Category Archives: Strange cures

1656: Treat piles with an “old white dog’s turd” in salad oil

The Skilful Physician was an anonymously written medical guide, published in London in 1656. While The Skilful Physician drew much of its content from existing works, it was intended for ordinary folk rather than doctors so was written in a more simple vernacular. Much of The Skilful Physician’s content is concerned with prevention, suggesting lifestyle choices, eating habits and natural prophylactics to ward off common illnesses and ailments. But it also lists more than 700 recipes, natural cures or treatments, such as this one for epilepsy:

“Take young feathered ravens… before they touch any ground. Remove the skin and feathers until clean and pull out all the guts and entrails… then put into an oven and dry so that you can make a powder thereof, then beat flesh and bones together thereof… let the patient drink it with ale or wine when the fit begins, and by God’s grace it will help.”

For problems with eyesight, such as cataracts, The Skilful Physician suggests mashing up a handful of wood lice with three different herbs, then taking this with beer. And for those painful haemorrhoids, take out the salad dressing and find some nice aged dog dung:

“Take a very old and hard white dog’s turd, which will be [found] on top of the molehills, and boil it in salad oil [until] very thick, and put it up the piles therewith, and it will help very quickly.”

Source: Anon, The Skilful Physician, containing Directions for the Preservation of a Healthful Condition and Approved Remedies for All Diseases, London, 1656. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1849: Frenchman corks own bottom to save on food

Writing in a colo-rectal guidebook in 1881, Dr William H. Van Buren described several instances of patients placing foreign objects into their own bowel or rectum. In most cases the patients claimed to be seeking relief from severe constipation. It goes without saying that while many objects entered readily, not all were so willing to depart.

In 1878, a 35-year-old valet:

“…inserted a glass bottle into his rectum with the object of stopping an urgent diarrhoea, and was brought to the hospital the next day with much pain of belly, vomiting and exhaustion.”

The bottle was eventually recovered – after a lengthy procedure involving scalpels, forceps and cat gut. Another case, cited by Van Buren from 1849, is notable for its motive rather than its method:

“A gardener, to economise in food, plugged his rectum with a piece of wood, which had carefully carved with barbs to prevent its slipping out. Nine days afterward he was brought to the hospital in great agony. The mass had mounted beyond the reach of the finger… in consequence of the barbs described by the patient, Dr Reali made no effort to extract it from below but proceeded at once to open the abdomen and thus safely delivered his patient, who made a good recovery.”

Source: William H. Van Buren, Lectures upon Diseases of the Rectum and Surgery of the Lower Bowel, 1881. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1536: Paracelsus warns against glueing on severed body parts

Paracelsus (1493-1541) was a prominent but controversial figure in post-medieval medicine. Born Aureolus von Hohenheim in Switzerland, he was trained by his physician father but also dabbled in chemistry, metallurgy and alchemy. By the mid 1520s he was practising in Strasbourg while also researching and writing.

Paracelsus’ philosophy focused on the relationship between the human body and naturally occurring organic and mineral matter. He also stressed the importance of natural healing processes, something evident in this extract from 1536:

“The surgeon must know that nature cannot by fooled or changed. He must follow nature, not nature follow him. If he uses remedies contrary to nature, he will ruin everything. For example, you cannot replace a limb that has been cut off and it is ridiculous to attempt it. In Veriul, I once saw a barber surgeon take an ear that had been hacked off and stick it back with mason’s cement. He was given great praise and there were cries of ‘Miracle!’ But the next day the ear fell off, as it was undermined with pus. The same thing happens with limbs if you try to stick them back on again. Where is the honour in such trickery?

Source: Paracelsus, Grosse Wundartznei, 1536. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.79AD: Pliny’s “hairy spider” contraceptive

The ancient Roman eclectic Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) had an answer for almost every ailment or injury. His 37-volume Natural History records hundreds of lotions, potions and animal-based cures: from chicken brains in wine for snakebite, to elephant’s blood or wolf’s eye for a fever.

Pliny was less forthcoming when it came to contraceptive methods, which he opposed on principle. Nevertheless, his Natural History lists several herbs which, if eaten, were likely to prevent conception or lead to miscarriage. Another method of contraception described by Pliny involves “rubbing juniper all over the male part before coitus”.

Still another, reportedly discovered by Caecilius, requires one large hairy spider:

“There is a type of hairy spider that has a very large head. If you cut this open you will find inside two small worms. If these are tied onto women, wrapped in a strip of deer hide, she will not conceive… This contraceptive retains its effectiveness for one year. I think it appropriate for me to mention contraception, only because some women are so fertile and have so many children that they need a break.”

