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Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor in chief of MentalFloss.com
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Welcome to Mental Floss Video, and did you know that in ancient Rome, people thought they could treat rabies
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According to Pliny the Elder, a naturalist and author, anyone bitten by a mad dog should
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be treated by having their wound cut open and covered with raw veal
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Then the patient should eat a diet of lime and hogs fat. But wait, it gets worse
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The patient would then drink a concoction made with wine and boiled badger dung. Blech
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And that's just the first of many strange, old-timey medical treatments that I'm going
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to share with you today. There are some interesting treatments in a book by the British evangelist
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John Wesley titled Primitive Physic or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases
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first published in the late 1740s. For asthma, the book suggests, quote, a fortnight on boiled
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carrots only. For heart palpitations, Wesley has a few ideas. Drink a pint of cold water
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apply outwardly a rag dipped in vinegar, and be electrified. Wesley also suggests that patients
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with toothaches be electrified. The idea of electrotherapy was pretty new in the 1700s
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but it was used regularly until the early 1900s for all sorts of illnesses
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Epilepsy, paralysis, impotence, tapeworms, and more. Some people just got electrotherapy for general wellness
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To prevent nosebleeds, Wesley recommends, quote, holding a red hot poker under the nose
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steeping a linen rag in sharp vinegar, burning it and blowing it up the nose with a quill
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In Wesley's day, someone with nosebleeds might also get blood removed from another part of their body
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We have documentation going back to around 200 CE recommending that someone with nosebleeds
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have their elbow bled. Back then, it was believed that every person had four humors in their body, black bile
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yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. So any illness could be boiled down to an imbalance of humors
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Bloodletting was one of the therapies that was supposed to put them back in balance. During medieval times in Europe
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bloodletting was used for the plague, smallpox, and gout. There are a lot of strange historical treatments for malaria, but one of my favorite cures
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was a magical charm recommended by a Roman physician in the third century CE
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Patients were told to write abracadabra over and over on a piece of paper with one less letter on each line until the letters formed a triangle with just an A at the bottom Then they had to tie the paper with flax and wear it around their necks for nine days before
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tossing it into an east running stream. If that didn't work, they were supposed to rub themselves with lion fat
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And now back to rabies, which was a huge concern in Europe during the 1700s
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There was this treatment from the Book of Physick that advised, quote, take 40 grains
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of ground liverwort and 20 grains of pepper and half a pint of milk
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Take this quantity four mornings together, then use of cold bath every other day a month
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The Book of Physic also contains a remedy for patients with epilepsy. Cook a strong man's hair with a deer leg bone, turn it into powder, then eat it leading
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up to the new moon. Perhaps you're wondering, what's the moon got to do with this
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Well, for a long time people have debated whether the moon affects seizures
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As recently as 2004, there was an article published in the journal Epilepsy and Behavior
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titled The Influence of the Full Moon on Seizure Frequency, Myth or Reality? For the record
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they found no connection between the full moon and the frequency of epileptic seizures
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You may have heard of Bible cysts, which appear on the hand or wrist. In 1743, German anatomist
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Lorenz Heister wrote down treatment options, which included strapping a bullet that had killed an
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animal to the cyst or touching it with a dead man's hand. But one of the treatments he recommended
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hitting it with a heavy book, is still in use today. That's why they're called Bible cysts
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The Bible was supposedly a good book to whack them with because it's so big, but medical professionals probably don't want you doing that
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Another surprisingly damaging former treatment was asthma cigarettes. These were popular during
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the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There were various brands, but some sample and toxic
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ingredients are stromonium, belladonna, and tobacco. Moving on to Wales, The Red Book of
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Hergist is a manuscript from around 1382 that contains some herbal remedies. To remove drunkenness
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it recommends a person quote eat bruised saffron with spring water and if a person
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was sad well saffron was the answer there too at least in moderation
