10 Bizarre Methods Of Treatment

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The medical field is always looking for ways to cure diseases. Even in the Medieval or ancient times, they would come up with plausible solutions for what was ailing the patient. Things in today’s society are a little more sophisticated than back then, but there are still some bizarre treatments for sicknesses and diseases.

Clysters

This procedure consists of introducing liquids into the rectum or colon. This procedure would cause the intestines to inflate causing all the backed up toxins to evacuate the body. This was seen as a way of administering drugs into the system for faster relief of upset stomachs.

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Bloodletting

It was believed that removing a substantial amount of blood would prevent or cure diseases. When a person was thought to have high blood pressure, they would use this method to reduce it. They believed that purging the blood would cure diseases and it would help the blood to circulate better. If you have a fever, headache, or apoplexy DEHE, which was stroke like or seizure symptoms, they would perform this procedure near the area that was affected. The thought was that if it was performed there then the ailment would be healed.

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Spells

It was believed that a person of the pagan faith could heal a person. Of the person that was sick was visited by a pagan and they looked under a rock to see something living, then they would survive the ailment. These people were then asked to repent for their sins. They were told that this would help in the curing process.

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Dwale

This was the term for potions used during surgeries. The patients needed to sleep during the procedures, but the use of just the hemlock plant was potentially lethal. A mixture of lettuce juice, gall from a castrated boar, briony, opium, henbane, hemlock juice and vinegar mixed with wine would put the patient to sleep. The dwale had the potential of being to strong and killing the patient during the procedure.

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Potato Peels

These are used to treat burns. It has been found out that if you use a potato peel on a fresh burn it will heel faster than the traditional bandage. The advantages of this are it is cheap, non-sticky, heals fast, patients won’t cry out when it is removed, and it will keep the skin moist. A burn victim loses moisture through the evaporation occurring from the wound, but the potato can help prevent that from happening. Aside from moisture qualities of a potato peel, they also have anti-bacterial properties.

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Vinegar

According to various studies, pouring vinegar on a jellyfish sting can stop the venom that is released by the sting. If you remove all the tentacles and then pouring vinegar on the wound would alleviate the pain and stop the release of more venom into your system.

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Hydrotherapy

This procedure involved just taking a bath in order to soothe pain and get rid of diseases. It used to be believed that taking a bath with oils and flowers or bathing in spring water would cure what was ailing you. Some doctors took this idea to the extreme though and would take up the practice of wrapping their patients in ice cold towels, spraying them down with high pressured water hoses, or submerging them in baths for hours or days, only letting them out to use the bathroom. Hydrotherapy can still be found today for treatments of arthritis, ankylosing, spondylitis, spinal cord injuries, burns, spasticity, stroke, or paralysis.

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Chemically Induced Seizures

This practiced was used by a Hungarian pathologist. He claimed that seizure patients did not exhibit signs of schizophrenia and they were happy after a seizure occurred, so inducing one in a schizophrenic patient would in turn make them happy and cure them. He tested a few drugs to make the seizures occur, but settled on one called metrazol. He had some success with this procedure, because of the chemical in the brain releases after a seizure calmed the patients, but it was frowned upon due to the side effects, which included possible injuries and a continued pattern of seizures.

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Lobotomy

This is a surgical procedure that involves removing the front portion of someone’s brain. For 20yrs this treatment was used to treat schizophrenia, clinical depression, other anxiety disorders, moodiness, or a defiant youth. After antipsychotic drugs were discovered, this procedure was no longer used and it was considered one of the biggest medical mistakes to take place. Read about Lobotomy Victims and Their Life Afterwards.

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Trepanation

This procedure consists of drilling a hole in the brain in order to relieve a disease that may be occurring in the brain. It was believed that the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders. This practice is still used today when swelling of the brain occurs due to a head injury, or when blood appears under the finger nail, they will drill a hole and it is often referred to by the same name. People that lay on a bed of nails are thought to be performing a version of this procedure, because it is releasing pressure from blood vessels under the skin.

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Scientists around the world are known for being geniuses, but sometimes they can walk the fine line of insanity. Why they conduct some of the bizarre experiments they do, one will never know, but the learning that comes from these experiments will never be forgotten.

