When Opium Was a Cure-All Remedy, and Other Unusual Historic Medical Cures

19. Ignorance of the Risks of Drug Addiction

The potential for drug addiction was little known in the mid-nineteenth century, and even when known, the risk was deemed acceptable. Faced with the immediate pressing problem of treating the war’s injured and sick, the risk of future drug addiction was seen as a lesser evil that could be dealt with later. “Later” came when the soldiers were discharged from the hospitals. It is estimated that over 400,000 Civil War veterans became morphine addicts because of their wartime experiences. The term “Soldier’s Disease” was coined to describe that addiction. Many addicts were readily identifiable by a small bag dangling from a leather thong around their neck, containing morphine tablets and a hypodermic needle. Unsurprisingly, the most chaotic and violent period of the Wild West occurred within a few years of the Civil War’s end. That was when many war veterans still struggling with addiction began arriving in the West.

18. Huffing Farts

England’s last major bubonic plague outbreak was the Great Plague of London, which erupted in 1665. It was not as bad as the Black Death had been centuries before, but it was bad enough. In a year and half, over 100,000 perished, after they suffered horrible symptoms that included stomach pains, vomiting, diarrhea, and copious rectal bleeding. Medical knowledge back then was dismal, and people got desperate for any remedy to combat or cure the plague. Amidst their desperation, some doctors turned to a particularly radical remedy: sniffing farts from a jar.

17. Flatulence as a Remedy

There was some method to the madness. The basic premise was that the plague was caused by a miasma, or toxic vapors in the air. So if people diluted the foul air with something just as foul, the odds of coming down with the plague might come down. Accordingly, doctors told people to have something that smelled bad at hand. To wit, that they store their farts in jars and seal them in. That way if the plague showed up in their neighborhood, they could open the jars, and breathe in the foul fart fumes to ward off the plague’s foul vapors. Needless to say, smelling farts did not save anybody from the plague. It was a weird remedy, but as seen below, not as weird as some remedies tried in an earlier and worse plague, the Black Death.

16. What Did Medieval Folk Think Was the Best Remedy for the Black Death?

About a third of Europe’s population perished in the fourteenth century’s Black Death. The infected usually expired after a few days suffering horrific symptoms like bloody lungs, gruesome boils, severe vomiting, and high fevers that made victims delirious. Between the rapid spread, scary symptoms, and high mortality rates, people understandably panicked. Combine that with poor medical knowledge, and it is unsurprising that people latched on to any remedy, no matter how crazy. Such remedies seldom worked, and often only served to increase the victims’ suffering. Most cures were based on superstition, ignorance, and bad logic of the kind that put two and two together to come up with nine. An example is the line of reasoning that took people from figuring that some plague variants were airborne, and the solution: live in the sewers.

15. Living in the Sewers to Escape the Plague

People began to visit, and sometimes even live in, stinky sewers. It was thought that the sewers’ horrible stench would discourage the otherwise clean but disease-ridden air from coming near them. Not only did it not work, it also made those visiting and living in the sewers susceptible to other illnesses caused by their vile surroundings. Another popular plague remedy was treacle – a syrupy byproduct of sugar refinement. In of itself, treacle, while devoid of any healing properties, was relatively harmless. However, seeing as how we are talking about a medieval plague remedy, it is unsurprising that there was a crazy medieval twist.

14. Rotten Syrup Every Day, to Keep the Plague Away

The Black Death treacle remedy called for rotten syrup: it had to be aged at least ten years to be effective. Reasoning that “if it tastes horrible it must be good“, doctors swore by the healing properties of rotten treacle. The old, sticky, and stinky syrup was believed to not only prevent plague in the first place, but to also cure those who became infected. Still, no matter how bad rancid treacle smelled, it was not as bad as another plague remedy: urine. Since ancient times, urine was collected for various uses, such as whitening cloth, developing and fixing dyes, and tanning leather. During the Black Death, many came to believe that urine had healing properties. So they soaked themselves in it. Plague victims were bathed in urine several times a day, in the belief that doing so would either cure them, or at least alleviate the symptoms.

13. Urine and Poo to Cure the Black Death

Unsurprisingly, urine neither cured the plague nor alleviated its symptoms. It just caused victims to spend their final hours badly stinking. However, urine did not cause them to stink anywhere near as bad as this next remedy. The Black Death often caused pus filled swellings, known as buboes, to erupt all over the skin. One remedy was to lance, or open the buboes to allow the disease to leave the body. So far, so not too bad. Then a special potion was applied to the lanced buboes. A potion in which poo featured prominently. The cuts made in the plague victims’ bodies were slathered with a concoction of tree resin, white lily roots, and human excrement. The ghastly paste was pushed and packed firmly into the open wounds, then tightly wrapped to keep the nauseating mixture inside.