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according to hergist quote if you would be at all times Mary eat saffron and
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meter drink and you will never be sad but beware of eating over much lest you
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should die of excessive joy that took a turn radium was once considered a legitimate medical treatment The ailments it supposedly cured included arthritis impotence and aging The Revitator an early 20th century crock that
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combined water with radium, was placed in hundreds of thousands of American households
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Now we know that radium doesn't cure aging, it puts people at risk of radiation sickness
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From the 16th century to the 20th century, mercury, either eaten or applied to the body
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the primary treatment for syphilis. It was also used to treat less severe illnesses like
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constipation. In fact, Lewis and Clarksman consumed so many pills containing mercury
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chloride that historians and archaeologists can find the places where they camped just
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based on the mercury content of the area. By the 18th century, doctors were aware of
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mercury poisoning, but they continued using it to treat syphilis. They just limited the
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amounts that were used. A book called Mother's Remedies, Over 1,000 Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers of the
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United States and Canada by Dr. Thomas Jefferson Ritter was published in 1910. It included
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many remedies that have been phased out, like the one for hay fever which called for spraying
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a quote 4% solution of cocaine up the nose. That was totally normal back then, though
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cocaine was prescribed for indigestion, fatigue, eye pain, and hemorrhoids. The book also recommends inhaling chloroform for asthma, which, like cocaine, wasn't an
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unusual treatment in the United States where it was used as an anesthetic. We now know
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that it's toxic. Dr. Ritter has an interesting fix for chapped hands
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Pour sour cream in a cloth, bury it outside overnight, then unearth it and apply the sour
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cream the next day. A quick google search will tell you that sour cream still pops up in some home face mask
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recipes, so maybe this one has a little bit of merit, though you probably wouldn't want
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the bacterial buffet that comes from burying it overnight. To heal ringworm, the book suggests a paste made of gunpowder and vinegar be applied to
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the infection. If that doesn't do the trick the first time, repeat until the ringworm disappears
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And a final one from Dr. Ritter's book. For certain headaches, he suggested mixing a drop of tincture of Nux Vomica in a teaspoonful
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of water. Today, Nux Vomica is best known as the primary source of strychnine, which is poisonous and
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is often used to kill rats. If you thought some of the other treatments we discussed were disgusting buck up for this next one In the 16th and 17th centuries the use of human bodies in medical remedies became more popular than ever in Europe They appeared in medicine for headaches epilepsy and more
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Egyptian tombs and graveyards were looted for the bodies. If you had a bruise or other ailment, you were supposed to put it on your skin, or turn
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it into a powder and ingest it via a drink. French King Francis I and Francis Bacon both used it
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Between the mid-1800s and the early 1900s, 25 cents could get you a bottle of Mrs. Winslow's
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soothing syrup for your baby. It was advertised as a solution for colic, teething, diarrhea
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and any pain. As for how it worked? Well, it contained a whole lot of morphine
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There's one known copy of Bald's Leech Book, a medical textbook from around the 10th century which can be found at the British Library in London. For cataracts, it suggests putting
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burnt periwinkle flowers and honey in the eyes. For swollen eyes, you're going to need
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to go to the beach, because you'll be cutting the eyes out of a living crab, then applying
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them to your neck, which makes total sense. You'll need a live fox to heal your swelling
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Take one of its teeth out, secure it into fawn skin, then place the skin on the swollen
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body part. Typhus had a more religiously oriented treatment in the 10th century
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A patient should go outside, write a prayer on a piece of paper, then hold it to their
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left breast. We're going to finish up with a few historical drunkenness cures that honestly seem more
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painful than hangovers to me. In ancient Assyria, bird beaks were ground up, combined with myrrh and eaten
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Supposedly, this helped you avoid getting tipsy. Legend has it that one popular Wild West hangover cure
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was rabbit poo tea. And finally, if you wanna kick the habit
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and avoid the morning after rabbit poo tea, our pal Pliny suggests drinking owl eggs mixed with wine
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for three days. You say disgusting, I say next artis cocktail. Actually, on second thought, no, don't do that
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Thanks for watching Mental Floss Video, which is made with the help of all of these nice people
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