Ah, the good old days, when there were no government agencies regulating what you could and couldn’t sell as a medical miracle. The 1800s were a time when people knew enough about medicine and the human body to be dangerous—and enough about capitalism to be doubly dangerous. There were few, if any, drug regulations and no agency was insisting that companies list their miracle cures’ ingredients on bottles. The result was babies addicted to heroin and adults swearing by the hydrochloric acid they rubbed on their scalps.

1 Victory V Lozenges

Victory V Lozenges were an extremely popular cough drop in Britain starting in the mid-1800s. Developed in part by confectioner Thomas Fryer, they were advertised to relieve symptoms of the common cold. Because of their pleasingly sweet liquorice taste and the warm feeling they created in those who took them, their popularity skyrocketed. They were a particular hit with sailors because, in a 19th century stroke of marketing genius, they were tied to Admiral Nelson and his ship.

For many years, they continued to be made in the sweets factory of Fry and Company, continuing their candy-like advertising campaign. Unfortunately, that warm feeling was created by the lozenges’ other active ingredients—ether and chlorodyne, a mix of cannabis and chloroform. Victory V Lozenges are still available, without the ether and chlorodyne.

9 Dr. Thomas’s Eclectric Oil

Dr. Thomas’s Eclectric Oil was a miraculous cure-all that made some unbelievable claims, purporting not only to cure a wide variety of ailments, but to do so in a very specific amount of time. A backache would be gone in 2 hours, while an earache would disappear in 2 minutes. Toothaches, deafness, coughing, and sore throats could all be cured by this miracle drug, and it would also relieve the pain associated with burns when applied to the skin.

Developed in the mid-1800s by Dr. S.N. Thomas of New York and later marketed under the name Excelsior Eclectric Oil, this remedy had as an eclectic mix of ingredients as ailments it claimed to cure. Active ingredients were opium, chloroform, hemlock oil, turpentine, an unspecified type of alcohol, and alkanet (for color). The commercially produced product was so popular that recipes were published in books like 1899’s Secret Nostrums and Systems of Medicine by Charles Wilmot, giving people the chance to mix their own version.

8 Perry Davis’ Vegetable Pain Killer

Perry Davis was born into a poor family in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. An apprentice shoemaker turned failed inventor, his middle years were haunted by chronic aches and pains from colds, coughs, stomach pains, and kidney distress. He turned his inventor’s mind to curing himself, mixing a concoction of all herbal and naturally growing ingredients.

Several centuries before “all-natural” would become a popular catchphrase and marketing tool, Davis created his Vegetable Pain Killer. Testifying that it had cured him of all that ailed him, he went on to become known worldwide for his concoction that cured everything from cholera to coughs. It was even administered to horses in the Civil War to alleviate their aches and pains. The concoction was, indeed, all-natural—and included a hefty dose of opium and ethyl alcohol.

7 The Microbe Killer

William Radam took quack medicine and hoaxes to a whole new level in the late 1880s. Standing on the shoulders of recent scientific discoveries that suggested disease was closely tied to the presence of tiny microbes in the body, Radam’s Microbe Killer made some pretty hefty claims. The tonic was supposed to purify the blood and rid the body of any microbes that were causing disease and discomfort, and Radam had the support of a handful of people who claimed to have been completely cured of their ailments by his miraculous cure. The Microbe Killer wasn’t just a miracle cure, it was a safe miracle cure.

Made by exposing water to the vapors that came from sulfur, sodium nitrate, manganese oxide, sandalwood, and potassium chloride, it was touted as not just another one of those so-called miracles of modern medicine that attracted gullible people with hope of a revolutionary, scientific cure. This was the real thing, created by a humble gardener with no other interests aside from making the world a better place. Fortunately for Radam, more people read advertisements than read the transcripts of lawsuits and the findings of an analysis by the Department of Agriculture. Radam made a fortune from the sale of a miracle tonic that was 99 percent water.

6 Gripe Water

Gripe water is another modern medicine that is simply a safer version of what it once was. An American invention of the 1840s, gripe water was given to colicky babies to stop their crying and relieve their discomfort. It certainly did its job, as it contained sodium bicarbonate, dill seed oil, sugar, water, and as much as 9 percent pure alcohol.

