18 Health Treatments that Killed People Faster than the Problems they Were Trying to Prevent

18. From being used as a disinfectant to teeth whitening, urine was frequently applied medicinally by ancient peoples and rubbed the fluid on the gums and skin of unfortunate patients who would later contract diseases.

Despite the associated unpleasant smell that comes with the fluid, urine has been used for medicinal purposes throughout history. Ancient Romans were known to use human urine as an early method for teeth whitening, resulting in the Emperors Nero and Vespasian instituting an unpopular tax on the Roman urine industry. Continuing into the 8th century, Islamic scholar Abu Yusuf recommended the use of camel urine to treat inexact medical concerns, whilst human urine is found in traditional folk cures from Nigeria to Mexico. Today, with the exception of Madonna, who used urine, allegedly, to cure athlete’s foot, medical practitioners are few.

Although healthy urine is not toxic, it nonetheless contains bodily compounds that have been purged by the body due to their undesirability. Urine can prove highly damaging to exposed tissue over time, in particular skin and eyes, whilst the condition and safety of the fluid deteriorates as it loses freshness. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, urine expelled from the body is not actually sterile. Acquiring bacterial cells as it passes through the urethra, consuming another person’s urine is highly infectious and harmful to one’s health in a similar manner as drinking the unprocessed blood of another human in contrast to one’s own.

17. Horoscopes were used by physicians as part of medical astrology, employing the alignment of celestial bodies to determine the most appropriate method of treating a patient rather than their actual physiological symptoms.

Medical astrology, known historically as iatromathematics, was a strand of medicine which associated a connection between certain parts of the body and the positions of celestial bodies. Believing these astrological phenomena and their placement in the solar system influenced the health and condition of the human body on Earth, many physicians adapted their treatment plans based on how they interpreted these other-worldly signs. The twelve signs of the Zodiac, through unscientific and bizarre means, were calculated to govern specific parts of the body, with, for instance, the head affected most by Aries and the toe by Pisces. Consequently, during the ascendance of these cycles, such conditions were superstitiously presumed to intensify.

Accordingly, during the Medieval Era patients would commonly be less examined physically than required to provide astrological information to be compared against a horoscope as a mode of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. In fact, during the 1500s many physicians of Medieval Europe were legally mandated to examine a patient’s horoscope prior to treatment. Unsurprisingly, diagnosing a patient on the basis of inconsequential celestial rotations was not an effective method of medical practice. Whilst some subjected to the absurd belief naturally survived, it was in spite of rather than because of the unscientific nonsense, with far more succumbing to their conditions without proper medical attention.

16. In Ancient Egypt, as well as during the Elizabethan period in England, mashed and blended dead mice were used medically in the belief they could cure a variety of illnesses but instead, often just caused severe infections from the necrotic tissue.

Toothaches are an enduring and irritating feature of human existence. Usually caused by tooth decay, endemic during the lives of our early ancestors due to the lack of modern dental hygiene. Several inventive cures were applied throughout history in an attempt to eliminate the consistent pain. Among these, in Ancient Egypt dead mice were routinely mashed into tiny pieces before being blended with other ingredients to form a poultice. This moist medicament would be applied to the painful area to provide relief and, allegedly, help cure the underlying causes of the toothache.

Looking beyond the disgusting reality of mashing up dead mice and coating the insides of our mouths with the remains, medically speaking the treatment caused far more harm than good to patients. Dead mice, unsurprisingly, are comprised of decomposing and potentially diseased necrotic tissue, serving as a highly infectious host of deadly illnesses. Despite this, the practice was revived in Elizabethan England as a widespread remedy for a host of ailments. Believed to cure whooping cough, measles, smallpox, warts, and even bed-wetting, the Elizabethans briefly became obsessed with dead mouse based medical cures that only led to further loss of life.

15. Premodern cosmetic surgeries and alterations, including the injection of paraffin wax, routinely proved fatal for patients who underwent said procedures.

The earliest known cosmetic surgery, the “Edwin Smith Papyrus”, from Ancient Egypt dated 3000-2500 BCE, records the reconstructive repair of a broken nose. These procedures reached India by 800 BCE and Rome by the 1st century BCE, whereupon the field of plastic surgery gradually developed over the next two thousand years. The first recorded cosmetic surgeries took place in 16th century Europe, with so-called “barber-surgeons” in Tudor England treating damaged or disfigured faces with varying degrees of success. Of particular note, Heinrich von Pfloseudnt is credited with the creation of a method for grafting skin from the back of the arm to create a new nose in the 15th century.

