<i></i> <i></i> <i></i> 0<p><img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/c-users-administrator-downloads-2-11-ready-to-dra.jpeg"/></p> <p>Now getting sick is never fun. Medical procedures are as old as written history people would get sick and the ancients would try to figure out ways to bring people back to health in ways which were often odd and in many cases even, very dangerous.</p> <h2>8- A toothache would be treated using smoking goat fat.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-248.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Now of course not all modern medical techniques are recent inventions such things as prostheses and dental fillings were known to the ancients. In Italy for instance they discovered a human tooth which was a whopping 14,000 years old and had telltale signs on it that it had undergone some form of dental work.</p> <p>However, some methods employed by the ancients were however quite strange and unusual. The Muslim Polymath Avicenna for instance would smoke the patient with a mixture of dental treatment, onion, henbane and goat fat. Pliny the Elder the famed Roman naturalist thought that the only way to deal with a toothache was to catch a toad in the middle of the night and to then spit into the mouth of the toad while uttering special words in order to get relief from a toothache.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-249.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Not all dental practices however were as ludicrous as those espoused by Pliny the Elder. Honey for instance had long been used to treat toothaches and as far back 1201 there is evidence that honey was traded in such places as Latvia and used for medicinal purposes.</p> <p>Garlic paste has also been used for centuries in order to treat toothaches and has been found to be effective.</p> <h2>7- Women gave birth to children sitting or standing on their haunches.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-250.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Now all of the techniques used by the ancients were not like Pliny the elder’s cure for a toothache. In India they knew how to alter the position of the fetus in the utero of the mother. While in some tribes in Africa healers were expert gynecologists and were able to perform the highly complicated cesarean section with tools which were crude, primitive and rudimentary at best.</p> <p>During the Dark Ages in Europe people on the continent lost the knowledge of the ancients. The Catholic Church was also a stifling influence on free thought and held back scientific progress, Thus midwifery remained a largely under developed profession and due to a lack of professional skill, the mortality rate among mothers and newborn soared as deaths during delivery spiked.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-251.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>In fact during the middle ages a staggering one third of all women died during their childbearing age. During the Middle Ages women did not even realize they were pregnant several months into the pregnancy, when they would feel movement inside their bodies by which time they would be five months pregnant.</p> <p>In such an atmosphere the likely of death was sky high both for the mother and for her child. It was not until centuries later that the process of childbirth was studied and safer means of delivery were developed.</p> <h2>6 Mandrake extracts and Juniper were used as anesthesia.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-252.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Among all the various branches of medicine the one in which the ancients truly did wonders was in surgery. In ancient Mesopotamia which is present day Iraq doctors would use opium and alcohol in order to make sure that their patients do not feel a thing as they come under the knife.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-253.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>The ancient Egyptians might have been master builders who built the pyramids and tombs at which we still marvel in astonishment. However when it came to anesthesia they used the extract of mandrake fruits which is something of questionable effectiveness to say the least. In China and India cannabis, aconite and juniper were used as anesthetic agents. It is indeed rather difficult today to judge their efficacy. One can only imagine the pain of the patients.</p> <h2>5 Holy water and exercise were used to treat chronic diseases.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-254.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Among the ancient Greeks during the time of the great Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC) it is believed that epilepsy was due to the will of God. He was sure that the causes of this horrible diseases were three namely wind, cold and sun. During the European Dark Ages those suffering from epilepsy were thought to be possessed by demons and were treated using and a combination of holy water and exercise.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-255.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Epilepsy was not the only disease where the cure led to an increase in misery as opposed to relief. Diabetics for instance were told by the doctors of the time to exercise and were given herbs. The patients of course did not get to live too long and would in most cases die.</p> <p>Skin diseases of all sorts were considered to be incurable. The patient would simply be ostracised from the community and would have to wear a bell around his or her neck in order to warn others to stay away.</p> <h2>4. Bloodletting was considered as a cure all procedure regardless the disease.