An offshoot of a medicine designed to treat a strain of malaria in babies, gripe water is still commonly recommended by doctors to soothe a baby suffering from colic. Now, however, the active ingredient is the combination of herbs that breaks up air bubbles in the baby’s digestive system—not alcohol that knocks them out.

5 The Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower And Scalp Cleaner

Fletcher Sutherland was a reverend in Cambria, New York in the late 1880s. Another early genius of marketing, Sutherland used his seven daughters and their singing act to promote his Hair Grower and Scalp Cleaner. More important than their singing ability was their collective 11 meters (37 ft) of hair. Rumors had started that their long-deceased mother used a special tonic to grow their hair to such lengths. Sutherland saw no reason why he shouldn’t capitalize on the rumors, so he created a concoction, bottled it, and started to sell it.

The girls, who had since joined Barnum & Bailey Circus, promoted a hair product that eventually raised them more than $3 million. With the honest reputation of their preacher father and living proof in the girls’ long hair, who would think that the mixture of rum, salt, magnesia, and hydrochloric acid wouldn’t work?

4 Coca Wine

Coca wine was the original energy drink. It wasn’t just marketed as a wine, but also as a medicinal drink that would cure fatigue of the body and mind as well as offer an emotional pick-me-up. It certainly would, as it was mostly a mixture of alcohol and cocaine.

Vin Mariani, a Corsican company founded in 1863, was at the forefront of coca wine production. Boasting more than 7,000 written endorsements from physicians on how the product stimulated brain, body, and nerves, they also had one stellar endorsement that topped them all—a gold medal from Pope Leo XIII. The pope was said to carry a hip flask of the stuff for those times when prayer just didn’t cut it and appeared on a promotional poster, along with his endorsement: “His Holiness The Pope writes that he has fully appreciated the benefits of this Tonic Wine.”

Another notable producer of coca wine was American John Pemberton. His original concoction of wine and cocaine hit a production roadblock when prohibition outlawed the sale of wine. He was forced to replace the wine in his drink with a sugar syrup, marketing it as “the temperance drink.” eventually, the cocaine was removed as well, but the name Coca-Cola stuck.

3 Dr. Scott’s Electric Devices

While not containing opium, heroin, cocaine, or alcohol, Dr. Scott still deserves a place among the others due of sheer volume and mislabeling of his devices. Though he called his creations electric devices, their curative powers lay in the magnetically charged iron rods that were in each of his hair and flesh brushes. While it might be a given that an “electric” hair brush would relieve headaches and prevent baldness, Dr. George Scott went a few steps further and claimed they could also cure constipation, blood diseases and paralysis.

He didn’t stop at brushes, either—he released a whole line of magnetic devices including corsets, belts, button hooks, curling combs, bracelets, toothbrushes, nail brushes, hats, anklets, rings, shoulder braces, shoe insets, and even brushes for horses. In perhaps his most brilliant marketing move, Scott warns against sharing his electric devices, because the more people that used an item, the more its healing powers would be depleted.

2 Cocaine Toothache Drops

At least Lloyd Manufacturing was truthful in the labeling of their Cocaine Toothache Drops. Boasting an “Instantaneous Cure!” for only 15 cents, Cocaine Toothache Drops were made in Albany, New York in the 1880s. And, perhaps frighteningly, they worked. The cocaine was prepared in such as way that it acted as a topical anesthetic while minimizing the mood-altering effects of the substance, but somehow, it still doesn’t seem as safe for both children and adults, as advertised.

Cocaine-based throat lozenges were also extremely popular—they also acted as a topical anesthetic, numbing the pain of a sore throat. Many druggists and chemists would buy tablets in bulk and repackage them under their own labels.

1 Bayer Heroin

In the case of Bayer, it wasn’t a matter of a company or individual using what’s now a controlled substance as a cure-all. With Bayer, they invented it. The first manufactured heroin was a product of the Bayer pharmaceutical company in Germany. Production started in 1897, and within two years, the company was making a ton of heroin each year. It was exported around the world, where it was used as a cure for tuberculosis and pneumonia and as a pain-killer.