With the refinement of anesthesia during the 19th-century, plastic surgeries increased in both frequency and appeal. Advertised in popular magazines as treatments for “humped, depressed, or ill-shaped noses” and “the finger marks of Time”, perhaps most notorious of these cosmetic introductions was an early form of artificial enhancements. Achieved through the use of paraffin wax, with the stated purposes of concealing wrinkles, breast augmentation, or nose alterations, hot liquid wax was injected into the patient and then “molded by the operator into the desired shape” whilst still warm. However, upon hardening the wax habitually grew into intensely painful deposits and could migrate through the body to other areas causing severe disfigurement or even fatal cancerous blockages.

14. Arsenic, a hazardous and carcinogenic element, was frequently used in early cancer treatments, often merely giving patients additional cancers and pains rather than solving the existing conditions.

Arsenic is a metallic element known primarily for being immensely hazardous to humans due to high levels of toxicity. Despite this defining characteristic, Victorian England employed arsenic generously, believing that the whiter a person’s face, the more it showed they had never worked in the fields. Mixing the poison with vinegar and chalk, arsenic was eaten, as well as rubbed into the skin, by high-class women to whiten their facial complexions. Wallpapers also included the toxic substance to brighten the color schemes, whilst in 1858 approximately 20 people died as a result of the Bradford sweet poisoning when arsenic was included in peppermint humbugs.

More astoundingly, not only used by ignorant members of the English aristocracy, arsenic was employed by medical physicians as an early treatment for cancers. In 1786, Thomas Fowler proposed the use of a 1% potassium arsenite solution, prescribed in tonic form, as a treatment for leukemia. Adopted by the medical profession, by 1845 arsenic was widely used to combat cancers and would expand in usage to also treat syphilis, psoriasis, and ulcers. However, as arsenic is itself extremely carcinogenic the practice merely gifted patients with side effects including liver cirrhosis, bladder cancer, skin cancer, and heart disease.

13. An early form of general anesthesia, a poisonous and often fatal concoction known as dwale was administered to surgical patients during the Middle Ages.

Efforts to safely and reliably induce a state of general anesthesia in a patient date to the earliest recorded histories, with references identified in ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Indian medical texts. Among the many suggested solutions to this longstanding problem, during the Middle Ages, specifically between 1200-1500 CE in England, a concoction known as “dwale” was employed as an anesthetic. An alcohol-based composition, dwale contained a broad collection of varying ingredients including bile, opium, lettuce, bryony, henbane, hemlock, and vinegar, and it was believed surgeons could counteract the effects of the anesthetic by rubbing vinegar and salt on the patient’s cheekbones.

Widely used, with dwale referenced in several literary sources including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, more than 50 manuscripts have been discovered praising the effectiveness of the anesthetic and detailing different methods of preparation and composite ingredients. However, despite laudatory popular opinion, dwale was an immensely dangerous concoction due to its frequent inclusion of powerful poisons and was lethal if improperly prepared. Including henbane as well as hemlock, both were powerful toxic plants capable of killing full grown adults with ease. In spite of this, with opium outlawed by the Catholic Church due to its Eastern and thus blasphemous nature, dwale remained the best available option for surgeons for over 400 years.

12. During the early 20th century, medical research promoted “fever theory: the combating of an otherwise incurable disease, such as syphilis, through the deliberate infection of a patient with malaria.

Fevers, despite being unpleasant experiences for those suffering, are actually beneficial to the host, serving as a defensive mechanism by the autoimmune system to purge itself of hostile infection. Most bacteria, due to evolutionary requirements to survive in a human host, thrive at approximate body temperatures of 38°C and consequently increasing the body’s temperature kills off the bacterial invaders. Due to the capacity of fevers to cure the body of infections, so-called “fever theory” was applied during the late-19th and early 20th centuries as a medical approach to treat otherwise incurable illnesses, in particular by Austrian neuro-psychiatrist Julius Wagner Jauregg concerning the treatment of syphilitic asylum inmates.

