- Treating syphilis with malaria? Blowing tobacco smoke up your butt? Buckle up, folks, this
is in science fiction. These are real treatments, real patients used throughout history. Thank God modern medicine
has come a long way. Oh, and I'll also tell you
about a medical treatment we use right now that I think might be on its
way out in the near future. Let's get started. Pee-whoop! (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to recommend lobotomies to treat mental health problems, and a lobotomy literally means
tearing apart your brain. Feeling depressed, anxious or simply have a nagging headache? Have you considered
removing part of your brain? Well, many have for all of human history. Lobotomies are one of the oldest verified medical procedures
historians know about, thanks to the remains of humans
from thousands of years ago, that present clear evidence
of rudimentary surgeries in the skull. In the earliest days of civilization, seemingly across the globe, the medical thinking was
that if you had a problem in your head, the head
needed to be opened up. This practice reached its
apex in the US in the 1900s when lobotomies were regularly performed. Today, neurosurgery and lobotomizing small parts of a patient's
brain are still used in highly specific cases,
but the simple method of cut out the frontal lobe
of a crazy person approach is no more and it's considered
one of the more shameful eras of worldwide medical history. (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to recommend
cannibalism to treat everything. Throughout a large chunk of human history, doctors in Europe regularly
prescribed corpse medicine or the practice of consuming
the remains of dead people for medicinal benefit. The problem? There was no medicinal benefit. The thinking was that if you
had a problem in your head, you would eat the ground up
remains of someone's head. You see, this is why we don't
put much stock into treatments that make sense or experts believe in, unless they're proven with evidence. Obviously no such evidence
that this barbaric practice ever worked existed but that
didn't stop apothecaries from 16th and 17th century Europe from turning a prophet
selling blood marmalades. Consider it the goop of the Renaissance. It goes without saying, consuming the remains of Egyptian mummies or slain Roman gladiators
does not cure an illness, and in fact, it comes with
the extremely high risk of poisoning from eating
decayed infected flesh. (movie reel whirs) Milk is a lot like blood, right? Blood transfusions are
a life-saving procedure often performed on patients who have suffered serious trauma. But throughout most of human history, doctors didn't just have a fridge full of blood
to run to in emergencies. In the late 19th century, some doctors believed milk
was a substitute for blood because it contained many nutrients and that the milk would eventually turn into white blood cells to
help fight off an infection. White milk, white blood cells. See how they got there. Obviously, this didn't work, but it didn't stop doctors from trying. In one well-documented and
frankly unbelievable case, Dr. Joseph Howe treated a sick woman with what he believed was
a groundbreaking idea. Not cow's milk, he said, but human milk. A woman in the hospital actually donated three ounces of breast milk, which was intravenously injected into the sick woman's veins. Needless to say, the results
weren't just ineffective, but actually negative, causing the patient's heart rate to spike while she convulsed in pain. Dr. Howe managed to stabilize the woman by injecting her with
morphine and whiskey. To no surprise, she
unfortunately died 10 days later. (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to prescribe the mosquito-borne illness malaria, to treat another disease, syphilis. I realize that sounds pretty outrageous, but what's even weirder,
is it actually work? Syphilis is a bacterial infection spread through sexual contact. Prior to the widespread use of condoms, and the invention of antibiotics, the disease was rampant across the globe. Suspected to have infected
some highly notable figures like Al Capone and Adolf Hitler. Untreated syphilis in its late stage spreads to organs
destroying them from within, leading to potential
disfigurement or even death. One way your body fights off infection is by giving you a fever, which creates an environment
too warm for invading bacteria to survive and one in which
your immune system thrives in. Why malaria? Well, it's caused by a
parasite of mosquitoes that causes extremely high fevers and we actually had a
treatment for malaria. So in the early 1900s, Julius
Wagner-Jauregg had an idea. Give us patients who
were sick with syphilis, the parasite that causes malaria, allow the fever to
spike, kill the syphilis, and then use the medicine
that already existed to treat the malaria. It was a bold idea that actually worked, netting Dr. Wagner-Jauregg the Noble Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1927. Malariotherapy was used
all around the world for the next couple of decades until the invention of penicillin, which is an antibiotic that kills syphilis without having to resort
to getting people sick with other illnesses. (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to recommend
heroin to treat the common cold. During the American Civil War, the drug of choice to treat soldiers suffering traumatic injuries was morphine, a highly effective and addictive drug derived from opium poppies, or an opioid. It interacted with pain
receptors in the brain to virtually eliminate
pain sensation in the body and leave patients in a
dream-like euphoric state. While highly effective, it also resulted in thousands of soldiers becoming
addicted to the substance. In response, Bayer, the
pharmaceutical company, began boiling the morphine
in an attempt to reduce the drug's addictiveness,
and thus heroin was born. Unfortunately, boiling morphine doesn't make the drug less addictive. In fact, it makes it more addictive and capable of being mixed
with other additives, leading to far more extreme
reactions in the body. This didn't stop the medical
establishment, and in 1906, the AMA officially approved
heroin for general use. Doctors not only recommended
heroin for extreme pain, but for more common
conditions like bronchitis, tuberculosis, cancer, depression, sluggishness, the common cold, old age, or even a simple cough for
adults and children alike. The real impact of heroin
became obvious soon enough, as addiction and crime rates soared, leading to federal regulation of the drug and the AMA revising their
previous recommendation. Today, opioids are still prescribed, however, many measures have been enacted in hopes to bring down the soaring rates of addiction and overdosing. (movie reel whirs) Cure your rheumatoid arthritis by staying inside the
body of a dead whale, something I never thought
I'd say on this channel. (static buzzing) Look, this wasn't the practice
