One of the benefits of living in the modern world is that we get the convenience of modern medicine. That is to say, no doctor is going to prescribe rubbing yourself with a live chicken to cure your disease. But in some cases, sanity has yet to catch up to a few unbelievable medical practices. Here are ten medical treatments you won’t believe they still use.

Known officially as apitherapy, the practice of using bee venom to treat medical conditions like rheumatism goes back for thousands of years, some believe as far as ancient Greece. So you would think that it’s something that would have been phased out at least a few hundred years ago, but that’s not the case.

Bee venom has recently been used by hospitals around the world as a treatment for arthritis, tendonitis, and herpes, among others. The treatment itself also varies: Some doctors will prescribe milked bee venom, while others will literally sting the patient with a live bee.

Interestingly enough, there has been a lot of research recently in the Western world for bee venom as a potential cure for cancer. So who knows, maybe it’s not as ridiculous as it might seem.

Maggot debridement, also known as maggot therapy, has been used off and on for most of human history, especially during times of war. “Debridement” is the removal of dead tissue, like you would get in an open wound. So as you can imagine, maggot debridement is a way of removing dead tissue – by putting live maggots into the wound.

While it would make sense for modern medicine to have moved past something as seemingly barbaric as dumping maggots into an open wound, it’s actually picking up steam again in the medical community—so much so that it’s now covered by some insurance plans. It’s usually used to treat post-surgical wounds that have difficulty healing.

Although it’s not a mainstream treatment just yet (or ever, hopefully), there are plenty of doctors who have taken up the age-old claim that hookworms, an intestinal parasite, are an effective treatment for allergies. Since the ’70s, researchers have noticed a strange connection: countries with high instances of hookworm infections have pretty much no allergies or autoimmune diseases.

Scientists are now studying why that happens, and they’re doing it in the only possible way that makes no sense: by infecting people with parasites. Other people are going after it themselves, like this man who traveled to Africa and walked around restrooms barefoot in the hope of somehow picking up the intestinal parasites. He was quoted as saying, “ . . . my feet were very itchy, so I felt very confident that I was infected.”

Most doctors warn their patients against setting their face on fire, but Chinese medical practitioners are reviving the cure more and more often, through burning moxa leaves. They apparently use the remedy to treat everything from facial paralysis to brain atrophy.

The treatment involves placing rolls of dried moxa leaves on the ears, mouth, or cheeks, lighting them on fire, and allowing the smoke to waft across the patient’s face. Sometimes walnuts will be placed in the patients’ eyes as well, which helps the process of restoring Qi, according to some medical specialists in the city of Jinan, China.

The practice of trepanation, in which a hole is drilled directly into the side of a person’s skull, is believed to have been used since the days of cave men. At least one 7,000 year old burial site has been discovered in which the skulls had circular holes cut away, and there are similar examples from every single period in human history.

The reasons for doing this have changed just as much as the techniques, and over time it’s been used to cure everything from migraines to mental disorders. The holes were first drilled with flint, then steel; sometimes a large hole was made by drilling several smaller holes and then connecting them; sometimes it was done by the agonizing process of scraping away layers of bone to make a hole.

And yep, we’re still doing it. These day’s doctors use trepanation to treat a condition called subdural hematoma, which is caused by blood pooling under the skull and around the brain. It just seems like we’d have figured out a better way to do it by now.

Meet the Bathini Gauds, an Indian family that has been administering live fish for over 160 years as a treatment for asthma – and they’re still doing it today. The treatment involves just what you might (hate to) think: The patient swallows a live fish along with a ball of secret medicine, then sticks to a strict diet for the next forty-five days.

According to the family, millions of people have been cured by the treatment, and over half a million come to see them every year. They claim that the fish must be alive, because it cleans out the throat as it squirms down into the stomach. But not everybody’s ready to swallow such a seemingly ridiculous remedy—the Indian Medical Association is threatening to open a lawsuit against the family unless they reveal the ingredients to the medicine.

Thalidomide, the devil’s sedative, has a history as infamous as Nazi Germany. It was heavily used during the 1950s as a cure for morning sickness in pregnant women—until they realized that it was responsible for more than 10,000 birth defects over just a few years. The FDA immediately stepped in to regulate the drug, which was being sold over-the-counter in nearly fifty countries, but the damage had already been done. Of the children who had been born with defects from thalidomide, about fifty percent died after only a few months. Pharmacists were actually instructed to destroy their thalidomide supplies.

Now, the FDA has once again approved thalidomide for medical use—this time as a treatment for bone marrow cancer. There are a lot of mixed feelings on this, but one thing is for sure: they’re double and triple checking patients for signs of pregnancy before even mentioning the word thalidomide.

First developed in 1938, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the practice of using an electrical shock of up to several hundred volts to induce a seizure. Eventually it fell out of use in the medical community due to minor side effects like confusion, muscle aches, bone fractures, and memory loss that can last for months.

In 2001, however, the American Psychiatric Association decided that electrocuting patients was cooler than not doing it, and ECT made a comeback. These days it’s mostly used to treat chronic depression and it’s legal in most countries, although only a few thousand treatments are reported every year.

