his venture into South Africa and his attempt to sell his “medicine” as a cure for AIDS. Using newspaper ads to denounce modern-day medicine as toxic, Rath endangered thousands of lives by keeping patients from getting free AIDS drugs given out by the government.

1Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS)

Created by a man named Jim Humble, who, ironically enough, once compared himself to Jesus, Miracle Mineral Solution is a 28-percent solution of sodium chlorite, a compound used primarily in the bleaching and stripping of paper. Followed to the letter, the instructions given by Humble say to mix MMS with an acid like citrus juice. This generates chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleach which, when taken orally, causes nausea and diarrhea, among other things.

Banned in a few countries already, MMS has been linked to a number of deaths. However, that hasn’t swayed the proponents of MMS, who have even recently begun to claim that it is a viable treatment for autism in addition to its alleged success against cancer and AIDS. Not only are oral treatments prescribed, but there are also protocols for enemas and baths using what is essentially industrial-strength bleach.

Ancient cultures have been practicing healing arts for as long as we have written historical records. Many of these practices eventually led us to the modern medical standards we appreciate today. Although they paved the way for modern medicine, some of those practices were not only counterproductive and harmful, but they were often quite odd. Thankfully, all of the following have fallen out of use.

10 Cutting Teeth
France

The term “cutting teeth” isn’t only an idiom that means learning basic skills in a new line of work; it used to be a medical practice. When a baby starts to grow teeth, we call this teething, but this word comes from a medical practice that began in France in the 16th century. When a baby’s teeth would begin the process of coming through the gums, doctors would take a scalpel and slice open the tissue over the teeth to allow them to come through. Cutting teeth began in France but eventually spread throughout Europe and into the United States.

The practice began with French doctor Ambrose Pare, who examined the corpse of a child in 1575. “When we diligently sought for the cause of his death, we could impute it to nothing else than the contumacious hardness of the gums . . . when we cut the gums with a knife we found all the teeth appearing . . . if it had been done when he lived, doubtless he would have been preserved.” Unfortunately, the practice of cutting teeth was performed until the early 20th century, though it was a hotly debated medical topic. It is unknown how many children died from teething, but the lack of sterile tools and the trauma inflicted on the young children often resulted in death.

9 Mouse Paste
Egypt

In ancient Egypt, many people who suffered from common ailments such as toothaches or earaches found that mice were the best answer to their problems. Toothaches were especially common in Egypt due to the prevalence of sand in their diet. Sand would get into almost everything, including food. Because of the grittiness of the sand, eating it would often wear down the enamel covering the tooth, which exposed the nerves and blood vessels.

For some reason, the Egyptians decided that dead and often festering mice were an effective remedy for this problem. The dead mice would be mashed into a paste and applied to the afflicted area. For serious toothaches, a whole dead mouse would simply be applied directly to the tooth. Common sense tells us that this treatment cannot have worked in curing the aching tooth, and it most likely caused more problems. Applying rotting tissue to exposed nerves and blood vessels is a pretty good way to turn a tiresome pain into a full-blown infection.

8 Clay Consumption
Greece

In ancient Greece, it was a common practice to consume a particular type of clay that was found on the Greek island Lemnos called terra sigillata. Disks of clay were exported and sold as a medical remedy for stomach problems and diarrhea.

While some people do still consume clay today for their own strange reasons, most people don’t recognize clay consumption as a viable medical practice. That being said, the clay found on the island of Lemnos contains kaolin and bentonite. These two elements are used in modern medicines to treat patients suffering from diarrhea. People like Hippocrates wrote about the benefits of ingesting this type of clay, and as it turns out, the most famous classical physician was correct—at least in the identification of healing properties through the consumption of the special clay. Similarly, bark from the willow tree is used today to make aspirin. This was also likely identified by the likes of Hippocrates, so while it is good that we don’t eat clay all that often, we do benefit from the ancient practice any time we have a touch of Montezuma’s Revenge.

7 Retribution Or Compensation
Mesopotamia

In Mesopotamia around 1700 B.C., King Hammurabi created a codex of laws, some of which may already be familiar, like “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Interestingly, when a surgeon performed a successful operation, he was awarded an appropriate amount of shekels relevant to the patient’s standing in the community. A failed or botched surgery might result in the loss of the doctor’s hand if the patient were of high standing and did not survive.