that was endorsed by doctors, but it was publicized in papers as something people actually did. The way the story goes is
that a drunk Australian man suffering from joint pain dove inside the body of a dead whale laying on the shore of
Eden, New South Wales in the late 1800s. The man was a bit of a jokester and was trying to make his friends laugh. Disgusted by the smell and the idea of touching a dead whale, his friends didn't rushed his aid and left him on his own for escape, and upon leaving the whale, he claimed it cured his joint pain. The theory was that the
fumes of the rotting whale created an aerosolized
treatment for his joint pain. Advertisements literally
popped up for whale hotels, where those suffering from rheumatism could stay while they
waited for a deceased whale to arrive on shore. If you could survive 30
hours inside the dead whale, your joint pain could be
alleviated for up to a year. Kind of sounds like those
oasis disease-curing retreats that make ridiculous
claims about their resorts. This one had a whale spin to
it, if you know what I mean. (screen beeps) Of course, look, I can't
believe I have to say this, but there's no evidence that
breathing decaying whale air for 30 hours alleviates
anything, let alone joint pain. (movie reel whirs) How about blowing some smoke up your butt to save someone from drowning? Native Americans regularly used tobacco as a form of medicine, something the Europeans
noticed and took back home. The idea of blowing tobacco
smoke into someone's rectum became the go-to method of saving a drowning victim in England. The theory was that someone
who had nearly drowned was cold and wet both inside
and outside of their body, so that if you blew tobacco
smoke up someone's butt, they would be warmed and
dried out from the inside, bringing them back to life. Quickly, this practice expanded
beyond drowning victims, with doctors across Europe
believing it was effective at treating all sorts of things, from headaches to hernias to cholera. The practice was not
only useless to patients, but sometimes even dangerous for doctors. Before the invention of bellows or the contracting expanding device that sucks and blows air,
doctors had to blow themselves and in the event that a
doctor accidentally sucked instead of blew, they would
inhale a mouthful of contents from the inside of the patient's rectum which actually led to infection
and death of some doctors. (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to recommend smoking tobacco as a treatment for asthma. Yes, actually recommended. The historical thinking was that asthma and other respiratory illnesses were caused by an accumulation
of cold phlegm in the lungs and the best form of
treatment for this cold phlegm was the inhalation of warm smoke from burning tobacco or stramonium. Dr. William Osler, the Regius professor of
medicine at Oxford University, went as far as encouraging asthmatic to sample a variety of cigarettes. It didn't stop there, though, as Dr. Osler also encouraged asthmatics to fill their bedrooms with
smoke prior to sleeping to ward off a nighttime asthma attack. While asthma can be treated by medicine consumed from an inhaler, inhaling tobacco smoke would
have the opposite effect. Kids whose parents smoke have
higher rates of asthma attacks and are more likely to
end up in the hospital. That's because smoke from cigarettes makes airways swollen and
narrow, essentially doubling down on the problem asthmatic
are already facing. (movie reel whirs) Doctors used to recommend
draining your body of fluids to treat literally everything. The practice was known
as balancing the humors. For thousands of years, dating back to Hippocrates
in ancient Greece, the medical establishment
believed that all illnesses were caused by an imbalance of the humors, blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile. Doctors believed that a healthy person had a perfect balance of all four, and that in order to cure a sick person, you simply had to rebalance them. The method by which they
would achieve this balance was sickening and painful. Doctors would cover you
in bloodsucking leeches, induce vomiting or diarrhea, or burn you to create pus
dripping sores across your body. But what they failed to realize is that many of these instances, it was the diseases that
imbalanced these humors, not the imbalanced humors
creating the disease. Look, obviously, putting
an already sick person through a circus of blood, sweat and tears did not improve health outcomes and actually usually led to
the death of those patients. Most notably, president George Washington, who was killed by his doctors while attempting to balance his humors. (movie reel whirs) Army doctors around the world used to recommend methamphetamine
to create super soldiers. The drug was popularized worldwide during the Second World War when military doctors
started recommending soldiers take the drug to keep them
alert, awake and energized. American soldiers took the drug to stay awake on the front line. German soldiers took the drug to Blitzkrieg countries
like Poland in record time. Japanese soldiers took the drug before hopping in planes
as kamikaze pilots. Soldiers became addicted to this stuff and companies started mass
producing it worldwide. Of course, the war came to
an end and all of a sudden, military warehouses had
stockpiles of surplus meth. It was then distributed
nationwide by physicians who recommended for a
variety of conditions like weight loss. Abuse of the drug eventually
led to its regulation, thanks to the Controlled
Substances Act of 1970. Interestingly, meth is
still prescribed by doctors in the US today under the name of Desoxyn, but this is only used with very specific diagnoses like ADHD. But what about the medical
practices of today? Well, we have certainly come a long way since blowing smoke up your butt. I believe there are probably some medical practices we do today, they're gonna be looked upon and really judged heavily in the future. One of those I think are colonoscopies. Don't get me wrong and hear me out here. Colonoscopies work in
catching colon cancer early. In fact, preventing some
cases of colon cancer by removing polyps before
they turn into cancer. But the practice of
having to stick a camera into someone's colon through their anus is gonna be looked at
rudimentary, at least I think so. I think there's gonna be new technology that's gonna allow us to
either chemically detect and there's already some
early stages of this, colon cancer or maybe even
ways to enter the body without having to go
in through the rectum. That's just my take. Which one of the medical
practices you think today are gonna be judged heavily in the future? Comment down below. And look, these were some
cringy medical practices, but how about some
horrifying medical devices physicians actually used to use? Click here to check these out. As always, stay happy and healthy. (cool music)
