Category Archives: Strange cures

1898: Dr Warren’s cure for masturbation: sleep with a friend

Doctor Ira Warren (1806-64) was a Boston physician and the author of one of the 19th century’s most trusted medical guides. Warren’s Household Physician first appeared in the early 1860s and remained in print for more than 40 years. Like most guides of its ilk, the Household Physician condemned the habit of masturbation and warned against its physical and moral effects:

“There is probably no vice to which so many boys and young men, and even girls and young women, are addicted, and from which so many constitutions break down, as self-pollution. Small boys and girls learn the vile practice of the larger ones at school and generally continue it up to maturity, without the least suspicion that they are inflicting upon themselves either a moral or a physical injury.”

According to the 1898 edition, the symptoms of prolonged self-abuse included:

“..headache, wakefulness, restless nights, indolence, indisposition to study, melancholy, despondency, forgetfulness, weakness in the back and private organs, a lack of confidence in one’s own abilities, cowardice, inability to look another full in the face… There are few objects more pitiable to behold than a young man in this condition…”

The Household Physician did not provide specific instructions for treating chronic masturbation but offered a few general guidelines. The patient, it suggested, should only be permitted to mix with “intellectual and virtuous females”. He should also make himself busy with “useful and agreeable employment”. Furthermore, he should:

“..avoid solitude and sleep with some friend. He should sleep on a mattress and never on feathers; always on the side, never on the back.”

Source: Ira Warren, The Household Physician; for the Use of Families, Planters, Seamen and Travellers, 1898 edition. 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.

1658: Cure bad breath by holding your mouth over the toilet

Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) was an English writer, diplomat and a courtier to King Charles I. Digby was also something of an amateur physician. One of his better known medical texts, republished several times, suggested recipes for the ‘weapon salve’ or ‘powder of sympathy’. This bizarre early modern medical theory was based on the premise that a victim’s wound could be treated by applying ointment to the weapon that had caused it.

Digby also believed in Galenic concepts of physiological balance and harmony. These principles were reflected in Digby’s suggested treatment for bad breath:

“Tis an ordinary remedy, though a nasty one, that they who have ill breaths [should] hold their mouths open at the mouth of a privy [outhouse] as long as they can… by the reiteration of this remedy, they find themselves cured at last, the greater stink of the privy drawing unto it and carrying away the lesser stink, which is that of the mouth.”

Source: Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse [on] Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy, London, 1658. 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.

1305: Cure lovesickness with an old hag and a menstrual cloth

Bernard of Gordon was a French physician and academic of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Born into a noble family on the French Riviera, just north of Cannes, he studied and then lectured at the University of Montpellier.

Bernard’s best known written work, Lilium Medicinae, was one of the most trusted medical encyclopaedias of its age, describing scores of diseases and their causes, symptoms and suggested treatments. It even explored less well known areas of practice, such as speech therapy and psychological problems.

One chapter of the Lilium even offered a treatment for male depression caused by unrequited love or ‘lovesickness’. According to Bernard, the treating physician should deal with this problem by locating:

“…an old woman with a hideous appearance, big teeth, a beard and ugly disgusting clothing.”

The old woman should appear before the patient, telling him that the woman he loves is promiscuous, alcoholic, unclean, lazy, mentally deranged and wets the bed. If this does not work, the old woman must:

“…take out an old cloth soaked with menstrual blood and show it before him, lifting it before his face. Then shout before him: ‘Look, your beloved is just like this cloth!”

Source: Bernard of Gordon, Lilium Medicinae, c.1305. 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.

1656: Dr Schroeder’s recipe for red-headed mummy

Johann Schroeder was a German physicist and medical researcher, best known for isolating and describing arsenic. Belonging to the Paracelsian medical school, Schroeder was also fond of prescribing ‘mummy’ – dried and powdered human corpse – as a catch-all treatment.

In his 1656 book Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, Schroeder claimed the very best mummy was sourced from Egyptian tombs or deserts. This variety, however, was often expensive and hard to come by. As an alternative, Schroeder provided his own recipe for high quality medical-grade human mummy:

“Take the fresh unspotted cadaver of a red-headed man (because in them the blood is thinner and the flesh hence more excellent) aged about 24, who has been executed and died a violent death. Let the corpse lie one day and night in the sun and moon – but the weather must be good. Cut the flesh in pieces and sprinkle it with myrrh and a little aloe. Then soak it in spirits of wine for several days, hang it up against for 6 to 10 hours, soak it again in spirits of wine, then let the pieces dry in a shady spot. Thus they will be similar to smoked meat and will not stink.”

Once dry the flesh could be powdered and used both internally and externally for a variety of ailments – from epilepsy to scrofula, from gout to haemorrhoids.

Source: Johann Schroeder, Pharmacopoeia Medico-Chymica, 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.

1841: Stick your diseased finger in a Chinese frog

In April 1841, Doctor Peter Parker gave a lively address to the Boston Medical Association. Dr Parker was reporting on his experiences as a medical missionary in Asia. He arrived in China in 1834 and spent several years there, helping with the institution of charitable hospitals in Macau and elsewhere.

A good deal of Parker’s address focused on the “medical quackery” he had observed in China. A Chinese dentist, Parker claimed, will keep the teeth he has extracted and string them onto his horse’s reins; this serves both as advertising and “evidences of his skill and extensive practice”.

Dr Parker also recorded seeing:

“…a man with his whitlowed [diseased] finger thrust into the abdomen of a [live] frog, the poor writhing reptile being tied on to cure the disease.”