Some old-fashioned medical procedures dip their toe in the shallow end of the barbaric, but lobotomies go straight for the swan dive. One of the most controversial practices in history, lobotomies were used in the 1930s to separate the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, allegedly as a cure for schizophrenia and other mental disorders. One psychiatrist famously performed his with a hammer and an ice pick, ramming the pick through the back of the eye socket and wiggling it around to find the right part of the brain.

It wasn’t until the 50s that lobotomy was phased out in favor of drugs and medication, but it’s still managed to cling to the coattails of the medical fringe, popping up now and then when you’d least expect it. For example, they were performed in France up through 1986, and in 1995 a US psychiatrist was experimenting with burning dime-size holes into patients’ frontal lobes.

Surprisingly enough, lobotomies are still performed, they’re just called lobectomies now, and they’re used for extreme cases of epilepsy.

If there’s any one “medical” treatment we definitely should have done away with by now, it’s exorcism. And yet, many people still believe in demonic possession, to the point where they are willing to eschew more modern treatment in favor of old-fashioned hocus pocus.

But here’s the really, really weird part: sometimes, it works. There are countless anecdotes of exorcism working to cure diseases, especially mental diseases. But that’s the thing—psychiatry is still largely speculative, and any form of personal demon (like past trauma) can be seen as a real demon, depending on what the person believes. Believe in the cure strongly enough, and it just might work. Strong placebo or evil spirits: What do you believe?

It goes without saying that our society is moving faster than it ever has in the past. As medical technology surges forward with unprecedented speed and accuracy, many of us are left in the ensuing dust storm of obsolete procedures that were commonplace mere decades ago. But if we look up and gaze into the near future, we can see the beginnings of a whole new world of medical treatments that the doctors of yesterday couldn’t even begin to imagine. Here are 10 medical technologies that could very well shape the future.

Usually, a medical advance comes from years of high budget research. Sometimes it’s sheer accident. And sometimes, a small team of pioneers will step forward with a truly innovative discovery. That’s the case with Joe Landolina and Isaac Miller and their Veti-Gel, a cream-like substance that will instantly seal a wound and start the clotting process.

The anti-bleeding gel creates a synthetic framework that mimics the extracellular matrix, an awesomely named natural substance that helps cells in the body grow together. Here’s a video of the gel in action (warning, it’s fairly bloody). In the video, pigs blood is piped into a cut of pork. When the pork is sliced, it begins bleeding immediately, but then stops the instant Veti-Gel is applied.

In other tests, Landolino used the gel to stop the bleeding on the carotid artery of a rat, as well as a live liver that had been sliced. If this product becomes commercial, it could save millions of lives, especially in combat zones.

Artificial lung tissue grown with magnetic levitation: it sounds like something out of science fiction, and it was, until now. In 2010, Glauco Souza and his team began looking into a way to create realistic human tissue using nanomagnets that allowed lab-grown tissue to levitate above a nutrient solution.

The result was the most realistic synthetically grown organ tissue ever grown. Typically, lab-grown tissue is created in a petri dish, but elevating the tissue allows it to grow in a 3D shape that allows for more complex cell layers. That 3D growth pattern is a more perfect simulation of the way cells grow in the human body, which means that this is a huge step forward in creating artificial organs that can be transplanted into humans.

It’s obvious that the direction of medical technology is leaning more towards reproducing human tissue outside the body, allowing us to create “spare parts,” so to speak. If one organ isn’t working, we can just replace it with a new one, fresh off the assembly line. Now that idea is moving down to the cellular level with a gel that mimics the action of specific cells.

The material is formed in bunches that are only 7.5 billionths of a meter wide—for comparison, that’s about four times wider than a DNA double helix. Cells have their own type of skeleton, known as a cytoskeleton, which is made of proteins. The synthetic gel will take the place of that cytoskeleton in a cell, and when it’s applied to, say, a wound, it replaces any cells that were lost or damaged. In a practical sense, it would work like a tiny, tiny sewer grate. Fluids can pass through the cell, which allow the wound to continue healing, but the artificial skeleton prevents bacteria from passing through with the fluid.

In a sentence we won’t get to use often, researchers have turned pee into human brain cells. At the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health in China, biologists have taken waste cells from urine and modified them with the use of retroviruses to create progenitor cells, which the body uses as the building blocks for brain cells. The most valuable benefit to this method is that the new neurons created haven’t caused tumors in any of the mice used for testing.

See, embryonic stem cells have been used for this in the past, but one of their side effects was that they were more likely to develop tumors after transplant. But after only a few weeks, the pee-based cells had already begun to shape into neurons with absolutely no unwanted mutations.

The obvious medical benefit of getting cells from urine is that, well, it’s freely available, and scientists could work on developing neurons that are sourced from the same person, increasing the chance that they’ll be accepted by the body.

We know, we know, but hear us out—electric underwear really can save thousands of lives. See, when a patient is lying in a hospital bed for days, weeks, or months, they can develop bed sores—open wounds formed by a lack of circulation and compressed skin. And believe it or not, bed sores can be deadly. Roughly 60,000 people die from bed sores and resulting infections every year, draining $12 billion from the U.S. medical industry.