In 1917, Jauregg determined the introduction of malaria to patients suffering from the advanced stages of syphilis could be treated through the forced inducement of a febrile episode caused by malaria. For this work, Jauregg would actually win the Noel Prize for Medicine in 1927 “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica”. However, although demonstrating some effectiveness within carefully controlled environments, Jauregg’s approach was highly risky, relying on the infected patient to survive the malarial infection long enough for it to kill the syphilis. Most would not, succumbing to the lethal virus due to their already weakened physical condition.

11. Hemorrhoids were historically treated in a number of painfully unscientific ways, most unappealingly through the insertion of a red hot poker up the bottom and which commonly resulted in painful and potentially fatal rectal abscesses.

Hemorrhoids, also known as piles, are natural cushions that form as part of the human anal canal with the purpose of easing and maintaining rectal command. Although innately benign, through a number of factors, including pregnancy, diarrhea, and constipation, hemorrhoids can become inflamed to cause considerable pain. First mentioned in 1700 BCE by the Ancient Egyptians, the condition has endured across the centuries, through Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, to the modern day, with an estimated 50-66% of all adults destined to suffer from inflamed hemorrhoids at some point during their lives.

During the Middle Ages, hemorrhoids became associated with Saint Fiacre – the patron saint of gardeners – who himself notably developed the condition during the 7th century. Believed to be a result of inadequate veneration of the canonized priest, the suggested medical treatment involved heating “seven or eight small pieces of iron” and inserting said scorching metals into the rectum until the hemorrhoids fell off “like a piece of burnt hide”. Incredibly, this practice continued as late as 1882, with William Allingham recommending this archaic approach as the preferred mode of treating inflamed hemorrhoids despite noting results tended to be unsuccessful, ranging from “great pain” and “retarded recovery” to potentially fatal “abscesses”.

10. Due to the archaic belief that the body was sustained by a harmonious balance of the four “humors”, bile was consumed by patients at the behest of ancient doctors resulting in major gastrointestinal distress and even potentially death

Throughout the history of early western medicine, from classical antiquity all the way through the Middle Ages, human bodily health was broadly believed to depend upon the balancing of four essential “humors”. These humors, encompassing blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile, were believed to constitute the vital fluids upon which life was founded and which necessitated a careful equilibrium between the four ingredients to maintain good health. Consequently, physicians during this period routinely ascribed physical illness to an imbalance of these humors, requiring a medical intervention to re-calibrate the body’s levels.

As a result, human and animal bile was introduced to the body either through oral consumption or rectal intake using an enema. Whilst human bile was generally preferable, elephant bile was believed to cure bad breath, python bile as a remedy for genital warts, and a boar’s bile as a panacea for all bodily ills. Subverting the expectations of physicians of the day, bile, whilst serving a vital function in the breaking down of food, absolutely should not be consumed by humans. The ingestion of bile by these unlucky patients did not cure their ailments, but rather led to severe gastrointestinal conditions whilst repeated consumption could prove fatal.

9. In a similar manner to the introduction of bile, a medical belief in the four “humors” resulted in physicians deliberately draining the blood of patients in order to supposedly re-balance the ratios of bodily fluids.

Bloodletting is the deliberate release of blood from a patient in an effort to treat a medical condition. Believed to be the most common practice performed by surgeons throughout history, beginning at the earliest emergence of medicine, bloodletting maintained this prominence until the 19th century over 2,000 years later. Performed for the alleged purpose of balancing the humors, an imbalance of these fluids was generally thought to serve as the primary cause of disease and disability. Hippocrates proposed female menstruation was caused by natural bodily efforts to “purge women of bad humors”, whilst Galen furthered such thought into active balancing through bloodletting.

Consequently, bloodletting was used to treat almost any and every disease or medical condition of the day and achieved either through the stereotypical, but nonetheless historically accurate use of leeches or via cutting. By the medieval period, bloodletting had become entrenched within medical opinion with “bleeding sites” identified for the most suitable penetrative regions of the body. In fact, George Washington, after contracting his ultimately fatal throat infection in 1799, was bled in a healing attempt, with an estimated 3.75 liters of blood removed from the former president across a ten-hour period hastening his death considerably, if not actually causing it.