12. When All Else Fails, Blame the Jews

Throughout the medieval era, Jews were often persecuted by Christians, who accused them of everything from killing Jesus to murdering Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. When the Black Death erupted, it did not take long for many Christians to blame the Jews, who were accused of deliberately poisoning wells to cause the plague. Some Jews were tortured into confessing that they had poisoned the wells. The belief in Jewish culpability was further buttressed by the observation that the plague did not strike Jews as often as it did Christians – a function of Jews practicing better hygiene. So thousands of Jews were rounded up and massacred throughout Europe in a bid to halt the disease’s spread. Some were summarily executed, others were crammed into their homes or synagogues which were then set on fire, and others were murdered in a variety of fiendishly cruel ways.

11. Self-Flagellation as a Remedy

The fact that none of the preceding remedies worked reinforced the belief – never far away from medieval minds – that the misfortunes were due to divine displeasure. God was mad at mankind for its myriad sins, so he sent the plague as punishment. Adding two and two together and coming up with seventeen, many reasoned that God might stop punishing them if they just went ahead and did that for Him. So they flogged themselves. Flagellants – people who mortified their flesh with whips – had been around since at least the thirteenth century. However, the practice peaked during the Black Death, when flagellant groups arose spontaneously throughout Europe. Religious zealots paraded around, seeking atonement for their sins by vigorously whipping themselves in public displays of penance.

10. A Plague of Flagellants Amidst the Plague

Attempts at redemption through flagellation were most popular in times of crisis. It is thus unsurprising that the number of flagellants soared during the Black Death. The Church condemned the practice, but the movement spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Large groups of flagellants – sometimes numbering in the thousands – roamed the countryside. Clad in white robes, they dragged crosses while flogging themselves and each other into a religious frenzy. In one episode, hundreds of flagellants arrived in London from Flanders. They paraded twice a day, stripped to the waist, and flogged themselves bloody with three tailed scourges, some of them knotted and with nails affixed to them. Needless to say, flagellation proved as ineffective as all the other attempts at keeping the plague away. The practice proved itself a temporary fad, and enthusiasm for flagellation waned as suddenly as it had arisen.

9. The Victorian Epidemic of “Female Hysteria”

In the Victorian era, people – particularly men – knew very little about female sexuality. In the second half of the nineteenth century, women who exhibited a variety of symptoms such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, or loss of sexual appetite were diagnosed with “female hysteria”. The remedy prescribed by doctors was a pelvic massage to bring about a “female paroxysm”. That was what Victorians called a woman’s climax. A doctor would insert his fingers inside a patient’s vagina, and manually massage her vulva and clitoral region until she climaxed. That was supposed to cure whatever was ailing her.

8. Climax as a Remedy

Throughout much of history, female sexuality was so little understood that women’s climaxes were viewed as medical oddities. As such, they were the province of professional physicians who induced them in order to calm down “hysterical” women. To be fair to Victorians, they did not invent such treatments to combat “female hysteria”. That diagnosis dates all the way back to Hippocrates, circa 450 BC, and it persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the early Modern Era. However, the late Victorians can be credited with picking it up and running away with the remedy. The late nineteenth century’s medical community believed that there was a female hysteria epidemic. Some prominent doctors estimated that up to three out of every four American women suffered from the malady.

7. Victorian Doctors Used High Pressure Water Hoses and Steam Powered “Intimate Massagers” to Calm Down Female Patients

The remedy of inducing “female paroxysm” in patients was a time consuming task. It was difficult to teach and learn, could take an hour or more, and often caused wrist fatigue – carpal tunnel syndrome, as we would call it today. In a nutshell, doctors were getting sore wrists from fingering female patients to climax. So they began to turn to other means. One alternative to fingering was a water massage: a physician would direct a powerful stream of water at a woman’s vagina. Another was mechanical “intimate” massagers. The first steam-powered massager, fueled by packing coal into a furnace, was invented in 1869. However, such intimate massagers were bulky contraptions, some as big as a dining room table. They took up too much space in doctors’ offices, and were too cumbersome to tote around in a medical kit for house visits.

