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

Khalid Elhassan April 10, 2025 16 min

Remedy - Flagellants thought that flogging themselves would ward off the plague — Flagellants thought that flogging themselves would ward off the plague. Pits Perilous

18. Huffing Farts

Londoners during the Great Plague. Welcome Images

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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.