Developed by Canadian researcher Sean Dukelow, the electric underpants—dubbed Smart-E-Pants—deliver a small electrical charge every ten minutes. The effect is the same as if the patient was moving on their own—it activates muscles and increases circulation in that area, and effectively eliminates bed sores, thereby saving lives.

Flower pollen is one of the most common allergens in the world, and it’s so effective at what it does because of the way pollen is built. The outer shell of pollen is incredibly tough, tough enough to be resistant to the disintegrating power of the human digestive system. And that’s more than most vaccines can say—the majority of vaccines are injected because they can’t withstand stomach acids when they’re taken orally. The vaccine breaks down, and becomes useless.

But put the two together, and you have a match made in heaven’s medical sciences lab. Researchers at Texas Tech University are looking into ways to use pollen as means to provide life-saving vaccines to soldiers stationed overseas. The lead researcher on the project, Harvinder Gill, has a goal of cracking into pollen to remove the allergens, then injecting a vaccine into the empty space left behind. Research like this could vastly change the way vaccines and medications can be given to humans.

Remember the days when you would break your arm and then have to wear a cast for weeks while the bone naturally healed itself? It looks like those days are behind us. Using 3D printers, researchers at Washington State University have developed a hybrid material that has the same properties—the same strength and flexibility—as real bone.

This “model” can then be placed in the body at the site of the fracture while the real bone grows up and around it like a scaffolding. Once the process is complete, the model disintegrates. The printer they’re using is a ProMetal 3D printer—consumer technology available to anyone with enough cash. It was the material for the bone structure that was the real problem, but they’ve created a formula that uses a combination of zinc, silicon, and calcium phosphate that works well—so well, in fact, that the entire process has already been successfully tested in rabbits. When the bone material was combined with stem cells, the natural bone grew back much faster than normal.

The real benefit of this technology is that, feasibly, any tissue—even full organs—could be grown with 3D printers once we have the right combination of starting materials.

The brain is a delicate organ, and even slight trauma can have lasting effects if it’s bumped in the wrong places. For people with traumatic brain injury, extensive rehabilitation is pretty much the only hope of leading a normal life again. Alternatively, they could just get a zap on the tongue.

Your tongue is connected to the nervous system through thousands of nerve clusters, some of which lead directly into the brain. Based on that fact, the Portable NeuroModulation Stimulator, or PoNS, stimulates specific nerve regions on the tongue to hopefully focus the brain on repairing the nerves that were damaged. And so far, it works. Patients being treated with that type of neuromodulation showed vast improvement after only a week. Fair warning, you might get brain damage just trying to read that link.

Apart from blunt trauma, the PoNS could feasibly be used to repair the brain from anything, including alcoholism, Parkinson’s, strokes, and multiple sclerosis.

Sometimes a new innovation doesn’t necessarily take the shape you expect. Most of us think of groundbreaking new procedures or cures for cancer, but this example shows that thinking outside the box can make a world of difference.

Pacemakers are used in approximately 700,000 people right now to regulate their hearts’ rhythms. But after seven years or so, the device runs out of juice, prompting a replacement with an expensive surgical procedure. Well, scientists at the University of Michigan may have solved that problem by developing a way to harness electricity from the motion of a beating heart—electricity which can then power a pacemaker.

Piggybacking off lab tests that produced overwhelmingly positive results, Dr. Amin Karami is ready to try his device—made from materials that create electricity when they change shape—on a live human heart. If the test works, it could revolutionize not just the pacemaker industry, but medical science as a whole by using human-generated electricity to power a range of medical devices. For example, this device harvests electricity from the vibrations of the inner ear and uses it to power a small radio.

DNA works like the instructions for life, telling cells what they’re supposed to do. Change the structure, and the message changes. DNA is often referred to as the building blocks of life, but engineers at Harvard are now making that phrase a little more literal. They are using DNA as building blocks—nano-size Legos—to build structures.

The Lego image was one that was encouraged by Peng Yin, the head researcher on the project, because it helped the engineers visualize what they were creating. And the comparison didn’t stop there—DNA is basically coded with four different letters—A, T, G, and C. When DNA combines, G connects to C, and A connects to T. Always. So they created a DNA strand that contained two of each letter like the pegs of a Lego brick. Snap them together, and you can build anything.

The concept is taking the biology world by storm, and the possibilities are endless. The Harvard team created a genetic copy of a 284 page book by translating it into binary, then associating the 1’s and 0’s of binary with the A,T,G,C structure of DNA. The resulting strand of DNA can be decoded by anyone to get the full text of the book.

These researchers at Oxford built a DNA robot that follows instructions, opening a whole other world of medical-related potential.

Doctors have often been seen as some of the smartest members of society, and with good reason. It takes years of training, constant retraining, and a lot more than just book smarts to be a good doctor. But they are still human, and humans are fallible. Mistakes are made every day, and while some of them can be insignificant, others can completely change lives. Suing doctors for less-than-perfect practice is becoming more and more common, the morality of which is debatable. If you need help, and only certain people are able (and often, legally obliged) to help you, is it really fair to blame them if their best isn’t good enough? In many cases on the other hand, it is clear if a patient suffered because somebody was careless. Below are ten examples of some of the most cringe-inducing medical malpractices of recent years.