Parker report mentioned many other bizarre treatments. Local doctors attempted to revive a drowned child, Parker said, not by draining and massaging the lungs but by blowing air into the rectum with a hollow feather. Another Chinese physician, treating a merchant’s wife for constipation, sent a messenger to the hospital asking if he could borrow a corkscrew.

Source: Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol.24, April 21st 1841. 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.

1307: Treat smallpox with the colour red

Many medieval doctors believed certain ailments could be treated by exposing the sufferer to different lights and colours. The 12th century writer Hildegard of Bingen, for instance, suggested that those with eye problems could do no worse than spend hours each day staring at green grass.

Another prominent advocate of this ‘colour therapy’ was John of Gaddesden (died 1361). Gaddesden was a royal physician to Edward I. His standard treatment for smallpox was to wrap the patient in a red cloth, fill the room with red decor – and provide the patient only with red foods and drinks:

“…Take a scarlet or red cloth be taken and the variolous [pox-ridden] patient be wrapped in it completely – as I did with the son of the most noble king of England when he suffered those diseases… I made everything about his bed red… it is a good cure and I cured him in the end without the marks of smallpox.”

Despite its lack of effectiveness the ‘red treatment’ for smallpox remained in vogue for centuries. Queen Elizabeth I was wrapped in a red blanket when she contracted the disease in 1562. Early modern smallpox wards were outfitted with red walls, red curtains and red lamps.

The American colony of Massachusetts passed a law in 1731 requiring “a red cloth to be hung in all infected places”. Even Niels Finsen, winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize for medicine, called for infected patients to be housed in specially outfitted rooms and bathed under red sunlamps.

Source: John of Gaddesden, Rosa Medicinæ, 1307 and others. 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.

1831: Strengthen Junior’s teeth with fresh rabbit brains

In 1831, Prudence Smith authored a household guide titled Modern American Cookery, with a List of Family Medical Receipts and a Valuable Miscellany. As the title suggests it was primarily a book of recipes, followed by a short chapter containing homespun medical treatments and preventatives.

Many of these were herbal treatments and concoctions typical for their time. Some were more unusual and drew on frontier remedies. For example, for a bed-wetting child, Miss Smith recommends:

“..regular serves [of] rat legs, fried until crisp, served hot or cold.”

And to strength the teeth and gums of a baby or infant, rub them with:

“..the rattle taken whole from a rattlesnake [or] the fresh brains of a rabbit.”

Source: Miss Prudence Smith, Modern American Cookery &c., 1831. 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.

1684: A recipe for ‘puppy water’ with ‘fasting spittle’

‘Puppy water’ was a rare but highly regarded cosmetic application in the early modern period. It was supposedly good for removing wrinkles, tightening and lightening the skin and eradicating blemishes.

This recipe for puppy water appeared in the Book of Receipts, an almanac of recipes and home cures published in 1684. The author was Mary Doggett, the wife of the popular Irish actor, comedian and raconteur Thomas Doggett.

In addition to a young stout puppy, Mrs Doggett’s recipe called for “a pint of fasting spittle” (saliva collected from a person or persons who had not eaten for several days).

“Take one young fat puppy and put him into a flat still, quartered, guts and all, ye skin upon him… then put in a quart of new butter milk, two quarts of white wine, four lemons purely pared and then sliced, a good handful of fumatory and egremony, and three pennyworth of camphire, a pint of fasting spittle which you must gather into a bottle beforehand, a handful of plantine leaves, six pennyworth of ye best Venus turpentine prepared with red rosewater… Eighteen good pippins must be sliced in with ye puppy.”

Source: Mrs Mary Doggett, Book of Receipts, 1684. 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.

1529: Silver rings help pilgrims deal with erectile problems

In the late 1520s, Sir Thomas More penned a defence of the Catholic church that also included a condemnation of obscure and superstitious rituals being practised in some areas.

One of the sillier examples described by Sir Thomas occurred at an abbey in Picardy, near the mouth of the Somme. The abbey, dedicated to St Valery, had become a shrine for men suffering from kidney stones, impotence and erectile problems. It attracted visitors from across western Europe, including some from England.

Seeking the blessings of St Valery, these pilgrims sometimes left offerings peculiar to their impairment:

“..Just as you see wax legs or arms or other parts hanging up at other pilgrimage shrines, in that chapel all the pilgrims’ offerings hung about the walls, and they were all men’s and women’s private gear [genitalia] made out of wax.”

More also describes a particular ritual carried out at the abbey, apparently intended to help pilgrims with their impotence and erectile problems:

“At the end of the altar there were two round rings of silver, one much larger than the other, through which every man puts his privy member, not every man through both… for they were not of the same size but one larger than the other.”

Source: Sir Thomas More, Dialogue concerning Heresies, 1529. 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.

1752: Feverish reverend saved from death by “breast milky”

Ebenezer Parkman was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1703. Parkman would spent most of his adult life as the reverend in Westborough, Worcester County. In the summer of 1752 he was struck down by an undiagnosed fever, a disease which had already claimed several lives in the district. Bedridden for weeks and unable to eat, Parkman continued to weaken, while concerned family members kept a constant vigil at his bedside. In late August Parkman’s fever started to dissipate. He found enough strength to write in his diary – and to report the reason for his recovery:

“My wife tends me [at] nights and supplies me with breast milky.”

Parkman’s wife Mary sent their one-year-old son Samuel to relatives, so that she could nurse her ailing husband. Parkman Senior recovered fully and lived another 30 years, dying in December 1782.

Source: Francis Wallett (ed.) The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1703-1782. 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.