- Hey! I'm doctor Matt and I've got the perfect cure
for that headache, backache, toothache, heartache,
handshake, corn flake, tummy ache; it's called meth.
Ride the snake!
(pained groaning)
Alright, well obviously I'm not a doctor,
and prescribing meth sounds nuts,
but there have been some insane treatments
prescribed by medical experts who
arguably didn't know better,
and what's really disturbing is that
these were all commonly used in the past.
If a physician used any of the methods
you're going to hear about today,
they'd be in jail.
So, what exactly are they?
Here are 10 Banned Medical Practices
You Won't Believe Existed.
Number one is mercury.
It definitely sounds crazy,
but there was a time when people thought
that the best way to treat syphilis
was to ingest mercury.
Side effects included losing your teeth,
damage to internal organs, or simply death.
Using mercury as a cure began as early
as 1500 BC in Egypt, and was believed to
cure ailments, heal wounds, and even prolong life.
(laughs) It turned out to be the exact opposite.
They also used to use mercury oilments, pills and lotions
to treat all sorts of ailments,
attributing the side effects and deaths
to the underlying condition the patient already had.
Nowadays, we're weary about mercury in fish.
Back then, they were drinking it like it was an ale.
Alright, give me some mercury.
Yeah, I feel great. (pained grunt)
Number two is radioactive water.
It's hard to believe, but in the early 1900s
radium was all the rage.
Today we know that exposure to radium causes cancer,
but back then, it was used as a cure for mental illness,
diarrhea, malaria and was even thought
to prevent aging due to increased cell activity.
And, what better way to get this stuff
into consumer's bodies then to sell it as bottled water?
That's right!
Radium infused water could be purchased
in many stores alongside radium infused chocolate,
radioactive toothpaste, and, why not,
radioactive suppositories.
Up and at em.
Number three is whirling chairs.
Between 1850 and 1900 in an attempt
to stop the practice of restraining the mentally ill
and locking them in dark cells,
yes that actually happened,
doctors turned to a method they
genuinely thought could help,
strapping patients into a chair
and spinning them until they lost consciousness.
Yep.
That'll get the voices to stop.
They used a simple chair with a lever system
to spin the person around.
The belief was that this would shuffle the contents
of the patient's brain around, knocking out
conditions like schizophrenia.
Used alongside other unbelievable practices
like high-dose laxatives, insulin comas,
and ice-water baths, it took far too long
for doctors to learn that this really wasn't working.
Just made a whole lot of vomit.
Just buckets, buckets of vomit.
Number four is the lobotomy.
Often declared as one of the most barbaric mistakes
ever perpetrated by mainstream medicine,
lobotomies involved driving a large ice pick
into a patient's head.
Follow me on this.
Entering through the eye socket,
the spike was pressed into the prefrontal cortex
of the brain, and then struck with a hammer.
Doctors truly believed that, whatever the outcome,
the patient would still be better off
then they were pre-lobotomy.
Side effects included severe brain damage
or even death, which was the case with
John F. Kennedy's sister who, after a lobotomy,
was reduced mentally to an infant
and never recovered.
How, how did they ever think that
driving an ice pick through the eye,
into the brain was ever a good idea?
It's just-- it's scary stuff.
Number five is the electrical impotence cure.
By the 1900s, everybody and their brother
had a miracle cure for anything,
and disturbingly, many of them were for
male, ahem, issues down there,
with your dick.
Anyhoo, as fascination with electricity was on the rise,
medical practitioners turned to it to solve impotence
by shocking the hell out of a man's package.
It was widely believed that a shock
provided energy to a man's body
which he could use to rise to the occasion.
Of course, what they didn't tell you,
until after they were paid, was that not only
was there no real science involved in it,
but it was incredibly painful.
Dudes these days be buying these
online enhancement pills,
and all they really needed was
a car battery and some jumper cables.
Science!
Number six is trepanning.