6. The Birth of the Modern “Intimate Massager”

Hamilton Beach, the makers of kitchen appliances such as toasters, blenders, and coffee makers, finally solved the problem of too-cumbersome intimate massager. In 1902, they marketed the “Try New Life”, the world’s first commercially available intimate massager. Because of the era’s conventional mores, the devices could not be advertised for what they actually were. Instead, they were marketed as “electrical massagers” to ease sore and aching muscles. Some people probably did buy them in order to ease sore and aching muscles. However, it was very much a wink-wink-nudge-nudge situation. The devices were marketed to women, most purchasers were women, and it was common knowledge among women just what such massagers were for.

5. Tobacco as a Cure-All Remedy

Tobacco’s harmful effects are well known and understood nowadays. For a long time, however, not only were tobacco’s ills little known, but tobacco was actually considered healthy. Centuries ago, tobacco was praised as a remedy for many ailments, not only by quacks and charlatans, but also by respected members of the mainstream medical establishment. Tobacco was introduced to Europe by the Spanish, circa 1528. From early on, it was described as a “sacred herb” because of its supposed medicinal properties, as claimed by various Native Americans. Soon, European medical practitioners came to see the newly introduced plant as a remedy for many afflictions, from headaches and colds to cancer.

4. Blowing Smoke Up the Rear

Today, “you’re just blowing smoke up my ass” is a figure of speech, conveying that the smoke blower is insincere. However, centuries ago, blowing smoke up the ass was meant literally. It described a medical procedure in which a tube or rubber hose was inserted in a patient’s rectum, up which tobacco smoke would be blown. In the 1700s, doctors routinely prescribed tobacco smoke enemas, in the mistaken belief that they had healing properties. Blowing smoke up the ass was thought to be particularly useful remedy to revive drowning victims. The nicotine in the tobacco was thought to make the heart beat faster, thus stimulating respiration, while smoke from the burning tobacco was thought to warm the drowning victim from the inside.

3. Faith in the Tobacco Smoke Remedy Was Widespread

The smoke remedy made intuitive sense: a drowned person was full of water, so blowing air, in the form of tobacco smoke which was full of healing properties, would both expel the water and heal the victim. One hiccup with trying to save drowning victims by blowing smoke up their rear was that the water was in the drowned person’s lungs, which are not connected to the rear end. Thus, blowing smoke up drowning victims’ butts and into their bowels would do little to expel water from their lungs. Although some doctors preferred to stick the tube directly into the lungs through the mouth or nose, most preferred to shove it up the patient’s behind, instead. Although medically useless, belief in the efficacy of tobacco smoke enemas in reviving drowning victims, or even those presumed dead, was widespread.

2. Public Bellows for Blowing Smoke Up Butts Were Common

Medical kits for blowing smoke up the ass were found at routine intervals along major waterways, such as the River Thames. There they waited, like modern defibrillators, ready to revive the drowned and bring the (presumed) dead back to life. Eventually, blowing smoke up peoples’ beinds came to be seen as a remedy for way more than the mere revival of the drowned. It was also used to treat to treat abdominal cramps, colds, headaches, hernias, and heart attacks. Tobacco smoke enemas were also used on typhoid fever victims, and those dying of cholera.

1. A Remedy Worse Than the Disease

While the smoke-up-the-butt remedy was useless for the patient, it could be quite dangerous for the medical practitioner. Especially if he blew the smoke with his mouth instead of use a bellows. Should the doctor inhale instead of exhale, or if gases in the patient’s bowels escaped (i.e.; if the patient farted) fecal particles could get blown back into the doctor’s mouth or inhaled into his lungs. Such a mishap, particularly when treating a cholera patient, could prove fatal for the doctor.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

All That is Interesting – The Strange, Surprising History of the Vibrator

Daily Beast, April 27^th, 2012 – ‘Hysteria’ and the Long, Strange History of the Vibrator

Eyewitness to History – The Flagellants Attempt to Repel the Black Death, 1349

Gizmodo – “Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass” Used to be Literal

Haviland, David – Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar & Other Oddball or Gross Maladies, Afflictions, Remedies, and “Cures” (2010)

Haynes, Sterling MD, British Columbia Medical Journal, December 2012 – Special Feature: Tobacco Smoke Enemas

History Collection – We Are Still Learning Weird Things About Ancient Sparta

History Learning Site – Cures For the Black Death

Kamienski, Lukasz – Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War (2016)

Listverse – 10 Crazy Cures For the Black Death

Mental Floss – The Fart Jars of 17^th-Century Europe

Providentia – Soldier’s Disease

World History Encyclopedia – Medieval Cures for the Black Death