Going in for brain surgery is worrying enough for most patients, but those in Rhode Island Hospital could be forgiven for being more worried than most. Despite being the most prestigious hospital of the state, and a teaching hospital for students of Brown University, the hospital made the basic yet tremendous mistake of operating on the wrong side of a patient’s brain. Three times in one year.

The first incident was the result of a third-year resident failing to mark which side of the brain was to be operated on. The doctor and nurse in this operation claimed they were not trained in how to use a checklist, although one must ask how many people would allow their heads to be cut open by someone who has clearly never received professional training in the fine art of grocery shopping.

In the second incident, a different doctor (with over 20 years experience) never filled out which side of an 86 year old man’s brain had a blood clot, assuring the nurse that he remembered. The patient in this case died a few weeks later.

In the third case, the chief resident neurosurgeon and a nurse both clarified which side of the brain was to be operated on beforehand, and then proceeded to operate on the other side. All three cases involved different doctors, but whether it’s better to be in a hospital where one doctor repeats a mistake multiple times, or several doctors make the same mistake is debatable.

Alexander Baez is a former Mr. Mexico and a runner-up Mr. Universe. Being a bodybuilder, he is, unsurprisingly, concerned with his physique, and in 1999 he decided he wanted to get pec implants. When he awoke from his surgery, he discovered that while he had been given implants, he was actually given breast implants (C-cups), and not pec implants. Police in Florida began a search for Reinaldo Silvestre, a man who had posed as a doctor and had no legitimate medical credentials. Silvestre had forged documents and had also operated on at least two women in Florida, using kitchen utensils. In 2004, Silvestre was found in working in Belize, where he is believed to have treated hundreds of patients over at least a one year period.

Carol Weihrer had long suffered pain in her right eye, and at the advice of her doctor, decided her quality of life would be improved if she had the eye removed. The surgery was five and a half hours long, and for about two of those hours, Carol was awake. She explained that anesthesia is made up of two different elements, one to paralyze the patient, and one to put them to sleep. Unfortunately, only the paralyzing agent worked fully in her case, and halfway through the operation, she woke up but could not move at all. She was horrified to hear the surgeon listening to disco music throughout, as well as having to hear things like “Cut deeper, pull harder”. Carol was awake for the exact moment they removed the eye. Eventually, the doctor realized she was conscious, and the administered more of the nerve-blocking anesthesia, which Carol described made her insides feel like “being roasted on a barbecue pit”. She was so traumatized by the ordeal that she has slept in a reclining chair since, too afraid to lie down. Cases like these are known as Anesthesia Awareness, and it is estimated that up to 42,000 people in the US alone experience it every year.

Never having been in for any sort of surgery in my life (and after writing this, hoping I never will be), I can only imagine the worries people have beforehand: how skilled is the surgeon, what if they cut something they shouldn’t and so on. I also think it’s safe to assume that “What if I catch on fire?” isn’t a common concern among patients. But perhaps it should be. In 2009 Janice McCall, 65, died six days after she caught fire during surgery. While the cause of the fire was not released in this case, there are a number of other examples to that can explain possible causes to igniting in surgery: In 2012, Enrique Ruiz suffered second-degree burns after an electronic scalpel caused his oxygen supply to explode, which the hospital then tried to cover up.

In another case, Catherine Reuter, 74, suffered second and third-degree burns after a cauterizing tool caused the alcohol based disinfectant on her face to catch fire. The incident led to strong infections, kidney failure, and long-term sedation. Reuter never fully recovered, and died in hospital two years later. It is estimated that surgical fires affect up to 650 patients a year.

It’s likely that everyone reading this will have heard stories about people who get operations and later find out that they had foreign objects stitched inside them. There are about 1,500 such reports every year in the US. While uncommon, such an occurrence can be extremely painful, and can lead to other complications such as infection or internal bleeding. What sets Daryoush Mazarei out from other examples is not the fact that the item left behind inside his chest, a retractor, was 10 inches long, nor that it could physically be seen poking out. It is that when he went back to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, he was told he should seek psychiatric care. After a month of agonizing pain, multiple complaints, and repeatedly being told the problem was in his head, Marazei was finally given a CT scan, and the item was removed. He has begun legal proceedings against the hospital.

Jesica Santillan was a 17 year old girl who died 15 days after receiving a heart and double-lung transplant. Undoubtedly, this was a major operation and any number of things could have gone wrong. The whole thing could have even gone perfectly, but failed if Jesica’s body rejected the new organs. While her body did reject the organs, it was not simply a case of bad luck. With such long waiting lists for organs in the US, you would think that the professionals in Duke University Hospital would make sure that the organs they intend to transplant are the same blood type as the person they’re going into. Unfortunately, Jesica was blood type O, and received organs from someone that was blood type A, something over a dozen people were supposed to check, but didn’t. The hospital hid the mistake for 11 days, and then went public looking for another donor. She received a second transplant two weeks after the first one, but was declared brain dead and taken off life support. Her mother believes that she was weaned off her medication so she would seemingly pass away naturally.

