- [Voiceover] Believe it or not,
but much of the modern medicine we know and use today
was built on a fragile foundation of trial and error.
Throughout history, many doctors would often invent
their own procedures and surgeries
that they truly believed would save lives,
however when looking back at some of these
downright barbaric practices,
we can honestly say to ourselves,
what on Earth were they thinking?
But, hindsight is 20/20.
Let's just be thankful that they're not practiced anymore.
These are the Ten Banned Medical Practices
that will make you lose your faith
in modern medical science.
Number 10 is tongue removal.
What is the best way to cure a stutter?
Doctors in the 18th and 19th century
believed that the cause of stutter was from the tongue
having minor spasms whenever a person spoke,
so the solution was simple,
just cut out half the tongue of the stutterer
called hemiglossectomy.
Doctors would use a knife to selectively slice off
small sections of the tongue,
until they rendered the tongue basically useless.
In most cases,
the stutterer will no longer be able to speak
or use their tongue anymore.
However barbaric the surgery was,
nowadays the surgery is only used to help
patients suffering from rare cases of oral cancers.
People today who suffer from a stuttering problem
are often prescribed a much more pain free solution,
speech therapy.
Number nine is lobotomy.
In the 1950's, Dr. Walter Freeman unveiled
his newest breakthrough medical procedure
called the trans-orbital lobotomy,
which the process of hitting an ice pick up the nose
with a mallet until you reach the brain,
in order to purposely destroy brain tissue.
A lobotomy is a very risky surgery
that would often kill the patients receiving them,
even those who survived a lobotomy were often rendered
virtually brain dead from the gruesome procedure.
Needless to say,
this procedure was widely criticized,
and many respected doctors spoke out against it,
but the practice still wasn't banned until 40 years later,
despite incessant criticism from the medical community.
Number eight is rest cure.
Pioneered by Dr. Silas Ware Mitchell,
during the late 19th century,
this controversial treatment operated on the belief
that if a woman became hysterical,
she wouldn't calm down unless she was forced to rest.
Resting in these terms meant no moving,
no reading, and no talking.
Instead, they were forcibly restrained
until their mood improved,
much like meditation,
except it was against their will.
After a few hours,
the doctors would check up on the patient to see
if they had calmed down or not.
If not, they would be left alone for a few more hours,
oftentimes doctors would request that the person return
for multiple sessions,
and as a cherry on top of this unethical nightmare,
the majority of the patients who were forced
to undergo this treatment were almost all women.
As you can imagine,
many women striving for empowerment
were rightfully taken aback by the notion
that they are somehow incapable of controlling themselves.
Nowadays, if someone get works up,
we just like to tell them, sleep on it,
this seems to produce the same results.
Number seven is doctors as assassins.
Doctors are banned by The Hippocratic Oath
from poisoning any of their patients,
which seems odd,
because doctors are supposed to help their patients,
and not kill them.
Well, in Roman Times,
doctors were known to be expert poisoners for hire.
High ranking officials were known to
frequently bribe doctors to help kill
their political rivals.
In fact, it was considered crucial
for a person of high standing to have a doctor
on their payroll.
Romans hated doctors so much,
that in order to protect the doctors,
and to make sure the city's civilians
got proper health care,
it had to become a law that doctors
could not poison their patients.
Number six is radioactive water.
Before anyone knew how bad radium was for your health,
it was put into bottles,
and marketed on TV as a fountain of youth,
while now it is used as a form of cancer treatment,
back then it was commonly believed that radium
had healing properties,
and would give recipients an energy boost.
This was so widely believed,
that it was even put into toothpaste and other goods,
that was up until Hermann Joseph Muller discovered
the effects of radiation poisoning,
then almost overnight,
all products containing radium were taken off the shelves.
Number five is spinning chairs.
In the 1800's through the 1900's,
doctors struggled to keep mentally ill patients still.
Most of the time,
multiple doctors and nurses would have to
physically hold people down,
so in an effort to stop the practice
of restraining the mentally ill,
one doctor came up with a brilliant plan to strap patients
to a chair and spin the chair around
until the lost consciousness.
The practice lasted nearly 100 years,
before someone finally decided that this was torture,
and deprived a human of their basic rights.
Number four is electroshock therapy.
Primarily used to treat severe depression and homosexuality,
electroshock therapy is the very definition of torture
that doctors would forcibly strap patients down to a chair,
attach electric rods to a persons temple,
and shock him or her until they felt better.
The doctor, of course,
would decide when the patient felt better.
Shockings could last anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours,
and many people had multiple sessions,
plenty of which were against the persons will,
such as Ernest Hemingway, Carrie Fisher,
and Paolo Coelho.
However, after being banned in the medical world,
electroshock therapy is still used by the CIA
as a form of torture.
Number three is trepanation.
Have a headache, migraine,
or just need to relieve some pressure?
Well, today we have little pills to help relieve the pain.
Before we had the pills though,
we had trepanation,
which is the process of drilling into a persons skull
to relieve the pressure.
The belief was that your body
would somehow overproduce blood,
and it would all pool in your head,
and cause the brain to be suffocated,
so they would relieve the pressure by drilling escape holes.
This is one of the oldest known medical practices,
dating all the way back to Pre-Historic Times.
Even though it was commonly used to help people
with migraines and headaches,
there were some cultures that used it for cosmetic purposes.
They viewed the holes as improvements to the human form,
similar in the way we view earrings or tattoos.
Luckily, that fad came to an end,
and we came to our senses,
and developed aspirin.
Number two is cocaine.
After we stopped using trepanation,
and before we invented aspirin,
we had another way of dealing with headaches.
In fact, this medical marvel can cure just about anything,
depression, toothaches, upset stomachs,
menstrual cramps, the whole works,
there's only one downside,
it's extremely addictive.
What is this drug called?
The ultimate painkiller, cocaine.
It was so common in the 19th century,
that doctors would prescribe cocaine to cure a variety
of mundane ailments.
The practice continued in a very widespread fashion,
until the negative effects of prolonged use
of cocaine were discovered.
After this, using cocaine as a medical treatment
became illegal.
And, number one is heroin.
On the topic of illegal drugs being used for medicine,
heroin first got its start in the late 19th century
when it was used as cough medicine.
It started out innocently enough,
the people who invented it were looking for
a cure for the common cold,
and stumbled upon heroin.
Thinking they had discovered a superior
cough suppressing medicine,
heroin was rushed onto the shelves.
It was only later that they discovered
the mind crushing addictiveness heroin possesses.
Doesn't this tale sound awfully familiar to cocaine's?
Oddly enough, the tale came full circle,
since the people who invented heroin
later went on to invent aspirin.
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