There were several types of doctors in ancient Mesopotamia. The ashipu, or sorcerer, would identify the patients’ ailments and determine which evil spirits inhabited them. They would then either prescribe spells or charms to expel the evil spirit or refer the patient to an asu, a physician. These physicians would apply herbal remedies and plaster casts to wounds.

The Code of Hammurabi directed retribution or compensation for surgeons only if they used a knife in their practice. This limited surgical options due to the understandable reluctance of a surgeon to cut a patient for fear of succumbing to the same fate. Since there was no prescribed retribution for non-surgical attempts, the asu treated their patients homeopathically more often than surgically.

6 Have Some Poo
Egypt

When we get eye infections these days, our first thought isn’t to rub animal dung into our eyes. The ancient Egyptians couldn’t say the same. The treatment for many ailments was, in fact, to rub the dung of various animals onto a wound or infection. Additionally, a mixture of dung and other ingredients was administered orally for myriad diseases and ailments. The dung of pigs, donkeys, lizards, and even children was used as an ingredient in various medicinal salves and oral treatments throughout ancient Egypt. One of the goals of Egyptian physicians was to create pus, which they believed was therapeutic in treating an infection. We now know that pus is merely a sign of infection, but the Egyptians were quite pleased with its presence.

Fortunately, we no longer rub poop into our eyes and wounds, but modern physicians do use feces in several medical treatments. To combat Clostridium difficile, which causes severe diarrhea and thousands of deaths per year, doctors implant feces into a patient’s bowels to replace the beneficial microbes lost during the course of the infection. New developments in this practice have led to the creation of frozen poop pills, which allow for the same treatment without the need to collect feces from a willing donor at the time of the procedure.

5 Partial Tongue Removal
Europe

Hemiglossectomy is a medical procedure that involves the removal of part of the tongue. It is practiced today for patients suffering from ailments such as oral cancer. The treatment works well in removing cancerous tissue, though it results in a visible deformity of the tongue. Fortunately, there are plastic surgeries and methods for improving the quality of life of patients who undergo hemiglossectomies.

Unfortunately for patents in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, the treatment was less about dealing with cancer and all about correcting a stutter or stammer. That’s right—doctors thought that the best way to treat someone with a stutter was to cut off half of his or her tongue. Since this clearly didn’t work to fix a stutter and many patients died as a result infection and blood loss, you have to wonder how many times this was done before someone decided that it just didn’t work.

4 Tobacco
North America

For Native American societies, tobacco was considered one of the best medicinal remedies for anything from chronic pain to tuberculosis. The leaves were smoked, eaten, or ground up and applied topically. Today, we don’t think of tobacco as a healthy thing. We have known for decades that smoking tobacco leads to ailments like lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases, but the tobacco in cigarettes is laced with an incredibly high amount of chemicals. The tobacco used by the Native American population for medicinal purposes was pure.

Even pure, tobacco is still a dangerous plant and can be hazardous when used medicinally. Doctors in the 19th century believed that the plant was capable of treating a number of ailments—ringworms, constipation, hernias, infections—when taken orally or rectally, or applied externally.

That being said, nicotine and tobacco are addictive substances. We don’t advocate their use, especially for medicinal purposes. If you would like to quit smoking, research smoking cessation and ask your doctor for help.

3 Grub Salves
Aboriginal Australia

The ancient Aboriginal Australians would grind up the grub worms of the witchetty moth (Endoxyla leucomochla) and use them as a salve for skin lesions and wounds. They would pack the crushed worms into any cut or abrasion that required healing. The paste made from the grub worms would actually help in the healing process. Once packed into a wound, a bandage would then be applied and the combination would keep out air and bacteria, which aided in healing.

Today, the grub is not used medicinally like it used to be, but it has become a staple in many aboriginal diets. Present-day Aborigines harvest and cultivate the moths. “Moths were cooked in sand and stirred in hot ashes, which singed off the wings and legs. Moths were then sifted on a net to remove their heads. In this state, they were generally eaten, although sometimes they were ground into a paste and made into cakes.” The grubs are considered a delicacy and if you ever visit one of these tribes, expect to be offered one. It is considered rude to refuse, so be prepared to chow down on one of these little buggers!