Only people who have actually seen it for themselves can really know how easy it is to look at something like a pair of kidneys and tell which one is healthy and which is not. Apparently, it’s not as clear a difference as you might think. In 2000, 70 year old Graham Reeves of Wales died after not one, but two surgeons removed the wrong kidney. This sort of error is not an isolated incident, nor is it confined to any one body part. Benjamin Houghton, an Air Force veteran, received $200,000 compensation after doctors removed the wrong testicle, while Willie King, who suffered from diabetes, received a total of $1.15 million after his right leg was amputated by mistake (with the correct leg being amputated later).

Kim Tutt was getting her jaw x-rayed at the dentist, when they noticed a large lump on the left side of her jaw. After undergoing further examinations, she was told she had 3-6 months to live. The doctors told her she could possibly get an extra three months if they removed the left side of her chin, right up to her ear, and replaced it with her fibula. Desperate to spend more time with her 10 and 12 year old sons, she underwent the procedure. The lump was removed, and although slightly disfigured, Tutt was grateful to have extra time with her sons. Three months later, she was called to the doctors office, who gave her the good news that she was cancer free. The bad news was that she had in fact never had cancer at all. There had been a mix up in the lab, and Kim Tutt had gone through five surgeries and been left disfigured for nothing.

Medical malpractice is not limited to surgery, and the case of Paul Lozano illustrates this better than any other example. Lozano had been sexually abused by his mother as a child, and his psychiatrist, Margaret Bean-Bayog, decided to try a form of therapy known as “reparenting”, where the psychiatrist simulates the different stages of lifespan development in an attempt to “reprogram” the patient. She coddled him, read him stories, called him “baby”, made him call her “mother”, and made him learn cue-cards off by heart. One such card read “I’m your mom and I love you and you love me very much. Say that 10 times”. Other cards were more sexual, and more notes were found that appeared to be erotica featuring Lozano and his doctor. It was also reported that they did in fact have sexual relations. After about five years, he committed suicide.

Some of the examples mentioned so far were a result of poor communication, while others can be attributed to bad practice. Depending on who and what you believe, it can be argued that both of these are present in the case of Bryan Mejia, but what sets it apart from the others is the ethical debate that it sparked. Bryan was born with only one leg, and no arms. The deformity is obviously not the fault of the medical staff at Palm Beaches, but parents Ana Mejia and Rodolfo Santana have accused the staff of negligence for not properly detecting this through ultrasounds, saying they would have aborted their son if they had known he would only have one limb. Most people would expect that a doctor would be able to alert the parents-to-be of such a disability, but Dr. Morel, the defendant, argued that he is not to blame. The couple, who feared the child may be born with down-syndrome, opted not to undergo amniocentesis after they were told there was a 99.9% chance that the child would not have any form of mental disability. This test would have detected the missing limbs, but there was a 1 in 500 chance that it could result in a miscarriage, and Morel argued that it was their decision, and he cannot be blamed. But according to the lawyer representing the couple, the second ultrasound given to them shows all four limbs intact, suggesting they were given false evidence.

The couple was awarded $4.5 million, to help Bryan have a good life, and stated that none of this was compensation for their mental anguish. But many people see this as the couple suing the hospital because they had a disabled child. This, the fact that the couple say they would have aborted their son, and the accusations of malpractice, all caused widespread outrage and debate.

America’s bloodiest and most costly conflict, the US Civil War claimed the lives of 620,000 men (roughly 2 percent of the population) with over 800,000 wounded or missing. Although the battlefields were covered with death, perhaps the most frightening places were the field hospitals. From the echoing screams of men undergoing amputations to the inexperienced doctors and lack of medical knowledge, many believed it was better to die on thefield than to face the surgeons, who were often considered to be butchers. The following 10 cases describe the horrors as well as astonishing, lesser-known facts about what the men endured throughout their time in Hell.

10 Drunken Surgeons

Alcohol was a vital commodity during the Civil War and was primarily used as an anesthetic during amputations. However, use quickly became abuse. Some took the occasional nip to dull their fears, while others, including the surgeons who were operating, got flat out drunk.

Phoebe Yates Pember, a Confederate hospital matron, once wrote of a patient who was brought in after his ankle had been crushed by a train. She described how after his ankle was set, the man was still in agonizing pain, and upon further investigation, Pember discovered that the patient’s bandaged leg was perfectly healthy and that the other leg was “swollen, inflamed and purple.” The surgeon was so intoxicated that he had set the wrong ankle. Soon after, fever set in, and the patient died.

Such stories of surgeons, officers, and even generals being intoxicated on the battlefields were not uncommon, given their access to whiskey and brandy. At the First Battle of Bull Run, a group of civilians and medical assistants who were supposed to drive medical wagons and collect the wounded from the field got into the medicinal liquor (aka whiskey) and became too drunk to be of any use. They ignored their wounded comrades, leaving them to die where they lay.