Oddly enough, heroin was also marketed as a solution to a problem that had grown to be worldwide by the late 1800s—opium addiction. The first solution to getting people off their opium addiction was to switch them to the supposedly less dangerous morphine. When that didn’t work, they tried weaning opium and morphine addicts onto this new, also supposedly less dangerous drug called heroin. Medical reports around the world gave heroin a cautious thumbs-up into the 1900s, and it was even approved by the American Medical Association in 1906. Obviously, it didn’t work, and by 1924, it’s estimated that 98 percent of New York’s drug addicts were addicted to heroin.

Medieval medicine involved beliefs and remedies that seem bizarre to us today. Understanding the beliefs behind the cures makes them seem less so.

Medieval physicians believed the human body to be a microcosmic version of the macrocosm, or the universe. This belief was central to philosophical traditions dating back to ancient Rome and Greece. It was the foundation of medieval medicine, and it was developed from the works of Pythagoras and Galen, among others.

In Galenic theory, good health depended on the proper balance of dry, moist, cold, and warm. These qualities were present in the four humors: Air was associated with the blood. Choler was fire and found in the red or yellow bile. Phlegm was cold and moist and was thought of as a watery, mucous substance. Black bile was cold and dry and was the unhealthiest humor.

Medieval remedies were based on the principle that this wholeness of existence infused everything—words, minerals, the seasons, locations, and plants and animals. An affliction was due to some cosmological imbalance in the patient; the remedy must correct this imbalance. Remedies could involve preparing “simples” (remedies of one ingredient taken from nature), bloodletting, cupping, and other procedures that seem bizarre to the modern mind.

10 Swallows’ Gizzards For Epilepsy

This prescription from the famous 14-century English physician John of Gaddesden is a “simple”:

The little red stones found in the gizzards of swallows, which are forever helpful if they are hung on the patient’s neck. After catching the swallows on the nest and cutting their gizzards, remove the stones in the middle of the day: they are useful, for they cure epileptic, insane, and lunatic patients.

The timing of the stones’ removal of the stones would have been important to the medieval doctor because the Sun is warm, and the Moon is cold. The stones are “hot,” as is the Sun; the efficacy of this cure would be related the fact that the epileptic’s seizures were the result of too much fire or heat in the brain. As 12th-century Benedictine abbess St. Hildegard von Bingen and others believed, “Like cures like.”

9 Detect Thieves And Prevent Defamation With Marigolds

The Book of Secrets of Albertus Magnus is an herbal remedy guide that includes astrological influences. One such remedy, as quoted in Harmony and Healing: The Theoretical Basis for Ancient and Medieval Medicine by James J. Garber, prescribes a ritual using marigolds to guard against thievery or being talked down by others:

[ . . . ] if it [marigold] be gathered, the sun being in the sign of Leo, in August, and be wrapped in the leaf of a Laurel, or Bay tree and a wolf’s tooth be added thereto no man shall be able to have a word to speak against the bearer thereto, but words of peace. And if any thing be stolen, if the bearer of things before named lays them under his head in the night, he shall see the thief and all his conditions.

This cure combines the properties of the marigold with the power of the Sun strongly enough to give the person magical powers. Magic was commonly held to be true in the Middle Ages, although the Church strongly discouraged its practice.

8 Mandrake Root For Depression

The mandrake root looks man-like. Its magical powers are enlarged due to this quality of its appearing to be human.

For depression, St. Hildegard von Bingen advises digging up a mandrake root, which will reportedly scream when pulled from the ground. Immediately put the mandrake into a spring and soak it for a day and night so that the evil inside it will be purged. Put it next to you in bed, and say the following prayer:

God, you made the human being from the mud of the earth without pain; now I place next to me this earth which has never been stepped on, so that even my earth shall feel that peace, just as you created it.

The result is that you will “receive happiness, and your heart will sense recovery.”

This cure is a good example of using words (prayers) and the curative power of the plant without having to ingest it or even apply it to your skin. It reflects the medieval people’s belief in magic.

