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HomeHEALTHBleeding to blisters: weird medicines in the doctor's cabinet

Bleeding to blisters: weird medicines in the doctor’s cabinet

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For centuries, before modern medicine came into being, medicine was developed basically through trial and error. Mankind endured some bizarre and even dangerous treatments for centuries. In this excerpt from the author’s book ‘The Fascinating History of Medicine and Surgery in the World’, be surprised by the outrageous.

Medicine is one of the most nascent of sciences. Hence, it is but natural that its history is full of examples that would appear to be nothing but outrageous to the modern reader. Still, it is extremely important to learn about the historical stages because mankind endured them for millennia. The patients served as de facto guinea pigs, and their fate became stepping stones in the progress of medical science. Some ancient practices were modified to render them safe. Cauterization, for example, is practiced even today in a slightly modified form.

The book is available on Amazon

The few examples given below would serve well to remind you how far we have come. It has been a very long and tedious journey indeed. Mankind stumbled a lot on the way; embraced horrors, errors, outrageous, and arbitrary decisions with gusto; and clung doggedly to archaic practices in the name of respecting predecessors and ancestors. It makes a greatly exciting and at times scary story. Still, remember that, at all times, we have had a few people who dared to differ, question authority and chart a new course.

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Blood-letting

Blood-letting was the most popular method in which ‘impure’ substances or bad humors were sought to be taken out of the body to restore the balance of humors. The practice started in ancient Egypt and continued up to the 19th century. The Greeks took it from the Egyptians. After Hippocrates, the most influential physician Galen was a very strong supporter of blood-letting. By the Middle Ages, blood-letting had crystallized as the standard treatment for things ranging from gout to epilepsy, smallpox, and even plague.

The earliest tools for blood-letting were naturally sharp thorns or animal teeth, or sharpened pieces of wood, stone or bone. By the time of Hippocrates, they used a tool called phlebotome for this, which was the predecessor of the lancet. The modern word phlebotomy for drawing blood for laboratory tests comes from this. By the 15th century, they had introduced the thumb lancet (with an adjustable blade). Then a spring-loaded lancet was also introduced. Another instrument called fleam was a narrow, half-inch long curved blade on a long handle which penetrated just deep enough to puncture a vein. The fleam had a channel cut in its handle so that one tool could both make the wound and hold it open. The blood drained into a bowl, which also measured the quantity taken out. They never bothered to treat the wound caused by all that cutting.

Such was the belief in blood-letting that even William Harvey, whom we remember with respect for his discovery of blood circulation, supported it. George Washington remained president for two terms until 1797. He went back to his plantations after that. In December 1799, he caught a throat infection, apparently due to continued wearing of clothes that had got wet due to snow and rain while he was supervising farming activities. He was a firm believer in the virtues of blood-letting. On his request, he was bled four times; starting from 8 ounces (240 ml) in the first round to 32 ounces (nearly a litre) in the last round. They tried enemas, induced vomiting and blisters also. The vigorous blood-letting ensured that within just two days of illness, the 67-year old Washington breathed his last.  

In 1828, for the first time in several thousand years, French physician Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis, a pioneer of EBM (Evidence Based Medicine), studied hospital records of 77 pneumonia patients who had been bled, and concluded that blood-letting was not effective. Then in 1830, British physiologist Marshall Hall denounced the practice in his ‘Observations on Blood-Letting’. Still, the practice continued throughout the 19th century.

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Eating human organs, or cannibalism as a therapy

Primitive races have had practiced cannibalism since ages under the belief that by eating specific organs of their defeated enemies, their powers would pass on to them. It is described as ‘sympathetic magic’. Human sacrifice by the Aztecs and their ritual cannibalism is well-known. Medical cannibalism was practiced in ancient China also since the Tang dynasty (618–907). Bencao Shiyi, an influential medical reference book published in the early 8th century, as well as similar later manuals recommended it.

However, you will be shocked that even the civilized Europe believed in this. Even a genius like Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “In a dead thing insensate life remains which, when it is reunited with the stomachs of the living, regains sensitive and intellectual life.” The only problem was that cannibalism was not possible for ordinary citizens though kings like Charles II could get men sacrificed for getting extract of skull.

The famous Greek-Roman physician Galen wrote of the curative effect of an elixir of burnt human bones on epilepsy. Pliny the Elder has written that the blood of slain gladiators was drunk by epileptics as though it were the draught of life. Gladiators were seen as the epitome of perfect male vigour and vitality and they died not from any disease but died healthy right before your eyes. Hence, eating their organs was naturally supposed to be beneficial. Scribonius Largus, himself a physician, has written that spectators would “step forward and snatch a piece of liver from a gladiator lying gutted in the dust.” The recipe of human skull extract came down from Roman era only.

A 15th-16th century Swiss alchemist and physician Paracelsus maintained that the noblest medicine for man was man’s body. Since 12th century in Europe, reaching a peak in the 16th century, intrepid people raided numerous tombs in Egypt and looted the mummies. Mummies made into a powder called ‘mummia’ and mixed with herbs and wine was supposed to cure different diseases like epilepsy, abscesses, rashes, migraine, nausea etc. and other problems like coagulated blood, obstructed menstruation, etc. The fat of human body (called man’s grease) was much in demand in 17th and 18th centuries for pain, inflammation, rabies, joint problems, and scars. Many executioners sold bodies of executed people for this purpose. In the 18th century, Dr. Robert James wrote at length on medical uses of human body parts in his famous pharmaceutical treatise ‘Medicinal Dictionary’. Since the supply of mummies was nowhere near the demand, people created outright fakes too by dipping a joint of meat in alcohol and smoking it like a ham. 