9 Smuggling Drugs Past Enemy Lines

The majority of medicinal drugs in the mid-1800s were manufactured in Europe and shipped to the United States. During the Civil War, the Union blockade of Southern ports prevented the Confederates from receiving shipments, including arms and medicine. This ultimately forced the Confederacy to obtain drugs through other means, such as processing indigenous medicinal plants, capturing enemy supplies, and smuggling.

One way that the South smuggled medicine past the Union blockades was through the use of children’s dolls. They would pack the medicine into the dolls’ hollowed papier-mache heads in order to avoid detection by the North’s blockades. The Union troops wouldn’t inspect the toys, since they were looking for obvious contraband.

Two drugs that were of great importance on the battlefield were morphine for pain and quinine. Quinine was vital for troops stricken with malaria, which spread like wildfire and claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers. Around 900,000 Union troops contracted malaria. The numbers of Confederates who fell ill hasn’t been well-documented, but given their lack of medicinal supplies, the numbers are presumed to be staggering.

8 Compassion In Gettysburg

Even though hundreds of thousands of men were dying on the battlefields from gunfire to hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, acts of humanity and compassion were evident in the Union hospitals, where doctors set aside their differences to care for the wounded. On July 1, 1863, the first day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, which claimed the lives of 7,000 men in the first 24 hours, Union officers overran the Lutheran Theological Seminary, converting the church into a hospital.

Although the church was officially a Union hospital, the doctors and local volunteers tended to both Union and Confederate soldiers as well as black soldiers, treating every injured man equally. The men were cared for and slept beside one another under the same roof for several days at a time. At its peak, the small church accommodated 150 wounded soldiers from both sides and continued to do so throughout the month, with 78 patients remaining on August 3.

7 Unqualified Doctors

During the Civil War, United Sates medical schools were far behind the educational quality of their European counterparts, which had four- year cirriculums. US medical schools, however, ran only two years, the second year primarily being a repeat of the first. In fact, US medical schools were so far behind that Harvard Medical School didn’t even have one stethoscope or microscope until after the war had ended. The majority of Civil War surgeons had never even performed surgery, let alone seen a gunshot wound.

To make matters worse, both the Union and Confederate armies were extremely understaffed. The Union Army only had 98 doctors, while the Confederates had 24. With the growing numbers of wounded soldiers reaching into the thousands every day, both the North and South began to take anyone who considered themselves a doctor. For the most part, their only medical knowledge came from a military surgery manual written by Dr. Samuel Gress, which would be their guide to performing life-saving emergency operations.

6 Bizarre Medical Treatments

Because medical education and knowledge during the Civil War was substandard to say the least, bizarre and absurd medical treatments were practiced, only making the injured and sick worse off. For instance, severe gonorrhea was “treated” with whiskey mixed with silkweed root, pine resin, and small pieces of blue vitriol. We can assume that such a concoction did nothing to combat the venereal disease. If a patient was suffering from syphilis, which caused genital ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, pustule rashes, fever, sore throat, and even neurological problems, a doctor would prescribe mercury, an extremely toxic chemical element.

Doctors considered pus a good sign, believing that a wound was healing when in fact, the injury was infected. To make matters worse, doctors unknowingly infected other patients by intentionally transferring pus from patients who had it to those who didn’t, assuming that it would be beneficial. Patients suffering from diarrhea were given chloride of mercury, a violent laxative also known as a purgative. This would cause the already dehydrated soldiers to lose even more fluids via vomiting and extreme diarrhea, thus compounding their illness, ultimately leading to death.

5 Working Around The Clock

If it wasn’t bad enough that the physicians during the Civil War were unqualified and practiced bizarre treatment regimens, the fact that they were greatly understaffed made a terrible situation far worse. Melvin Walker of the 13th Massachusetts Infantry described how surgeons operating at the division hospital where he was taken worked without rest or sleep for 36 hours straight, often with little food and no help.

Following the Battle of the Wilderness, roughly 7,000 wounded soldiers were taken to Fredericksburg, a trip that took many over 24 hours to make due to the clogged roads and primitive ambulances, which were horse-drawn wagons. Upon arriving at the hospital, the 7,000 wounded men were met with only 40 surgeons available to tend to their needs. Surgeon George Stevens of the 77th New York regiment described how hundreds of ambulances were continuously arriving, men were dropping dead all around him one by one, and that he and his fellow surgeons “were almost worked to death.” It’s understandable why there were more casualties off the battlefield than on.

4 The Great Anesthesia Myth

One of the greatest myths of the Civil War was that there were no anesthetics for operations such as amputating limbs, which was commonplace in the hospitals. Amputation was so common, in fact, that piles of arms and legs would be strewn around in every direction the eye could see. Contrary to popular belief, those undergoing surgery were often sedated with chloroform and whiskey, causing them to partially lose consciousness and not feel pain. The screams that field hospitals were so known for were often from soldiers who’d just learned that they were going to lose a limb and hadn’t yet been sedated.