2 Counter-Irritation
Worldwide

The practice of counter-irritation makes a little bit of sense. When you scratch an itch, you are producing a counter-irritation to your skin; essentially causing a new irritant which is less painful or annoying than the initial itch you needed to scratch. In ancient medical practice, counter-irritation was far more nefarious. When someone sustained an injury, it was common practice to cut into the injury further and often reopen the wound on a daily basis to pour various concoctions into it—all in the hope that the new irritant would help to relieve the patient of the old irritant.

There are some modern examples of counter-irritation in medicine and homeopathy, like acupuncture. “Some proponents argue that the needles may stimulate the release of pain-killing natural chemicals, relax tense muscles, or inhibit the conduction of pain through counter-irritation. “

Additional examples of counter-irritation that are no longer recognized as medically viable are inserting a patient’s inflamed limbs into anthills. If no anthills were available, practitioners used to create blisters with a hot iron or acid. Another method of “Counter-irritation involved making a saw-shaped wound and inserting dried peas or beans into it. The doctor would then ensure the wound remained open, keeping it from healing, from weeks to months, replacing the peas and/or beans as necessary.” Leeches were also used as a means of bloodletting topically, orally, and vaginally to relieve “sexual excitement” in women.

1 Castration
Assyro-Babylonia

Medicine wasn’t always a science. In ancient Assyria and Babylon, it was more of a magical and spiritual exercise. Castration wasn’t a normal practice of the Assyrians or Babylonians outside of medicine. Generally, the removal of the testes was performed by a physician for one of a number of reasons, but the most common was to allow men to work in the harem as eunuchs. This wasn’t always voluntary. Unlike the harems in Turkey, which required the removal of both the penis and testicles, the Assyrians and Babylonians only required the removal of the testicles. Removal wasn’t necessarily always done and on occasion, “testicles were crushed or damaged in such a way as to destroy the function of the seminal ducts.” (Getting them removed is one thing, but the idea of having them crushed ought to make your stomach turn.)

The practice of castration was solely done by medical professionals only as a last resort and almost entirely for the creation of a eunuch. The Assyrians and Babylonians were very concerned with the nature of male genitalia because they were aware that they were integral in human reproduction.

In Assyria, it was a severe criminal act to damage a man’s testicles. If a woman were to crush a man’s testicle in a fight, she would have a finger cut off. If both testicles were damaged, both of her nipples would be torn off.

Castration isn’t normally performed for medicinal purposes any longer, but it has been administered via chemical castration as punishment for sexual crimes.

I am an amateur graphic artist, illustrator, and game designer with a few independently-published games through my game company, TalkingBull Games. I enjoy researching and writing about history, science, theology, and many other subjects.

The history of medicine has not unfurled gradually. Instead, it is made up of moments—points in time when someone did something really important that would go on to have a significant impact on the medical world as a whole. Each subsequent moment brings us closer to the inevitable conclusion where we all become immortal cyborgs, but until that day, we can look back on some of the noteworthy moments from our past.

10Charles-Francois Felix Removes The Sun King’s Anal Fistula

The year is 1686, and the king has a pain in the butt. Specifically, we are talking about Louis XIV, king of France. Despite enjoying a very lengthy reign of 72 years (also earning the moniker “the Sun King”), Louis was not a healthy man. He suffered from headaches, gout, periostitis, and (some also suspect) diabetes. And in 1686, the king was stricken with a very painful anal fistula that would not go away despite all the enemas and poultices that were the accepted practice at the time.

Perhaps in an act of desperation, the king did something unusual for that time—he turned to a barber-surgeon. Back then, physicians considered surgery beneath them, so the practice was usually left to barbers since they were skilled with a blade. The barber in question was named Charles-Francois Felix. He received around six months to prepare and was told to come up with a procedure to ease the king’s suffering. After practicing on 75 alleged volunteers from France’s prisons, Felix perfected two instruments with which to perform the surgery—a spreader and a scraper.

The procedure went well, and King Louis showered Felix with wealth and titles. All of a sudden, having an anal fistula became the latest trend in France, and many courtiers approached Felix, demanding the royal surgery to imitate the king. But on a more serious note, this also helped legitimize surgery, and physicians started looking at it as a viable alternative.

9Ambroise Pare Runs Out Of Oil

One of the most famous barber-surgeons in history was Ambroise Pare. During the 16th century, he served four different French kings, and before that, he was a pioneer of battlefield medicine. During that time, the pain suffered by a patient wasn’t of paramount concern to medical professionals. It was more of a “you either live or you die” scenario. Pain was expected with most medical procedures, and it wasn’t uncommon for it to be so excruciating that patients would pass out in the middle of the operation.