7 Banish Anxiety With Bear’s Hair

Anxiety must have been as common in the Middle Ages as it is today, for there is a cure for it in von Bingen’s Physica:

Take some hair from between the bear’s ears, and place it on your chest over your heart until it warms up. Immediately you will be peaceful and calm.

The strength and serenity of the bear is infused into the anxious person, giving them confidence and serenity.

6 A Unicorn’s Hoof To Detect Poison

If you think someone is trying to poison you, put the hoof of a unicorn under your plate or cup. If the dish is hot, the hoof will make it boil. If what you have been served is cold, the hoof will make it steam.

This ability of a unicorn’s hoof to detect poisons in food is the result of the purity of the unicorn, which by the Middle Ages, had come to represent Christ and purity.

5 For Testicle Ailments . . . 

If you’re experiencing problems with your testicles, St. Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica has you covered:

He should burn a swallow’s egg in its shell, and then grind it to a powder. Add some chicken fat, and mix. Anoint the testicles with the mixture.

This remedy imparts the healing powers of the egg. The cooked egg has a perfect balance of the humors, hence its healing powers.

4 Wear A Live Bat For Jaundice

For jaundice, the Physica tells you to stun a bat by striking it gently. Then, tie it over your loins. Make sure the bat’s back is facing your back. Wait a little while, and then tie it over your stomach. Leave it there until it dies. Another remedy for jaundice is to tie a dead widderwalo, a kind of bird, over your stomach.

In Galenic medicine, yellow bile was associated with jaundice. The bird and the bat being associated with a cure for jaundice could indicate that these animals were able to counter the heat of the yellow bile with either their own heat or perhaps their cooling properties.

3 Lion’s Ear Hearing Aid

According to the Physica, a lion’s ear can cure hearing loss:

Hold the ear of a lion on the deaf ear until that ear warms up from the ear of the lion. Also say, “Hear adimacus, by the living God, and by the sharpness of the lion’s strong hearing.”

This cure uses words and the idea of “like curing like,” common threads in medieval medicine.

2 Contraception

In the 11th or 12th century, Trotula of Salerno, a woman living in Italy, wrote a book on women’s medicine called De passionibus mulierum (On the Diseases of Women). Almost nothing is known about who this woman was or about her life. The Trotula, as the book came to be called, was in wide use in Europe in the late 12th through the 15th centuries.

To prevent pregnancy, the Trotula advised women to carry the womb of a goat that has never given birth against their nude flesh. This remedy is also given in the English remedy book Bodley 591.

1 Medieval Viagra

The many remedies for impotence, conception, and contraception in medieval remedy books show that the medieval people were as preoccupied by sex as we are today. In Bodley 591, there is a Middle Ages version of Viagra:

A man “who has lost his kynde and is cold in the body or porpis” should make a concoction of seeds of fennel and persill (parsley), lyngnum aloes (agarwood), galingale, canell (cinnamon from cassia bark), cardamon, and other ingredients. Mash these all together in a mortar and then put them into a basin, add sugar, and melt it together. Take a handful of what is left after the mixture has melted, put it in a glass, and drink it.

The manuscript says “ [ . . . ] this is a very good drynk, and an holsom ho woll use hit to restor a man anow.”

+ Faking Virginity

The Trotula gives some practical advice on how to fake virginity:

Mix together one or two ounces each of dragon’s blood, hematite, oak apples, Armenian bole (a kind of clay), cinnamon, pomegranate rind, alum (an ingredient in styptic pencils), and mastic. Put this mixture into your vagina.

The mastic and alum would give this mixture a stickiness that would become liquid when warmed.

Davanna Cimino is a writer and editor living on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Connect with her on Twitter @davanna.

So you’re feeling achy, sneezy, congested, or queasy due to contracting a cold. In that case, you might want to check out some of these natural albeit bizarre cold remedies with the caveat that they are not necessarily “doctor recommended.”

Let’s explore ten of the most bizarre cold remedies.

10 Wet Socks

This cold remedy will literally give you cold feet, which doesn’t sound too enticing when you already have a cold.

Here’s what to do. Take a pair of your socks- preferably cotton or wool as opposed to socks made from synthetic fibers. Soak them in ice-cold water and then wring out the excess water. Pull the socks over your bare feet. Shivers!