Source: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, b.29 v.28. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1909: Doc’s asthma cure: tobacco, coffee, booze and cocaine

In 1909, Dr William Lloyd published a brief essay on asthma in the British Medical Journal. According to Dr Lloyd, asthma was “essentially a nervous disease” caused by nasal irritation and involuntary spasms of the bronchial muscles.

Contrary to popular opinion, he wrote, asthma could be easily treated. An attack could be subdued with a dose of ipecacuanha powder, a plant extract that causes vomiting. Some of Dr Lloyd’s other suggested treatments were less creative:

“The use of pipe tobacco smoking acts admirably in some patients… One of the commonest and most effective remedies is coffee. It acts better if given very hot and strong and without sugar and milk. Alcohol, chloroform and cocaine are remedies of value [for] checking an attack, however severe.”

Dr Lloyd continued to write on asthma, hay fever and other respiratory conditions until the 1930s. In 1925 his practice was flooded with patients after the Daily Mail claimed that Dr Lloyd had discovered a permanent cure for hay fever. The British Medical Association deemed this to be advertising, a practice against its charter, so Lloyd’s name was temporarily removed from the register. His hay fever ‘cure’ was also discredited.

Source: Dr William Lloyd, “Asthma: Its causation and treatment” in British Medical Journal, vol.1, January 16th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1744: For consumption, sniff turf and “suck a healthy woman”

John Wesley (1703-91) was an English theologian and religious reformer, best known as the founder of Methodism. Wesley also had an interest in the natural sciences, physics and medicine. In 1744, he penned Primitive Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, a volume of medical receipts and treatments.

Most of Wesley’s medical advice is standard for the time, though there are a few bizarre tips, such as his treatment for insanity:

“Put the madman under a great waterfall, for as long as his strength would bear, or let him eat nothing but apples for a month.”

His advice for consumption (tuberculosis) is no less strange:

“Cut up a little turf of fresh earth and, laying down, breathe into the hole [for] a quarter of an hour. Have known a deep consumption cured thus. In the last stage, suck a healthy woman. This cured my father.”

Source: John Wesley, Primitive Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, 1744. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

c.1320: Cure baldness with year-old pot-roasted mice

A Celtic medical manuscript, written in Irish Gaelic and dating to the early 14th century, offers several animal-based cures for common illnesses and conditions. To bring an end to paralysis:

“Take a fox with his pelt and with his innards. Boil him well till he part from his bones… the patient’s body being first well scoured, bath the limbs or even the whole person in [the fox’s] brew.”

The manuscript also contains instructions for a medieval hair restorer. If rubbed regularly into a bald head, this substance will produce instant hair growth – but it must be handled with care:

“With mice, fill an earthen pipkin [pot]. Stop the mouth with a lump of clay and bury beside a fire, but so as the fire’s great heat reach it not. So be it left for a year, and at a year’s end take out whatsoever may be found therein. But it is important that he who shall lift it have a glove upon his hand, lest at his fingers’ ends the hair [will] come sprouting out”

Source: Celtic medical manuscript, c.1320; cited in Medicine in Ancient Erin, 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1889: Cure jaundice with urine-filled carrot by fire

Walter James Hoffman (1846-99) was a Pennsylvanian physician, ethnologist and author. After graduating from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, the young Hoffman volunteered as a medic in the Franco-Prussian War. After this he enlisted as a US Army surgeon, serving briefly under General George Custer.

In the 1880s Hoffman left the Army and traveled extensively on the North American continent, living with and studying frontier communities and Native American tribes. In 1889, Dr Hoffman presented the American Philosophical Society with the conclusions of his research on Pennsylvanian folklore.

This volume detailed a wide array of homespun medical treatments, some valid, some based on superstitions and wacky theories. One ‘cure’ still widely practised in rural areas was for a dog bite:

“To cure a bite, use a hair of the dog that caused it. It is sometimes placed between two slices of buttered bread and eaten as a sandwich.”

Mumps could be cured by rubbing the swellings against a hog trough. Rheumatism could be kept at bay by carrying around a potato in one’s pocket. Excessive saliva and dribbling in children could be stopped by “passing a live fish through the child’s mouth”. Whooping cough could be treated with daily drinks of tea made from a hornet’s nest. No less bizarre was a treatment for jaundice:

“Hollow out a carrot, fill it with the patient’s urine and hang it, by means of a string, in the fireplace. As the urine is evaporated and the carrot becomes shrivelled, the disease will leave the patient.”