One of the most painful but essential procedures was cauterization. The surgeon would use boiling oil to seal gunshot wounds. Even so, the chances of the patient surviving the ordeal were slim. In 1536, during the Italian War, Pare was serving as a war surgeon. One day, he ran out of boiling oil to treat injured soldiers, so he created a tincture using rose oil, egg yolks, and turpentine. He didn’t expect it to do much good. To his surprise, the next day, the soldiers treated with his new recipe were in much better shape.

Pare showed the world there were less agonizing alternatives to cauterization and continued his trend by also popularizing the use of ligatures after amputations. Furthermore, Pare brought attention to his ideas through a very simple yet unconventional method—he wrote in French instead of Latin. That way, all the less educated barber-surgeons would be able to learn what he had to say.

8Andreas Vesalius’s Dissections

Claudius Galenus (or simply Galen) was one of the most important scientists of ancient Greece. Primarily a physician and surgeon, Galen’s medical accomplishments are almost on par with those of Hippocrates. He became renowned for his insight into the inner workings of the human body, which he gained primarily through dissections on animals. However, we are still talking about the second century here, so Galen got a lot of stuff wrong.

The man was so respected that his notions remained mostly unchallenged for centuries. It wasn’t until the 16th century that Galen’s teachings were challenged by another publication by Dutch anatomist Andreas Vesalius. In 1543, Vesalius wrote On the Fabric of the Human Body, which showed conclusively that Galen was wrong on several points regarding the human anatomy. More than that, Vesalius based all of his observations on his own personal human dissections, so he also urged doctors to take a hands-on approach to medicine.

Fortunately, Vesalius also had some powerful supporters (like Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), which ensured that his book became one of the most important anatomy publications of all time. Like Pare, Vesalius wanted to ensure that his book was as accessible as possible, which is why it contained over 200 high-quality illustrations by skilled artists who were clearly present during the dissections.

7Ephraim McDowell Performs The First Ovariotomy

American physician Ephraim McDowell earned worldwide renown for one particular case—or two cases, if we’re counting the time he removed bladder stones from a 17-year-old James Polk, future president of the United States.

On December 13, 1809, McDowell went to see Jane Todd Crawford, a woman who was thought to be pregnant beyond term by her local doctor. After McDowell inspected her, he promptly diagnosed Mrs. Crawford with a giant ovarian tumor. He explained to her that nobody had ever tried to remove such a tumor and that most doctors would consider the procedure impossible.

Even so, Mrs. Crawford had nothing to lose at that point, so she let McDowell operate on her. She had to endure a 25-minute procedure without anesthesia, during which the doctor removed a 10-kilogram (22 lb) tumor. Despite the grim prognosis, Mrs. Crawford recovered fully in less than a month and lived for 32 more years. McDowell went on to become known as the “father of the ovariotomy,” although not immediately since he waited for eight more years before writing about the procedure.

6Richard Lower Performs The First Blood Transfusion

Blood transfusions are an essential part of modern medicine, but there was a time when they were mocked. Obviously, blood has played a role in many rituals throughout history, but it wasn’t until the middle of the 17th century in London that transfusions were studied as a possible medical treatment. The man behind the research was Richard Lower, an Oxford physician and member of the Royal Society, which had only formed a few years prior.

In 1665, Lower performed the first successful animal transfusion. He took blood from one dog and put it in another dog. That done, he moved on to people. In 1667, a sheep served as the donor, while a volunteer named Arthur Coga became the first human recipient of a blood transfusion and was paid 20 shillings for his services. Noted diarist Samuel Pepys was present at Coga’s medical procedure and took extensive notes.

Coga received 9–10 ounces of sheep’s blood, and the landmark procedure was published in Philosophical Transactions. However, the public didn’t regard this event as anything noteworthy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lower and the Royal Society were mocked and branded as mad scientists. A play called The Virtuoso written by Thomas Shadwell even satirized the sheep-to-human transfusion.

Coga was a little mad, and Lower incorrectly thought the blood transfusion would fix his mental problems. When that didn’t happen, people dismissed the idea, and it would take a century before blood transfusions would seriously be considered again.