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Cauterization

The basic purpose of cauterization was to stop bleeding from the wounds. In the ancient era, they used red hot iron or scalding oil for it. The heat burned the blood vessels and, in the process sealed them, thereby reducing or stopping bleeding. It was used for removing unwanted growths also. Hippocrates, for example, used cauterization to burn off haemorrhoids. It was also used for wounds, which they thought were somehow ‘poisoned’. Aulus Cornelius Celsus, for example, recommended it for bites of mad dogs, and blood- and pus-exuding ulcers.  

Until Ambroise Pare (16th century) argued against cauterization, they never realized that it actually caused more damage by increasing the chances of infection in the burned tissues. However, their greater concern had been the immediate issue of stopping bleeding, and not what happened thereafter.

Usually, there were three types of cauterizing irons:  button-shaped for penetrating wounds (such as those caused by bodkin arrows, stiletto daggers or later, by musket balls); flat one for broad arrowhead wounds; and one wedge-shaped, like a ship’s prow, for wide wounds such as those caused by spears. They were heated to red-heat in a charcoal brazier.

Cauterization is used even today in the form of electro-cauterization and chemical cauterization to burn off tissues by electricity (low voltage, high amperage to cause local heating) or chemicals (like silver nitrate) in a relatively pain-free manner and in a sterile setting. They are used, for example, for cosmetic removal of warts, skin tags and stopping nosebleeds, etc.

Tobacco enema

Tobacco had gained such tremendous popularity in England that as late as 1962, over 70% of British men and 40% of British women used to smoke. Naturally, it was imbued with huge and varied medicinal properties as well, besides making it the hallmark of ‘thinking people’. Remember, Sherlock Holmes famously describing a complex problem as ‘quite a three pipe problem’?

One of the novel properties of tobacco was believed to be its ability to warm a person from within and stimulate respiration. The idea of giving tobacco smoke by enema was that they could pump in much more smoke than what could be inhaled by a willing subject. Second, the smoke enema could be given to unconscious people also.  It was also called Dutch fumigation. In 1746, a paper published in ‘The Lancet’ describes the case of a woman who was pulled out of water nearly dead:

“Amid much conflicting advice, a passing sailor proffered his pipe and instructed the husband to insert the stem into his wife’s rectum, cover the bowl with a piece of perforated paper, and ‘blow hard.’ Miraculously, the woman revived.”

People started using it to treat everything from colds, headaches and abdominal cramps to typhoid and cholera. They even invented a ‘resuscitator kit’ replete with rubber rectal tubes and a pair of bellows. It took a hundred years for the practice to be discarded after Benjamin Brodie started publicizing tobacco’s negative effects.

Snake oil

Snakes do not have any oil in them but their body fat can be dissolved or extracted in liquid form the way it is done for many other animals. Fish oil, for example, is made by boiling fish or using solvents. Cod liver oil is made by grinding the livers with water into slurry, and simmering it until the oil rises to the top. Beef tallow and lard are made by simmering beef fat/pork fat, a process called rendering, and skimming off the liquefied fat.

True snake oil is used in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and is made from Chinese water-snakes (black-banded sea krait). It is used to treat joint pain such as arthritis and bursitis. Its medicinal properties might perhaps be dependent on the presence of Omega-3 fatty acids in it, which is more than that in salmon fish oil.

From wherever the West learnt of it, it caught the fancy of people and it was sold as a cure-all thing, for problems ranging from joint pains to skin diseases. The Spaniard Juan de Loeches’ 18th century book ‘Tyrocinium Pharmaceticum’ contains the following recipe: “Take 2 pounds of live snakes and 2 pounds 3 ounces of sesame oil. Cook slowly, covered in a glazed pot, until meat pulls away from the bone. Strain and store.” In the USA, some people took to rattlesnakes (pit viper) found in abundance there. Others saved themselves the trouble of handling dangerous snakes and started peddling simple mineral oil laced with all sorts of things like herbs, spices, and alcohol or opium products. In 1915, the US government got the famous Snake Oil Liniment marketed by a former cowboy, ‘The Rattlesnake King’ Clark Stanley, analysed. The famous Liniment was found to consist of mineral oil, beef tallow, capsicum, and a hint of camphor and turpentine.

In the end, mankind benefitted both from correct intuition as well as wrong approaches of the physicians of yore because there was always the acid test available at hand. If something worked for the patient, it was right; if it did not, it was wrong. Thus, despite many of the drugs, treatments, and procedures devised being risky and even contra-instinctual, they laid the foundation of the progress and knowledge we came to gain over the centuries.

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Dr N C Asthana IPS (Retd)
Dr N C Asthana IPS (Retd)
Dr. N. C. Asthana, IPS (Retd) is a former DGP of Kerala and ADG BSF/CRPF. Of the 56 books that he has authored, 20 are on terrorism, counter-terrorism, defense, strategic studies, military science, and internal security, etc. They have been reviewed at very high levels in the world and are regularly cited for authority in the research works at some of the most prestigious professional institutions of the world such as the US Army Command & General Staff College and Frunze Military Academy, Russia. The views expressed are his own.

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