8. Due to a widespread belief that teething was the prime cause of infant mortality, a surgical procedure was introduced whereby a physician would cut into the gums of a child to release their teeth prematurely.

Due to the high levels of infant mortality, it was widely, and incorrectly, believed that the concurrent process of child teething was the cause of death. This belief became sufficiently widespread that during the mid-19th century 4.8% of all infants who died in London under the age of 1 were registered as having died from teething, rising to 7.3% for those between the ages of 1 and 3. Traditional, albeit entirely unnecessary remedies to “cure” teething included “blistering, bleeding, placing leeches on the gums, and applying cautery to the back of the head”. Of particular note, Ambroise Paré developed and popularized a surgical procedure to treat the alleged condition.

Paré’s technique demanded the use of a scalpel to cut open the gums of the afflicted infant to help encourage the emergence of teeth. Naturally, slicing into the mouth of an infant child, exposing tissue to infection and causing irreparable damage to oral development, did not aide at all in combating the non-existent medical concern. Despite this, Paré’s method remained commonplace through the start of the 20th century, when it was surpassed by the growing use of “teething powders”. These powders, arguably even more dangerously, included calomel: a form of mercury and which remained in use until 1954 when it was banned due to its tendency to cause severe poisoning.

7. Despite the dangerous toxicity, and indeed smell, human and animal feces were widely used in ancient medicine causing fatal infections in patients subjected to the treatment.

Among the most disgusting, and fortunately anachronistic of medical treatments used throughout history, feces were recurrently used across the ancient world in the spurious belief that it possessed powerful curative properties. In Ancient Egypt, for example, “donkey, dog, gazelle and fly dung were all celebrated for their healing properties and their ability to ward off bad spirits”, whilst crocodile dung is also believed to have been used as an early form of contraception. Naturally, these uses of feces were rarely more effective than they were immensely harmful, with feces incredibly infectious and patients submitted to fecal medicine, unsurprisingly, typically developed fatal cases of tetanus.

This horrendous medical belief incredulously persisted into the 17th century, where in Ireland “warm hog’s dung” was still used to treat nosebleeds. Famed chemist Robert Boyle allegedly treated cataracts by blowing dried and powdered human feces into the affected eye. A hundred years later, Ireland was still using poop in medicine, with “the dung of an infant pulverized” a known “treatment” for epilepsy. Today, feces is still used as part of modern medicine, but finally founded upon genuine science: the fecal transplant, in which a donor’s leavings are inserted into a patient to introduce “good” gut bacteria in an individual unable to produce it themselves as a result of autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s or IBS.

6. During the 17th century, European physicians would sometimes treat the inanimate weapon responsible for a wound in the hope it would magically heal the injury caused by it.

A form of magical medicine popular during the 17th century in Europe, powder of sympathy was a bizarre and unscientific method of treating patients suffering from weapon-inflicted wounds. First proposed by Rudolf Goclenius, Jr., and later expanded upon by Sir Kenelm Digby, doctors would treat the cause of the wound rather than the injury itself, with the hope that in so doing the object would sympathetically undo the harmful action it had committed. A poultice or salve would be applied jointly to the weapon and wound, in the hope that a connection might be made between the two and heal the injury.

Consisted of the patient’s blood, human fat, as well as iron sulfate, physicians of the day correlated the healing powers of sympathetic medicine to the now-debunked theory of animal magnetism: the belief in an invisible natural force possessed by all lifeforms that could exert physical effects, including healing, upon the world. Unsurprisingly, this practice did not help those suffering from weapon-based wounds at all. Despite retaining no scientific evidence of ever actually working, the clergy condemned the practice as devilry and magic, seeking to outlaw sympathetic medicine in 1631.

5. Virgin cleansing was, and remains in some parts of the modern world, a medical treatment to cure an individual of serious infectious diseases but instead merely passed the condition onto the unfortunate “virgin” as well.

The virgin cleansing myth is a historic belief that engaging in intercourse with virgins possesses the spiritual power to heal a person of serious infectious diseases. First reported in 16th-century Europe, accounts detail the efforts of prominent individuals to rid themselves of “social diseases” by engaging in intimate activities with presumed virgins. The precise origin of this medical practice is unknown, but it has been theorized to stem from the Christian mythical traditions of virgin-martyrs: legendary figures whose purity protected them against demonic forces. Expanding in the popular imagination in 19th century England as a cure for syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted diseases, the British Empire subsequently gifted this dangerous falsehood to the world.