Next, pull a dry pair of socks over the wet pair. Climb into bed under the covers, making sure your feet stay warm and snug. When you wake up, you should find that the original wet pair of socks are completely dry in the morning. Doing this wet sock-dry-sock routine supposedly increases your body’s natural immunity while increasing blood circulation to the feet and simultaneously relieving the congestion in your head. Oh, and it also assists with the elimination of waste from the body.

9 Homemade Cough Lozenges

This homemade, natural cold remedy will soothe your sore throat along with your weary soul. It’s no fun to have a bad cough that leaves your throat feeling raw. Follow this recipe, and hopefully, these custom-made lozenges will give you some much-needed relief.

Place a saucepan on a stove burner. Add one cup of white granulated sugar and half a cup of water. Add one teaspoon of fresh lemon juice for a hit of vitamin C, one tablespoon of honey (an antibacterial that soothes a sore throat and acts as a natural cough suppressant). Add one and a half teaspoons of ground ginger (acts as an anti-inflammatory, helps maintain the immune system, and aids with pain relief and nausea). Add 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (reduces phlegm, has antiseptic properties, and contains antioxidants).

Turn on the burner and stir all the ingredients together thoroughly. Simmer on low for fifteen to twenty minutes. Stir regularly. Meanwhile, cover a cookie sheet with baking parchment. After the ingredients have finished simmering, remove the pan from the burner to allow the mixture to cool. As it cools, it should become a thick syrup.

Next, spoon teaspoons full of syrup onto the parchment about the size of a quarter per lozenge. Space them out so they don’t run together. Let the lozenges set completely. When they’ve hardened, sift powdered sugar over them and mix them around so each lozenge is completely coated. This dusting of confectioner’s sugar keeps the lozenges from sticking to each other.

8 Listening to Music

We all know that music is good for the soul but did you know it’s also good for a cold? Research done by German scientists revealed that listening (to jazz music in particular) reduces stress, which amplifies immunoglobulin levels in the body.

Immunoglobulin is a naturally occurring protein that helps the body defend itself against infection. By listening to jazz, or the second-best type of music- dance music, your antibody levels will rise while cortisol, a stress hormone, decreases. A body in a restful state has a much better chance of coming back into balance from a cold than when it is stressed.

So kick back, put in your earbuds, and lose yourself in the music. Your cold-riddled body will thank you for it.

7 Cupping and Scraping

Cupping, an ancient Chinese healing remedy, on the surface, seems a bizarre remedy for colds. If you’re experiencing congestion due to a cold, then cupping might be a good choice for relieving it. Cupping triggers your body’s energy which helps to restore and heal it.

During an appointment with a practitioner, cups are placed on the skin. Each cup is heated or pumped manually to create suction and then left on the skin for a few minutes.

There are different types of cups. Your practitioner may use edge cups, electric suction cups, Zen clear cups, or oval glass cups. They all essentially do the same thing: massage the skin at a deep level, causing increased blood flow. Increased blood flow detoxes the area where a cup has been applied.

Please note you might react to cupping treatment with a headache, nausea, fatigue, or burns if the cups are overheated before being applied to the skin. But as a rule, cupping is generally pain-free.

Another treatment is scraping, traditionally known as gua sha. The treatment entails running a scraping tool across muscle fibers, myofascial lines, along lymphatic tracks, and the meridians of the body. During a cold, having this kind of treatment can open the skin’s pores and release inflammation in the body.

When you’re feeling miserable and are desperate for some relief, any viable treatment such as this one is worth considering.

6 Make a Poultice

Making and applying a tallow poultice to your chest to relieve congestion is not just an old wives’ tale. This peculiar cold remedy is a combination of an African and European home remedy.

Take rendered cattle or sheep tallow, otherwise known as fat, and gently warm it to soften it. To the tallow, add some herbs. For example, mint aids in clearing up your congestion, while mustard adds a little heat to the poultice. Experiment with the herbs you have in your garden.

Once the tallow and herbs have been mixed, wrap the mixture in a piece of cotton flannel cloth and apply it to the chest.