5Dominique Jean Larrey Perfects Battlefield Medicine

Dominique Jean Larrey is often regarded as the first modern military surgeon because of his many innovations in the field that are still relevant today. It didn’t take long for Larrey to learn all the standard practices of the time and enroll as a military surgeon under Napoleon. After that, he pretty much decided that all of those practices were wrong. For example, it was standard for hospitals to be kept miles away from the battlefield for safety. While this made them safe, it also made them empty, as many injured soldiers died en route. Larrey decided that battlefield medicine would be much more effective in medical tents erected near the front lines.

Now that the hospitals were closer, Larrey also wanted the method of transportation to be faster. That idea gave birth to the flying ambulance, the first army ambulance corps. They were horse-drawn carriages, typically used to maneuver artillery. Larrey also became an expert on amputations, developing techniques to make the procedure faster and safer. Supposedly, he once performed 200 amputations within 24 hours.

Larrey’s dedication earned him the admiration of Napoleon (who first named him surgeon-in-chief of the French army and later a baron), but he was also idolized by the soldiers. After the devastating defeat at the Battle of Borodino, Larrey was picked up and passed around crowdsurfing-style by soldiers who wanted to make sure he didn’t get trampled while retreating. Even Napoleon’s most bitter enemy, the Duke of Wellington, gave orders to his men not to shoot on Larrey’s tent at Waterloo.

4Sushruta’s Rhinoplasty

Ancient India excelled in many scientific fields such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. While the Western medical world had men like Hippocrates and Galen, India had Sushruta. An ancient surgeon active during the sixth and fifth centuries BC, Sushruta is sometimes called the “father of plastic surgery” for his teachings on nasal reconstructions. He gave quite a detailed description on how to perform a primitive form of rhinoplasty by removing skin from the cheek flap and attaching it to the nose. We can’t say for sure if Sushruta ever actually successfully attempted this procedure, but the level of detail is still quite remarkable for the time period.

Plastic surgery aside, Sushruta’s other notable contribution to medicine was the Sushruta Samhita, an ancient text that became one of the foundations of Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine that’s still used today. The compendium contained most, if not all, of the medical knowledge India had at the time. It covered over 1,000 illnesses and hundreds of plants, minerals, and animal preparations that supposedly had healing capabilities.

3Jean Civiale Performs The First Minimally Invasive Surgery

Passing a kidney stone is often claimed as one of the most painful experiences you can endure, with certain women even putting it one step above the pain of child labor. Over one million people have to deal with a kidney stone every year in America alone. Thankfully, we don’t do it the old-fashioned way anymore. Nowadays, we use a minimally invasive procedure called a lithotripsy, which uses various techniques to crush the stones.

Before the 19th century, the standard procedure was a lithotomy. It involved making an incision and removing the stone whole. Not only was it extremely painful, but it also carried a high mortality rate. But in came French physician Jean Civiale with his invention, the lithotrite, which he used to perform the first minimally invasive surgery in the world. With this tool, Civiale was able to crush the stone before removing it through the urethra.

Civiale, a pioneer of urology and the founder of the first urology center in the world at Necker Hospital in Paris, showed that his method was much more efficient than a lithotomy. While the traditional technique had a mortality rate of over 18 percent, his lithotripsy hovered around the 2-percent mark. He did this through an ample and comprehensive study commissioned by the Paris Academy of Science, a significant feat of evidence-based medicine that was highly influential for the time.

2George Hayward Performs First Amputation Under General Anesthesia

Very soon after William Morton introduced ether as anesthesia in 1846 with his “Letheon” inhaler, physicians were already thinking of the possible applications it might have. Sure, the gas proved itself potent enough during a minor surgical procedure, but could it be used for major surgery as well?

The process was somewhat delayed by Morton’s reluctance to reveal ether as the core ingredient of his inhaler. Doctors wanted to use his concoction but were wary of using an unknown agent on their patients due to potential side effects. Morton offered to supply Boston hospitals with Letheon free of charge, but physicians took a stand and demanded to know the formula used with the inhaler. At this point, Morton finally conceded and admitted to using sulfuric ether.

Now that that issue was out of the way, the anesthesia could be used on a much more ambitious medical procedure—an amputation. The task was undertaken by Dr. George Hayward. The patient was a 21-year-old servant girl named Alice Mohan whose leg needed to be amputated due to tuberculosis. Like before, Morton administered the gas until the patient fell asleep. Hayward tested her reaction by stabbing Alice with a pin. When she didn’t react, he quickly proceeded to cut off her leg.