Disgustingly, this ineffective practice has continued into the 21st century, notably in South Africa which experienced a dramatic increase in child sexual assault in 2002 in the aftermath of an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Social anthropologists continue to record countless instances of rape in modern Africa in the belief that the perpetrator will be cured of their ailments. Surveys by academic institutions on the African continent habitually discover a continued acceptance in this barbaric and unscientific practice, with 18% of South African laborers found at the turn of the millennium to ascribe to the false theory and as many as 32% of participants in a study from 1999.

4. During the 1700s and 1800s, surgeons would routinely remove part of the human tongue in an attempt to prevent speech disorders resulting in the disabling of the patient’s ability to speak.

A glossectomy is the surgical removal of the tongue, often performed today in order to prevent the development of oral cancer in extreme circumstances; consequently, the partial removal of the tongue is known as a hemiglossectomy. Hemiglossectomies became popular medical procedures during the 18th and 19th centuries as a cure for stuttering and other associated speech disorders viewed negatively and unsympathetically by society at large. Of particular note, German surgeon Johann Frederick Dieffenbach (1795-1847) developed and popularized a procedure that proliferated throughout Europe.

Dieffenbach’s technique involved the removal of a triangular portion at the root of the tongue, with the intent of dividing the lingual muscles and impeding nerve supply to prevent the muscular spasms causing the stutter. Although successful in that regard, the surgery also left the individual without the full, or even any, controlled use of their tongues. Without the advantages of modern prosthetics, these unfortunate patients were often rendered mute by medical incompetency. By the late-19th century, speech disorders began to be treated in more humane fashions, notably by the use of speech therapy and the emerging field of psychiatry.

3. Trepanning – the drilling of a hole into the human skull – was a frequent medical practice throughout history to treat a variety of ills, commonly resulting in the death of the patient due to the inadequacies of ancient neurosurgery.

Trepanning is a surgical technique whereby a hole is drilled into the skull, either to release built up blood pressure or expose brain tissue for operation. Believed to be the world’s oldest surgical procedure, with the earliest known examples dated to 6500 BCE in prehistoric France, more than 1,500 Neolithic skulls, representing approximately 10% of all recovered skulls from this period, depict evidence of early trepanation strongly suggesting widespread early use of the medical method. Although continuing to serve legitimate purposes in modern medicine, notably to relieve the pressures of a subdural hematoma, the historic use of trepanning was shockingly dangerous and misguided.

During the ancient era, trepanning was predominantly used to treat those considered as behaving abnormally, now recognized as sufferers of epilepsy, migraines, seizures, or mental disorders. It is also likely the practice was employed as a form of emergency surgery after severe head wounds, a common occurrence due to the prevalence of blunt stone weaponry at the time. Similarly, trepanning is believed to have been employed by pre-Columbian Mesoamericans, but at a significantly decreased rate to that of Europe. However and wherever the practice was used, the results were nevertheless comparable: the patient would likely not survive, suffering a critical loss of brain function or debilitating brain damage.

2. Liquid mercury was regarded by ancient practitioners of medicine to possess great healing powers, but instead often just killed those who consumed or were exposed to the toxic metal.

Mercury is a naturally occurring element that, atypically for a metal, takes liquid form at room temperature. Dating its discovery to at least 1500 BCE, the substance has been used by almost every culture at some point throughout history ranging from Far-East Asia to the Americas. Despite the intense toxicity of mercury, capable of absorption through the human skin and lethal in cases of excessive or prolonged exposure, it was nonetheless used as part of longstanding medical treatments. Few of these treatments resulted in positive outcomes, with mercury poisoning highly lethal if not treated properly and swiftly.

Historically, ancient Chinese medicine believed the consumption of mercury had the power to prolong life, heal injuries, and maintain vitality; in fact, the consumption of mercury does almost precisely the converse. Most famously, the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di, is believed to have died after drinking a concoction made from mercury and powdered jade which resulted in liver failure and severe mercury poisoning precipitating a complete loss of brain function. Equally unhelpfully, Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun, the second Tulunid ruler of Egypt (r. 884-896 CE), allegedly slept atop a basin filled with mercury to benefit from the presumed rejuvenative powers of the toxic substance.