Source: Dr Walter J. Hoffman, Folk Medicine of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1889. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1814: Woman carrying the Messiah actually just overweight

messiah
Joanna Southcott, the wannabe Virgin Mary of the Victorian era

Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) was born into a poor but devoutly Anglican farming family in Devon. Southcott left home around her 20th birthday. She spent the next 30 years working in and around Exeter as a farm worker, a housemaid, a lady’s maid and an upholstery seamstress.

Sometime around 1792, Southcott claimed to have experienced voices and visions. Some of these voices predicted events that later proved true. They also instructed Southcott to take up writing. In 1801, she spent her meagre life savings on self-publishing a book of her divine prophecies. It was picked up by a small but influential group of millenarian Christians and within three years Southcott had become a minor celebrity.

In February 1814, Southcott – then 64 years old, never married and purportedly still a virgin – shocked her followers by announcing that she was pregnant with the Second Messiah. She described her immaculate conception to a follower, George Turner:

“It is now four months since I felt the powerful visitation working upon my body… to my astonishment, I not only felt a power to shake my whole body, but I felt a sensation that is impossible for me to describe upon my womb… This alarmed me greatly, yet I kept it to myself.”

The news was greeted with comedic interest by the London press, which followed Southcott’s prophecies closely. She certainly developed some of the symptoms of pregnancy, growing “great in size”. But when no baby had appeared by the start of November, the 14th month of Southcott’s ‘pregnancy’, the sceptics were in uproar.

Southcott blamed the child’s non-appearance on her spinsterhood and recruited one of her followers as a token ‘Joseph’, marrying him on November 12th, but even this could not coax out the reluctant Messiah.

Southcott, by now very ill, disappeared from sight and died two days after Christmas. Followers kept her body for four days, believing that Southcott might rise again. Instead, they were greatly disappointed when her corpse started to putrefy and stink. An autopsy was conducted on Southcott’s body to find causes for the symptoms of pregnancy, including her greatly swollen belly. One attending doctor put this down to her abdomen, which was:

“..the largest I ever saw, being nearly four times the usual size, and appeared [to be] one lump of fat… this preternatural enlargement, the thickness of fat [and] the flatus of the intestines… satisfactorily accounts for the extraordinary size of the deceased.”

Source: Joanna Southcott, Conception Communication, conveyed to George Turner, February 25th 1814; Dr Peter Mathias, The Case of Johanna Southcott, 1815. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1739: Mrs Stephens receives £5,000 for snail recipe

In June 1739, the British Parliament passed a private member’s bill granting Joanna Stephens a gratuity of £5,000, the equivalent of more than £8 million in today’s currency. The reason for this princely sum? Mrs Stephens claimed to have a recipe for dissolving bladder stones and was willing to share it for a hefty fee.

Bladder stones, or cystoliths, are caused by dehydration that facilitates high mineral concentration in one’s urine. In the 18th century world, where water was fetid and potentially deadly, men quenched their thirst with beer, wine and spirits, making bladder stones a common ailment.

Mrs Stephens announced her “dissolving cure for the stones” in 1738 and demanded £5,000 to share it. A public subscription raised only one-third of this amount, so she took her request to Westminster. Despite Mrs Stephens being the daughter of a landed gentleman with no medical training, some MPs took her seriously and pushed her request through parliament.

Their enthusiasm seems even more incredible when Stephens’ recipe was unveiled:

“My medicines are a powder, a decoction and pills. The powder consists of eggshells and snails, both calcined [dry-roasted]. The decoction is made by boiling some herbs, together with a ball which consists of soap, swine cress and honey in water. The pills consist of snails calcined, wild carrot seeds, burdock seeds, ash seeds, hips and hawes, all burned to a blackness, soap and honey.”

The £5,000 did come with conditions. Before payment was made, Stephens’ recipe was tested for several months on four men, all of whom suffered from bladder stones. These trials were overseen by a panel of 28 trustees, including the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In March 1740, a majority of the trustees declared that Stephens’ recipe had fulfilled its promise and was capable of dissolving bladder stones. Stephens accepted her £5,000 and withdrew to spend it, while doctors quibbled over whether her recipe had any real value.

Stephens returned to private life and was never heard from again; she died in 1774. Modern historians suggest she was either a fantastic charlatan or a lucky beneficiary of government stupidity.

Source: The London Gazette, Saturday June 16th 1739. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.