Alice later awoke, not realizing that she’d fallen asleep and that the procedure was finished. When she said she was ready to begin, Hayward reached down and picked up her leg from sawdust and presented it to its former owner.

1Ignaz Semmelweis Tells Doctors To Wash Their Hands

Humans can be very slow to change when a new notion goes against long-held beliefs. Richard Lower was mocked for his work on blood transfusions. When Edward Jenner came up with the smallpox vaccine, he was criticized by the clergy for his ungodly work. And yet probably no man has made a greater contribution to medicine that earned him nothing but scorn and mockery than Ignaz Semmelweis.

Nowadays, the man is known as the “savior of mothers” and you don’t get that kind of moniker unless you did something right. We also know that infection is a serious problem, and doctors go to great lengths to ensure that they operate under sanitary conditions. This wasn’t always the case, though.

Joseph Lister usually gets the credit for pioneering antiseptic surgery, but Dr. Semmelweis had the same idea several decades prior. The only difference between them was that Semmelweis became a pariah of the medical world for his ideas.

Semmelweis realized that there was a direct correlation between infection and puerperal fever in obstetrical clinics. Just by washing their hands and their instruments, doctors could drastically lower the mortality rates caused by the fever to below 1 percent. Puerperal fever was a common problem in the 19th century and had a mortality rate of up to 18 percent. However, doctors simply refused to believe that they could be responsible for so many deaths. It wasn’t until Pasteur proved germ theory that people finally realized Semmelweis’s ideas had some merit. By then, Semmelweis went insane trying to convince others and was committed to an asylum, where he was beaten to death by guards.

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In high school, many young people are simply trying to adjust to teenage life as they deal with the awkwardness of their own bodies. But then there are other teens who tackle major medical problems like cancer, influenza, and other deadly diseases that have plagued humans throughout history. While it is impressive that some young people attempt to study these topics, these teens went further and even made incredible breakthroughs in the medical field.

10 Ethan Manuell

In the spring 2015, eighth grader Ethan Manuell of Rochester, Minnesota, was visiting his oncologist. Since the age of four, he had been wearing a hearing aid in his left ear. That’s how he was struck with inspiration for his entry in his school’s science fair.

Manuell wanted to know how air affects the zinc batteries for hearing aids. When changing the battery in a hearing aid, a tab or a sticker over the area that connects to the hearing aid has to be removed. Manuell found some old toy bugs and converted them to run on the same type of batteries that are used in hearing aids. Then, through a series of trials, Manuell discovered that the batteries lasted 85 percent longer if they were exposed to air for five minutes. The longer battery life could give people who wear hearing aids an extra day or two of use out of their batteries and save an average of $70 per year. Manuell also took home the top prize at his school’s science fair for his “five minute rule.”

9 Tony Hansberry

Many 14-year-old boys probably don’t know what a hysterectomy is, but Tony Hansberry was no ordinary 14-year-old. When Hansberry was in high school, he developed a new, faster, and safer way to stitch patients up after the procedure.

Hansberry, who attended a special magnet school that specializes in health and medicine, said he got the idea when he was an intern at a hospital in summer 2008 as part of the University of Florida’s Center for Simulation Education and Safety Research. While working with the center’s administrative director, Hansberry figured out a way to use an endo stitch, which is a stick with two clamps on it that is used for suturing. Hansberry used the endo stitch vertically; it had previously only been used horizontally. Hansberry’s new method makes it easier to close the opening after the uterus is removed and speeds up stitching time. Now that his technique has been made public, it is used by gynecologists during surgery.

Hansberry is currently studying biomedical engineering at Florida A&M University and said that he wants to be a neurosurgeon.

8 Suman Mulumudi

Around the dinner table one night at Suman Mulumudi’s home in Seattle, his parents, who are both doctors, talked about troubles they had in their day. Mulumudi’s father, a cardiologist, complained that his stethoscope didn’t work as well as he wanted it to. When there was a weak heartbeat, his father would order an echocardiogram for the patient, but echocardiograms take time and are quite expensive. So, 15-year-old Mulumudi got the idea that could help his father. Using a 3-D printer, he created a device to attach to a smartphone and developed a stethoscope app. The final product is called “Steth IO.” The product turned out to be better than a stethoscope on two counts. It sounded better, and there was also a visual graph of the sound on the screen.