Another poultice you might want to try making consists of mustard, flour, and water. Simply mix four tablespoons of flour with two tablespoons of dry mustard. Add enough lukewarm water to make a paste. Take a smooth tea towel (not terry cloth) and spread the paste over half the towel on one side. Fold the remaining half of the towel over the paste and apply to the chest. Leave the poultice on the chest for twenty minutes.

Afterward, wipe away any residue from the poultice with a clean, damp cloth. You should apply this mustard poultice once every six hours.

5 Lizard Soup

North American’s have a tradition of serving a cold sufferer warm chicken soup. But in China, lizard soup is served instead.

To simmering water, add a dehydrated lizard along with yams and dates. Cook until yams are soft. It’s reported that this soup reduces coughing and soothes other common cold symptoms. Most importantly, the broth helps to rehydrate the body due to the loss of fluids from repeatedly blowing your nose and sweating, and it aids in loosening built-up mucus.

4 Gogol-Mogol

The phrase “gag me with a spoon” comes to mind when it comes to Gogol-Mogol. Gogol-Mogol is a medicinal hot drink served to citizens in Ukraine and Russia who are inflicted with a cold.

Gogol-Mogol is made by taking one beaten egg yolk and a teaspoon of sweetener – sugar or honey and whisking them together. It’s then added to half a cup of hot milk. Next, dissolve one tablespoon of unsalted butter in the warm mixture.

To make this drink more palatable, you may wish to add a little cognac or rum; of course, this addition is for adults only. It’s believed the egg yolk soothes the throat while the L-tryptophan found in the warm milk helps you to sleep more soundly when stricken with a cold.

3 Onions and Lard

If you’re suffering from a sore throat due to a cold, you might want to slice up a raw onion and stuff it inside your socks! It turns out onions contain allicin. Allicin can reduce inflammation in the body and acts as an antioxidant.

Speaking of socks, here is an old English remedy. Take a pair of dirty socks and wrap them around your neck after first greasing the neck with either rendered chicken fat or lard. Doing this is thought to bring on sweating. And finally, seeing we are on the topic of socks, before putting on a fresh, clean pair of socks, consider rubbing Vicks VapoRub on the bottom of your feet first.

People who use this bizarre cold remedy claim it offers relief from congestion and coughing.

2 Oysters, Anyone?

Oysters are packed with zinc. So if you feel a cold coming on or, better yet, want to build up your zinc levels as cold season approaches, start eating oysters.

The strange thing is that fried and breaded oysters contain more zinc than the raw ones, which is good news for people who don’t have fresh oysters. If you don’t already know it, zinc helps to fight off cold symptoms because zinc aids in the function of our white blood cells. And it’s the white blood cells that fight viral and bacterial infections in the body.

Other sources of food rich in zinc are legumes, so you might think of making a pot of lentil soup. Also, dairy products, spinach, and meat are excellent sources of zinc.

1 Turnips

Who would guess the lowly turnip is an expectorant?

An expectorant aids in quieting coughing and can loosen mucus in the body when sick. Turnips are also loaded with vitamins A, B, and C. In Iran, it’s very common for people suffering from a cold to cook up a plate of turnips, mash them and devour them to reduce their cold symptoms.

Or you may want to try making a turnip concoction to relieve your sore throat or painful, persistent coughing!

Simply peel and cut up a turnip into pieces. Take 150 grams of these pieces and boil them in a pot with a liter of milk. Simmer for a good forty minutes. Strain the liquid off, and let it cool for a bit before drinking it. To make it more palatable, add some honey. This concoction reduces coughing due to a naturally occurring sulfurous ingredient that loosens and eliminates phlegm and disinfects the respiratory tract.

And finally, if eating mashed turnips or drinking milk infused with turnips isn’t appealing, you might prefer a turnip syrup. Make the syrup by first peeling a turnip. Next, cut it into thin slices. In a bowl or plastic container, lay down a slice of turnip, sprinkle on some brown sugar, add another slice of turnip, and so on. Cover the container and let the turnip and sugar sit for twelve hours. Drain off the turnip syrup and store in a bottle. Sip as needed.