Creepy Things That Were Considered Normal 100 Years Ago

medicine law war and business were all very different 100 years ago but not always for the better and frequently for the downright creepy like arranged marriages for child brides and that's just the start here are some creepy things that were considered normal 100 years ago for most of history a newborn baby was generally viewed as one part future laborer and one part old age insurance policy children were expected to work from a very young age helping around the farm house or business by the turn of the 20th century as the economy evolved and urbanization continued children were employed in a great variety of industries and trades the us bureau of labor and statistics keeps track of these things they say that in addition to the traditional farming and agricultural field labor that they'd always done 100 years ago rural youth could also be employed in resource extraction that means things like mining and breaking up and hauling coal in coastal towns you could find children fishing shoring shucking oysters or canning in cities and towns of all sizes children were employed by mills and factories making everything from glass products to textiles to kitchenware to cigars the big cities had legions of children buzzing around as careers drivers cleaners newsies and much more child labor was intrical to just about every level of the u.s economy but the children themselves usually didn't even get to enjoy their wages generally speaking society saw kids as an extra money-earning appendage of their parents on january 17 1920 after a decades-long effort to convince americans that society would be improved by banning liquor the sale of alcoholic beverages in the united states was made illegal the tea totalers were wrong though america turned into a bizarre mirror of itself where the government tried to poison you while cops and politicians took their orders from the mafia and the kkk resistance to prohibition appeared immediately maryland flatly refused to enforce it and many states and municipalities underfunded enforcement banning the production and sale of alcohol didn't diminish the desire so naturally a market emerged to supply it and since alcohol was now a most profitable substance bootleggers and mafia bosses who sold it had lots of money to bribe police officers politicians and judges did six months for pushing heroin a couple of years back are you only there six months i bought a judge police were openly corrupt and since prohibition was largely driven by racist anti-immigrant and anti-catholic attitudes it helped fuel the ku klux klans resurgent terror campaign thirsty americans risked prison to buy beer and sometimes their lives homemade booze sometimes referred to as bathtub gin killed four times as many people during prohibition than alcohol did prior to banishment by 1926 these deaths were less accidental and more deliberate since much of the homemade liquor was distilled using industrial alcohols the feds increased the amount of methanol a deadly poison required to make those industrial alcohols famed humorist will rogers quipped that quote governments used to murder by the bullet only now it's by the court yersinia pestis is a pretty famous bacterium it has the greatest stage name ever the black death and it rocked the 14th century so hard that one third of europe died from its effects bubonic plague however wasn't just a problem for europeans dead hundreds of years ago there were over 1 000 cases in the us during the 20th century bubonic plague is primarily transmitted by flea bites specifically from fleas carried by rats rats that came to the u.s aboard steamships bound for san francisco in 1900 that city's chinatown hosted the very first u.s outbreak of the plague and it scared california's leaders so much that they conspired to hide it from the rest of the country san francisco's mayor and the state governor along with their willing accomplices in california's media and business titans actually secured the collaboration of the surgeon general of the united states in covering up the plague outbreak at least 172 people died before the outbreak ended the first 25 years of the 20th century saw over 500 cases of plague and they would usually be in port towns in 1920 galveston texas was home to another outbreak this time the city acted quickly the source of the disease was discovered which as always was rats and galveston embarked on a two-year rodent murder spree that helped end the outbreak with only 11 dead health care wasn't a pleasant experience in the early 20th century for women it was worse it will probably be of little surprise that women face challenges entering medicine but they were also excluded from medical research for a very long time so long in fact that including females in medical research trials was only made mandatory in 2016. this exclusion probably contributed to the baffling diagnoses and treatments that women could expect one popular 1907 book on pregnancy instructed doctors to prep pregnant women by bathing their lady part with bichloride which is a highly toxic substance now used primarily as a fungicide male ignorance of women's medicine wasn't all bad a popular treatment to the dreaded female hysteria whose symptoms could basically be any behavior that men didn't like purportedly involved doctors giving patients a pelvic massage until they were satisfied as shown in the 2012 film hysteria a visionary hero eventually arose and invented an electromechanical treatment which helped to lead to today's adult toys eugenics is the pseudo-scientific theory that humans can consciously improve the species through racism for decades governments around the world tried to improve their citizens not their lives mind you but the citizens themselves eugenics is a breeding program for humanity essentially an effort to breed ourselves into a better species the president of the american natural history museum declared in his opening address to a 1923 eugenics conference that responsible governments should make sure the individual races stay in their place and not pollute each other through interbreeding those who proved unfit should be sterilized in fact the famous supreme court justice oliver wendell holmes had some very disturbing words to say when he voted to uphold several sterilization laws it is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind in all 32 states passed some kind of eugenics law at some point eugenics was popular and considered progressive leaders of organizations like planned parenthood and the aclu joined luminaries like teddy roosevelt and alexander graham bell in supporting eugenics programs california with its high levels of anti-mexican and anti-asian attitudes was particularly aggressive and successful over 20 000 californians were sterilized in the 20th century health care might have looked scary for women 100 years ago but mental health care was terrifying for everyone it probably shouldn't surprise you that an era obsessed with science and new technology might produce psychiatric treatments that looked more like the work of sci-fi author philip k dick than the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders treatment for mental illness was fashionable for eugenic supporters states commonly prohibited marriage for individuals with mental illness or went one step further and sterilized them over 65 000 mentally ill us citizens were sterilized until the last such operation in oregon which actually occurred in 1981 schizophrenia could be treated with insulin shock therapy where patients were given progressively larger doses of insulin leaving them at high risk for brain damage one new jersey doctor thought mental illness was caused by untreated infections and went on a 20-year spree of unnecessarily removing teeth tonsils and even organs from patients searching for the cause of mental illnesses he killed 30 to 45 percent of his victims but it wouldn't be the early 20th century without electricity and sexism there was electroshock therapy which induces seizures by electrocuting the patient and that particular therapy is still practiced today though not to the horrific levels of 100 years ago and even as women fought for the right to vote there were still doctors who went so far as to claim a direct connection between women's reproductive organs and insanity this resulted in many women sent to asylums for obvious signs of insanity which like so-called hysteria in the 19th century could be pretty much anything men didn't like check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more grunge videos about history are coming soon subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one

Channel: Grunge

Views: 1,137,035

Keywords: grunge, grunge channel, creepy, hundred years, hundred years ago, century, old, old facts, creepy facts, normal, child labor, alcohol poison, poisoned booze, government ban, prohibition, the black death, plegue, bubonic plegue, us soil, us plegue, medicine, womens medicine, eugenics, eugenics science, eugenics law, science and law, mental health, mental health care, wrong mental health care, normalized, bad mental health care, prohibition poison, frightening medicine

Id: 5YAP1LRcLtA

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020