Although the men were reported to be only partially sedated, when properly anesthetized, the wounded would feel no pain at all during surgery. Although it’s uncertain as to how many successful operations took place in terms of the anesthesia working, the best example of proper sedation is that of Stonewall Jackson’s amputation. Jackson, whose left arm needed to be amputated, described how once the chloroform kicked in, the only thing he noticed was the sound of the saw cutting through the bone of his arm. Other than that, Jackson claimed that he faded into a stupor while repeating the words “blessing, blessing, blessing,” free of pain.

3 Battling The Real Enemy

During the Civil War, disease ran rampant. The battlefields, camps, and hospitals were filled with typhoid, pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, and malaria, just to name a few. With the exception of malaria, there were no medications or cures available. Those infected would only become more ill, further spreading disease. The local streams were quickly contaminated, leading to the development and spread of yet more diseases, including dysentery, which accounted for 45,000 Union deaths and 50,000 Confederate deaths.

Lack of sanitation and hygiene only made the situation worse. Surgeons would use the same tools continuously on hundreds of patients without ever cleaning their instruments, thus causing cross contamination. Often, the surgeon would hold his bloody tool in his mouth while operating, possibly infecting himself.

Of the 620,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, two thirds succumbed not to enemy fire but to the endless array of diseases lurking all around them. Their frail and weakened bodies, exhausted and worn from continuous battle as well as horrendous diet and lack of food took an immense toll on their immune systems, making it impossible to stand any chance of overcoming an illness. It’s a misconception that the greatest danger was on the battlefield, when in fact the real enemy was visible only under a microscope.

2 The Dawn Of Modern Medicine

Although the greatest number of casualties during the Civil War stemmed from the lack of medical knowledge and understanding, it did become apparent to physicians that a change in medical practice was necessary, thus paving the way to new research and knowledge. Physicians began to document their observations from hundreds of different cases, which would ultimately aid researchers after the war.

For instance, medical officers realized that sanitation could greatly reduce the spread of disease. Some hospitals took notice that washing bandages in hot, soapy water in order to reuse them caused the infection rates to decrease, unlike other hospitals that weren’t conducting such practices. Because of this correlation, the birth of sanitation had begun.

The Civil War also gave rise to modern emergency medicine and ambulatory evacuation, not seen prior to the 1860s. It was of great importance that the wounded be carried off the battlefields to a nearby station, where they were attended to prior to being taken to a hospital. This gave way to the bigger concept of moving someone swiftly in order to provide care to save their life, a standard which will forever be practiced in warfare.

1 Dr. Mary Walker

The story of Dr. Mary Walker is not only one of sacrifice and courage, but heroism that has broken down barriers for female physicians ever since. After Dr. Walker received her medical degree, she headed to the front lines, where she worked in tent hospitals in Warrenton and Fredericksburg, Virginia. The following year, Dr. Walker was stationed in Tennessee, where she was appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland by General H. Thomas.

Dr. Walker was captured by the Confederate Army in April 1864. She was imprisoned in Richmond, Virginia, for four long months. Following her release, Dr. Walker began to supervise a hospital for women prisoners and an orphanage after becoming an acting assistant surgeon with the Ohio 52nd Infantry, a feat no woman had ever accomplished.

Dr. Walker served honorably until the war had come to an end. In 1865, she was awarded the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker wore the medal with great pride every day from that point on until her passing in 1919. To this day, Dr. Walker remains the only woman to have ever received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Adam is just a hubcap trying to hold on in the fast lane.

Medical Research and the study of Human Health are subjects that offer an extensive and ever expanding range of puzzling and in some cases, disturbing phenomena. The lesser known, exceptional or downright weird occurrences in the medical field thus continue to fascinate Listverse readers and scientists alike. In this new and unusual account, we discover how contact lenses can trigger blindness, consider cases of infant development outside of the womb, learn why potato chips could make you angry, and explore a mysterious infection that discriminates by sex.

10Cold Urticaria

While most allergies are in response to physical stimuli, Cold Urticaria is an allergic reaction to cold temperatures. It is triggered when the immune system is exposed to sudden drops in temperature or contact with a chilled object. Hives, swelling and severe itching may result from attacks of Cold Urticaria, while falling in cold water or spending too much time in a walk-in freezer could prove fatal for the most severely affected. The condition is diagnosed by testing with ice cubes, and immune support therapies may be prescribed in addition to relocating to a warmer climate.

9Ectopic Pregnancy

Pregnancy begins when the sperm successfully merges with an egg, which begins to develop inside the uterus as an embryo. However, in around one percent of pregnancies, the fertilized egg becomes lodged outside the uterus and the embryo develops in what is known as an ectopic pregnancy. The fallopian tubes linking the ovaries to the uterus are the location accounting for the majority of ectopic pregnancies. As the fetus develops outside the normal location, severe medical complications may result, leading to death when proper medical care is not provided. Ectopic pregnancies are normally terminated to prevent fatal complications, but in rare cases, babies have been delivered alive and healthy after developing entirely outside of the womb.