But that wasn’t the last medical invention Mulumudi created. The second of his inventions aids in angioplasties, procedures that clear blocked or narrowed arteries. During the procedure, lesions need to be propped up with stents. Placing these stents is a difficult task because doctors have to estimate how big the lesions are. If there is a mistake, it can lead to repeated trips to the hospital to fix the problem. To better measure lesions, Mulumudi developed LesionSizer, another device he made using a 3-D printer. It helps cardiologists measure lesions without changing or altering their technique.

After creating the Steth IO, Mulumudi appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in May 2014. Mulumudi now attends the prestigious private Lakeside School in Seattle. Famous graduates of the school include Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

7 Elana Simon

As a child, Elana Simon of New York suffered from horrible stomach aches. She went to a number of specialists, but no one was sure what was wrong until she was 12 years old. That was when she was diagnosed with fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, a rare form of liver cancer.

Simon survived, but she was one of the lucky ones. Only 32 percent of people who are diagnosed with that type of cancer survive past five years. A major problem with the disease is that by the time it is diagnosed, the cancer has usually already spread. Research on the disease has also been fairly limited because of its rareness. Only about 60 cases are diagnosed every year in the United States, and it mostly affects women under the age of 35.

In 2013, when Simon was 18, she was looking into an internship for high school. She came up with the idea to genetically sequence fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma cells to find the cancer-causing mutation. Working with her surgeon, she got others who suffered from the cancer to send samples of their tumors. Using the 15 samples, the genes were sequenced. When they looked at the results, they found that in all 15 samples there was a chimera—two genes that connect and create a unique protein. More research needs to be done to see if the chimera is actually responsible, but the progress looks promising.

In February 2014, a paper that was co-authored by Simon was published in the prestigious journal Science. Simon also appeared on The Dr. Oz Show and met President Obama. Currently, Simon is studying computer sciences at Harvard University.

6 Jack Andraka

Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of any cancer because it spreads quickly. Samples need to be sent to a lab, which takes time. Even when samples do finally get to the lab, the testing method is over 60 years old and isn’t very reliable. This really bothered 14-year-old Jack Andraka from Baltimore, Maryland, who lost a close family friend to the disease. He started searching the Internet for information about pancreatic cancer and tried to find out what its biomarkers were.

Once Andraka found the biomarkers, he formulated his plan and then he sent over 200 packages containing his method, budget, and timeline to cancer researchers around America. He received 199 rejection letters—some with intense criticism of his idea—but Dr. Anirban Maitra, the head of pancreatic cancer research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, agreed to help Andraka. Over the next seven months, after school and on weekends, Andraka developed a test that detects unusually high levels of mesothelin. Mesothelin is a protein that the body produces in the earliest and most treatable stages of pancreatic cancer. Andraka says that his tests can be done in five minutes, are much more accurate than traditional testing, and would only cost $50 instead of several hundred. Besides pancreatic cancer, the tests should also help in early detection of ovarian, breast, and lung cancer as well.

After the breakthrough was made public in 2012 when Andraka was 15, he was invited to the State of the Union speech by Michelle Obama. He also won the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, which is worth $100,000. The tests are currently in preclinical trials, and Andraka started attending Stanford in fall 2015.

5 Brittany Wenger

When Brittany Wenger of Sarasota, Florida, was in seventh grade, she said she fell in love with computer science. One aspect that caught her attention was artificial intelligence (AI). After learning about AI, she got a coding book and learned how to code. Another pivotal moment in Wenger’s life happened in 10th grade, when her cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was during this time that she learned that one in eight women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes. Wenger was working on an artificial intelligence system that could play soccer at the time, but she changed paths. Instead, she decided to invent an AI system that could diagnose breast cancer.

While talking with her cousin, Wenger found out that the least invasive, cheapest, and fastest way to diagnose breast cancer is with fine needle aspirates (FNA). The problem is that they are not very accurate, so many doctors do not use them. To make FNA tests more effective, Wenger designed an AI program called Cloud4Cancer that processes samples from FNA tests and looks for patterns that are far too complex for humans to detect. Her program is 99.1 percent sensitive to malignancy, drastically increasing the reliability of FNA tests.

Wenger won the Google Science Fair in 2012, and she was also invited to the White House to meet President Obama. Wenger is attending Duke, and she wants to be both a pediatric oncologist and a research scientist.

