What Was Once Considered Medicine

When you are desperate to cure an illness or heal a wound, you are willing to try anything. And eventually, any substance could be tried as a medicine. If it worked, great. If it didn't, we'd probably find out why in a couple hundred years. But by then, students of history would think us really dumb. Not dumb; just desperate. After all, some of our greatest medical discoveries came about by accident or by someone trying some random substance as medicine.

Rabies is a good example of that desperation. Once symptoms appear, the disease is fatal, so victims were willing to eat burnt hair or the liver of the dog that bit them. After all, it couldn't hurt.  For arthritis, people were advised top sit inside of rotting whale carcass and breathe in the fumes emitted by its decaying flesh. The patients would be mighty relieved to have access to some opioids. Weird History is eager to fill us on on bizarre medicines that were once trusted, but but now just make us say. "what were they thinking?"