8Smoker’s Penile Reduction

Smoking is often associated with lung cancer or increased respiratory illness, but one of the primary effects of smoking is its ability to constrict and interfere with circulation. Nicotine tightens blood vessels, while calcification and increased carbon monoxide levels associated with the practice further impair the human cardiovascular system. The potential for heart disease comes to mind, but it turns out for men that lighting up sticks may affect another very important stick: The blood vessels in the penis are only half the size of those in the heart, and are even more rapidly compromised by the effects of smoking. Studies suggest that men who smoke may experience a certain reduction in both flaccid and erect penis size as a result.

7Human Spinal Cord Redundancy

The spinal cord forms a tightly wired nerve bundle that is both complex and easily injured. While complete severing of the spinal cord will generally remove all function below the injury site, the spinal cord is different from a manmade electronic cable in that impairment levels do not correspond to the degree of spinal damage. The spinal nerves are in fact highly redundant and interconnected, so even a 90 percent gap in the spinal cord may not deprive a victim of the ability to walk. The implications of this include the fact that a cure for spinal cord injuries may be easier to achieve than once thought. Partial, “random” regeneration, rather than nerve by nerve reconnection, may suffice to return mobility. In an even more bizarre finding, blue dye injections dramatically reduced the impact of spinal cord injuries in rats, a treatment that must be tracked for humans.

6Situs Inversus

Situs Inversus is a rare condition affecting less than 1 in 10,000 individuals where the main visceral organs in the abdomen and thorax are reversed, or “mirrored” in position. The heart will typically be transposed to the right hand side, while the stomach and spleen trade places with the liver and gall bladder, while the intestines and other organs are “misplaced”. Complications can result from misaligned blood vessels, and those affected often carry a special note affixed to their person to ensure a surgeon would not operate “backwards” on them in the case of a medical emergency. Many with the condition do not realize they have it until it is discovered by a medical professional. Although the condition is rather odd, patients appear normal externally, and can usually live normal lives.

5Contact Lens Blindness

Acanthamoeba Keratis is the scientific term for the way contact lenses can blind you. While developing nations face the worst water quality threats, most tap water in the United States contains Acanthamoeba microbes. When contact lens users rinse their lenses with tap water, the lenses become coated with the bacteria. If a slight, imperceptible scratch occurs during replacement of the lens, the amoebas may invade the eye, causing an infectious inflammation known as keratitis. The effects of the attack may include swelling, redness and irritation, while severe cases can actually cause blindness. 85 percent of reported infections occurred in contact lens users, suggesting sterile wash, and not tap water should be used to clean contact lenses.

4Whipple’s Disease

A man may have to eat a peck of dirt before dying, but the potential to contract Whipple’s Disease means it may have been the dirt that killed him. Tropheryma whipplei bacteria cause a potentially fatal suite of including gastrointestinal lesions symptoms if not properly treated with a round of antibiotics. However, the exact method of contraction remains a rather disturbing mystery of medicine. The organism is far more prevalent in the environment than one would expect based on rates of infection, suggesting infection is highly dependent on body condition, rather than exposure. Especially bizarre is the fact that 87% of infections involve men. Disturbingly, Whipple’s Disease may mimic almost any neurological disorder as bacteria affect the nervous system, hindering detection.

3Potato Chip Rage

Potato Chips—you cannot have just one. But what you might possibly have, according to preliminary researchers, is a case of trans-fat induced personality change. Researchers at the University of California at San Diego conducting a controlled study of several hundred male and female participants found statistically significant increases in hostility and aggressive behaviors resulting from consumption of fast food. The study was controlled for variables such as Caffeine and Nicotine use, and pointed towards an apparent correlation between levels of trans-fatty acids in the diet and behavior. The mechanism for the effects is thought to stem from the ability of trans-fats to interfere with the body’s natural levels of DHEA, a long chain fatty acid that is known to impact mood and act as a natural anti-depressant.

2Muscle Tissue in the Lungs

Abbreviated as LAM, Lymphangioleiomyomatosis is an exceedingly weird lung condition that only affects women, at an average age of around 34, in the vast majority of cases. LAM involves the uncontrolled growth of an unusual type of smooth muscle tissues throughout the lungs, airways and blood vessels of the respiratory system, leading to serious impairments in breathing, and sometimes death. In an even odder twist, the runaway smooth muscle cells may arise from cloned tissue when LAM is of the type associated with the non-malignant tumor disorder known as Tuberous Sclerosis. The disease may be managed to a certain degree, but the fact that symptoms may be mistaken for Asthma may hinder treatment until the disease reaches an advanced stage.

1Parrot Fever

Though a great source of intelligent companionship, pet birds can also give you a potentially fatal case of Psittacosis. Also known as “parrot fever”, Psittacosis is an aggressive, avian form of Chlamydiosis, closely related to the disease better known as a sexually transmitted infection in humans. The infection reached pandemic proportions in the late 1920s following increased importation of parrots from South America, and deaths have occurred from time to time since. The disease may manifest as high fevers, muscle rigidity, and eye irritation, all the way to spleen enlargement, heart distress and brain swelling. Fortunately, death is usually preventable through appropriate antibiotic treatment.

Mike Williams is an ardent follower of science with a passion for the unexplained or unusual. His writing interests include strange medical facts, world mysteries and new technology.

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.