4 Serena Fasano

In third world countries, diarrhea caused by E. coli is a devastating problem. On average, six million people die from it every year, and most of them are under the age of two. Thirteen-year-old Serena Fasano didn’t know that when she was sitting in her home in Howard County, Maryland, eating a yogurt in 2003. She was reading the ingredient list on the yogurt container when she came across one she didn’t recognize called lactobacillus, a form of bacteria. That kicked off her interest in bacteria in yogurt and led her to her first experiment for her school’s science fair. She used E. coli samples that her father, a director of the Mucosal Biology Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, procured for her. She mixed the samples into yogurt, and the results were that the samples with the most yogurt had the least amount of E. coli. The project landed her the top prize at her school and regionally, but that was just the start for Fasano.

Over the next three years, Fasano worked with a doctor at the Maryland School of Medicine to try to find out what exactly in yogurt killed E. coli. She discovered that the lactobacillus secretes a substance that is deadly to E. coli. She was able to break that substance down into five components and one of those, an undiscovered protein, seemed to cause the most harm to the E. coli. In February 2006, she was awarded a patent on the protein. Currently, Fasano is a family planning health educator in New York City.

3 Joe Landolina

In the United States, the leading cause of death for people under the age of 45 is trauma, while it is the fourth leading cause of death overall. A major reason that trauma is so deadly is because the internal organs can be lacerated. If there is an internal laceration, it is hard to stop the bleeding because life-saving measures like a tourniquet or applying pressure can’t be used on damaged internal organs.

Looking to solve the problem, 17-year-old Joe Landolina entered a business competition in 2011 at New York University as the only freshman competing against PhD and MBA candidates. His idea was to develop a type of organic gel or foam that would seal up wounds. His idea won, and over the next three years, Landolina worked on a plant-based gel that congeals when it is applied to blood or tissue. His product, called VetiGel, creates a mesh by using a key protein in blood clotting. Landolina’s gel can close an internal or external wound in 20 seconds or less. Also, since the gel is plant-based, it can be left in the body as it heals.

VetiGel is currently approved by the FDA for use on animals, but Landolina says it could be approved for use on humans in 2016. Lanolina hopes to have VetiGel available for widespread use, included in first aid kits worldwide.

2 Eric Chen

While the flu may remind people of staying home sick from school and watching The Price Is Right, the influenza virus is actually a lethal disease, and it is possible that a mutation could cause a plague at any given time. This realization dawned on Eric Chen in 2009 when he was just 13 years old. He was living in San Diego, and news about the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus was making headlines across the world. Wanting to make a difference, Chen developed a computer program to help him study biological data of the flu.

Chen was looking for inhibitors of a protein called “influenza endonuclease” that causes influenza to be contagious. Identifying and targeting these inhibitors would kill the virus because if the flu isn’t contagious, it isn’t effective. Using both the computer program he designed and a wet lab, Chen was able to whittle down half a million possible inhibitors to just six. Chen is hoping that antivirals will be developed based on his research that will help treat, cure, and even prevent outbreaks.

In 2013, when he was 17, Chen presented his findings and won the Google Science Fair, the Intel Science Talent Search, and the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology. He is currently attending Harvard for mathematics and computer science.

1 Angela Zhang

When Angela Zhang was a freshman at her high school in Cupertino, California, she started reading research papers about bio-engineering. The papers were a little complicated for Zhang, but she found that she enjoyed reading them because she felt like she was decoding a puzzle. By the time she was a sophomore, she was allowed to work in a lab at Stanford. Then, when she was a junior, she started her own research with a lofty goal—to cure cancer.

By the time she was a senior, Zhang had written her own research paper in her spare time with her own theory of how to cure cancer. Her idea was to mix cancer medicine with polymer. The polymer would be attached to nanoparticles. In turn, those nanoparticles would be injected into the body where they would attach to cancer cells. Then, when the patient underwent an MRI, doctors would see exactly where the tumors in the body are. Zhang believes that if an infrared light is fired at the tumors, the polymer will melt and release the medicine. This would kill the cancer cells without affecting healthy cells. And according to tests on mice, the tumors almost completely disappear.

In 2011, Zhang entered the National Siemens Math, Science, and Technology Competition and won the top prize, which was a $100,000 scholarship. In February 2012, at the age of 17, Zhang went to the White House Science Fair, where she presented her ideas to President Barack Obama.

Zhang is currently at Harvard, working on a degree in biomedical engineering. She also spends her summers at Stanford, where she continues to research her theory.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or on Pinterest, or visit his website.