The twisted cousin of lobotomy,
trepanning was used for many years
and involved drilling into a mentally ill patient's head.
As one of the oldest methods of treatment,
trepanning dates all the way back to 6500 BC in France
and consisted of drilling bur holes into a patient's skull
to let the evil spirits out.
(ghost noise)
The mentally ill were often mistaken to be
possessed by demons and, as we all know,
the only way to get a demon out of your head
is to make a little hole for it to get out of.
Long after science recognized mental illness, however
trepanning was still used when all other treatments failed,
as doctors just drilled a few holes to see what happens.
Uh, science, doctors, if I ever become ill,
please, don't treat my head like a bowling ball.
If there's demons in there, just let em chill.
Just let em chill; I don't want no holes.
Okay?
Just let em chill.
They're living and then I'll die.
I'll die; that's cool.
I don't want to be a Matthew Santoro bowling ball.
That's disturbing.
Number seven is bloodletting.
A treatment used for over 2,000 years
until the late 1800s, bloodletting was
the act of draining blood from the body.
Now while this is still done is a way today,
it's nothing like it used to be.
Many doctors used to believe that blood
would pool in certain places and that was
why people got sick.
Vast quantities of it would be drained
from the body for ridiculous reasons
like a stuffy nose or even a headache.
Obviously, this caused many deaths,
but, once again, practitioners just chalked up
the loss of life to the illness itself
or state of mind of the patient.
Fun fact; barbers were the most common bloodletters,
and that's the reason that they use red and white poles.
Disturbing, I know.
Think about that next time you walk by a barber.
Nightmares for days.
Number eight is urine therapy.
Urine therapy was the practice of using
one's own pee to cure them of ailments.
Sometimes, it would be the patients own urine,
but other times it was a healthy person's
or even the doctor's.
How generous.
It was thought that by drinking urine
or applying it around affected areas,
it could help heal broken bones, clear up strep throat,
cure acne or even whiten teeth. (laughs)
Don't get any ideas.
Though technically debunked, there are some people
still in the world that claim to gain the benefits
from this truly bizarre form of therapy,
so careful where you go in the world
because that lemonade may not be lemonade.
Number nine is Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup.
Hey! Want a quick way to stop your child
from throwing a temper tantrum?
Well don't worry!
With Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup
they'll be calm and cool, and halfway to a coma in no time.
Sold in the early 1900s as a remedy for children
with ailments such as cold, fever, rambunctiousness
or even if a parent just wanted to catch a quick nap,
Mrs. Winslows remedy was fast-acting mostly because
it contained heroin, cannabis, powered opium, morphine,
and an insane slew of other substances.
The cocktail proved deadly to those children
who didn't mellow out, and to top it off,
it was marketed to parents of babies who were teething
and thus always crying.
Mom and Dad can finally relax
by putting your child to sleep, forever.
That was a scary time to be alive, medical science.
And number 10 the tobacco enema.
Let me just say, first of all, that all the remedies
you've heard of today are 100% true.
I am not blowing smoke up your ass.
Although, if you lived in the 1700s and
needed emergency, life-saving treatment,
that's exactly what they'd do.
It was actually believed that tobacco smoke
could warm up a person's body just before
or immediately after death and
could jump-start the respiratory system.
Of course, the best place to jump-start
the lungs and the heart is through the butt,
using rubber rectal tubes.
Doctors claimed that this practice would combat hernias,
typhoid fever, and even headaches,
and then in 1811 it was discovered that this is really
doing just way more damage than helping,
and tobacco enemas were discontinued.
I think the moral of the story here, friends,
is just don't try to smoke with your butt.
Just don't smoke with your butt.
Leave the anus.
Don't smoke with your butt.
Yes.
It's a helpful tip.
You're welcome!
And those were 10 Banned Medical Practices
that actually existed.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode.
I really hope you enjoyed it.
If you have a recommendation for a topic
of a top 10, please leave a comment below,
and I'll be reading through your comments.
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