1. Upon their discoveries, both cocaine and heroin were sold, marketed, and prescribed with alarming regularity as solutions to mundane medical concerns such as dandruff and sore throats.

After the isolation of cocaine in the mid-1850s, physicians were quick to take up the powerful stimulant for medicinal purposes. From use as an anesthetic, especially by ophthalmologists during eye surgeries, to serving as a painkiller, and even as a teeth whitener. Most incredulously, in the 1890s, cocaine was marketed as a cure for dandruff and was included, as depicted above, in shampoos available on the high-street. Unsurprisingly, the endemic use of cocaine did little to aide the general health of the public and instead resulted in widespread addiction before use was restricted in the early 20th century.

Equally, heroin was quickly adopted after its discovery in 1874 and prescribed for a host of medical ailments. In the 1890s, German pharmaceutical company Bayer began marketing heroin alongside aspirin as a remedy for coughs and colds, notably promoting the use of these products in the treatment of children. Adverts surviving from this period depict Bayer’s heroin ointments in the treatment of minors with bronchitis, with the claim that after use “the cough disappears”. One cannot dispute this claim, as after the child died from a heroin overdose, as often occurred, the cough did also disappear.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

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“Urine is not sterile, and neither is the rest of you”, Erika Engelhaupt, Science News (May 22, 2014)

“The Encyclopaedia of Medical Astrology”, H.L. Cornell, Echo Point Books & Media (2017)

“Crazy Medical Practices You’ll Be Glad Are Well and Truly in the Past”, Emily Blatchford, Huffington Post (November 28, 2015)

“The Ugly History of Cosmetic Surgery”, Michelle Smith, The Independent (June 9, 2016)

“A History of the Use of Arsenicals in Man”, D.M. Jolliffe, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1993)

“Arsenic-based drugs: From Fowler’s Solution to Modern Anticancer Chemotherapy”, Stephane Gibaud and Gerard Jaouen, Topics in Organometallic Chemistry (2010)

“Dwale: An anesthetic from old England”, Anthony Carter, British Medical Journal (December 1998)

“A real knockout: Medieval medicine’s version of anesthesia was often worse than surgery itself”, Jackie Rosenhek, Doctor’s Review (August 2012)

“Introducing fever therapy in the treatment of neurosyphilis”, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, Psychiatriki (2013)

“Haemorrhoidal disease: A comprehensive review”, O. Kaidar-Person, B. Person, and S.D. Wexner, Journal of the American College of Surgeons (January 2007)

“Surgical management of hemorrhoids”, S.P. Agbo, Journal of Surgical Technique (January 1, 2011)

“Medicine & Philosophy: A Twenty-First-Century Introduction”, Ingvar Johansson, Niels Lynoe, Walter de Gruyter Publishing (2008)

“Fever associated with teething”, L Jaber, I.J. Cohen, and A. Mor, Archives of Disease in Childhood (1992)

“The lancet and the gum-lancet: 400 years of teething babies”, Ann Daily, The Lancet (1996)

“The Decline of Therapeutic Bloodletting and the Collapse of Traditional Medicine”, Carter Codell, Transaction Publishers (2012)

“The Western Medical Tradition: 800 B.C. – 1800 A.D.”, Lawrence Conrad, Cambridge University Press (1995)

“The Use of Poop in Medical Treatments Throughout History”, Elana Glowatz, Medical Daily (October 7, 2016)

“History of Medicine”, Fielding H. Garrison, W.B. Saunders (1921)

“On the Virgin Cleansing Myth: Gendered Bodies, AIDS, and Ethnomedicine”, Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala, African Journal of AIDS Research (2002)

“Virgin: The Untouched History”, Hanne Blank, Bloomsbury (2007)

“The historical background of the modern speech clinic”, G.M. Klingbeil, Journal of Speech Disorders (1939)

“Mercury – Element of the ancients”, Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Dartmouth College (2012)

“Yes, Bayer promoted heroin for children: here are the ads that prove it”, Jim Edwards, Buisness Insider, (November 17, 2011)