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-256.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Bloodletting was practiced among many different ancient cultures from the Arab World and the Middle East to ancient Greece, Egypt and even in India.</p> <p>The doctors of the times erroneously believed that blood contained within it a thing they called bad humors, which if they were bled out of the system would lead to a full recovery for the patient. The logic went that our blood contained humors of different kinds some good and some bad and that in order to remain healthy one needed to have a balance among all the different humors.</p> <p>It was one of the most popular medical procedure for at least two thousand years right up until the nineteenth century. This one size fits all approach was practiced for thousands of years. In fact the first President of the United States George Washington also used this technique in order to cure his tonsils. Needless to say he died not long afterwards.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-257.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>The practice of bloodletting is now viewed to be generally harmful. Even in such cases where it might have had a positive effect such as when it was used to treat blood pressure to lower blood volume in the body, its efficacy has been limited and the positive effects were largely unintentional.</p> <h2>3 The Ancients used poisonous herbs and snake venom.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-258.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Long before we invented antibiotics, people from various cultures would try their luck to come with cures using viper venoms and plant poisons. Unlike certain other practices which were totally futile this one actually worked. As per scientists, small proteins known as disintegrins are the cause of the antibacterial behavior.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-259.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>While the doctors of ancient Egypt tried to use henbane, opium and cannabis. During the Dark Ages doctors tried to add scorpions and dried snakes to their portions. Although of questionable effectiveness it is still used in some cases such as treating snake bites.</p> <h2>2 Skull trephination used to be practiced.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-260.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>Now of all the diseases one could have caught in the old days the worst would have to be psychological diseases of various sorts. Epilepsy, headaches among other things were treated by well simply drilling into the skull of the patient. Trephination is in fact the oldest surgical procedure known to man. There is proof that even during the neolithic period trephination was a part of medical practice. In fact skulls found in France showed a total of 40 out of the 120 skulls at the burial site had trephination procedures carried out on them as far as at least 6500 BC.</p> <p>In fact it was so popular that 1500 trephined skulls have been discovered so far that date back to the Neolithic period or a staggering 5 percent to 10 percent of all the skulls discovered thus far from the time of the Stone Age.</p> <p>The use of this technique was not just limited to psychological diseases however and it was also used in order to alleviate blood clotting after an injury. It was also used in order to remove any bone fragments or other material that might have remained lodged in the skull after an injury. Such head injuries were not at all uncommon as during the neolithic period use of such weapons as clubs and slings was common and of course violence was prevalent thus leading to a very high rates of head injury.</p> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-261.jpeg"/>Wikimedia <p>It was also used in order to deal with spirits as a form of exorcism. The bone that had been removed from the skull of the patient would be worn in order to ward off any evil spirits.</p> <p>It is still practiced however modern anesthetics and tools have not only made the process safer and less painful, it is also used in rare cases in order get access to parts of the brain that may not be otherwise possible. The part of the skull that is removed is also put back into places fixed their as soon as possible.</p> <p>It was a very popular practice right up until the time of the Renaissance in Europe. In modern world it has lost its place and is now only done for extreme cases. However, pseudoscience in favour of trepanning continues with such people as Bart Hughes a man who rather shockingly was not even a medical doctor but was a librarian who had been a medical student however due to his views on the use of marijuana he was not granted a degree in the medicine.</p> <p>Such views however are lonely voices and do not command any following in the wider medical profession.</p> <h2>1.Tobacco smoke enema was also used for medical purposes.</h2> <img src="https://cdnone.netlify.com/db/2017/11/word-image-262.jpeg"/>Imgur <p>Doctors used a tobacco smoke enema in order to treat such things as parasites, somnolence and stomach cramps. This technique had been picked up from Native Americans in the North America.</p> <p>In its liquid form tobacco smoke was also employed to treat hernia patients. Before the discovery of tobacco in and its subsequent import from there to Europe, tobacco was unknown to Europe, however the inhaling of smoke to treat such things dated back to the time of the ancient Greeks.</p> <p>They continued to be used up to the nineteenth century when it was discovered that tobacco has nicotine in it and eventually the use of these enemas went out of fashion.</p> <i></i>