1.
The Masked Tickler

This experiment was the brain child of Professor Clarence Leuba. He wanted to know of laughter was a learned response to being tickled or an inborn response. He had two children and convinced his wife that she was not allowed to laugh during tickling to see what happened. During the experiments on the newborns, he would wear a mask that had blank stares. What he discovered was by month seven of the newborns lives they were over come with laughter when they were being tickled. So, the conclusion to his experiments was that laughter is indeed an inborn trait when it comes to the realms of tickling.

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2.
Reversing Death

While conducting research at Berkley, Robert E. Cornish believed he had discovered a way to restore life into something that had been dead for ten minutes, just as long as there was no vital organ damage. He began conducting his experiments on dogs at the college. Once the college was alerted to it, he was banned. He continued his work at home, where he failed the first two times, but succeeded the last two times. He wanted to conduct it on an actual human and found a death row inmate who wanted to volunteer for it. The state denied his request to perform this experiment. So, whether this could have been one of the greatest discoveries known to man we will never know.

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3.
Slumber Learning

Professor Lawrence LeShan wanted to know if a person is able to learn while they are asleep. He conducted an experiment on a group of constant nail biters. Using a phonograph the phrase “My nails taste terrible bitter,” was repeated 300 times during the course of a night. Seven weeks into the experiment the phonograph broke, so he began standing in the room and repeating the phrase. After several weeks forty percent of the nail biters had stopped biting their nails. He concluded that it is possible to learn while you are sleeping.

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4.
The Doctor Who Drank Vomit

Doctor Stubbins Ffirth had made the observation that yellow fever was only rapid during the summer months and lay dormant during the winter months. So, he claimed that it was not a contagious disease and wanted to prove his point. He began his experiments by making small incisions in his skin and pouring the vomit from yellow fever patients into them. He remained healthy. He made deeper incisions and continued to pour the freshly obtained vomit into them, still remaining healthy. He poured it in his eyes, made a vomit sauna and only experienced some head pain, nausea, and perspiration, but was still healthy.

For his final experiments, he began ingesting the vomit. He made pills from fresh specimens and even mixed some with water and drank it down. He stayed healthy and concluded that it was not a contagious disease. As a society we all know that yellow fever has to be directly transmitted into a blood stream by a mosquito in order from the person to be infected.

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5.
Elephants on Acid

Researchers Louis Jolyon West, Chester M. Pierce, and warren Thomas wanted to know what would happen to an elephant that was on acid. They shot a cartridge-syringe of 297 milligrams, 3000 times more than any human would take, of the stuff into the hind quarters of an elephant and proceeded to record the event.

They claimed that the experiment was being conducted to find out whether the drug would induce aggressiveness that male elephants where they will secrete a sticky type of fluid from their temporal glands. This elephant acted like he was shot by a gun and died. He walked around his pen a few times wailing. The researchers tried their best to revive him using anti-psychotic drugs, but to no avail. When they went public and faced scrutiny they claimed that the elephant must have been sensitive to the drug.

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6. Terror in the Skies

Researchers wanted to know how well a person’s brain would function in the presence of fear of death. In order to conduct their experiment they use soldiers, who thought they were going on a routine mission. While they were 5000 feet in the air the pilot announced that one of the engines had failed and the landing equipment had malfunctioned, so he was going to have to attempt a landing in the ocean.

The soldiers were handed insurance forms to fill out and were told that the army wanted them to be covered for the loss. Unbeknownst to the soldiers, the forms where written in a confusing matter, so once the last soldier finished filling out the form, the pilot let them in on what was going on. A group of soldiers that were safe on the ground were asked to fill out the same form as the ones in the air. The soldiers that were in the air made more mistakes on the form than the ones on the ground, so it was concluded that the brain will have a tendency to make more mistakes in the presence of fear than one that is at a restful state.

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7.
The Look of Eugh

Carney Landis wanted to find out if certain emotions evoked the same facial expressions in each person, so he came up with an experiment to find out. Once he found volunteers, brought them into a lab and drew lines on each of their faces so he could clearly see the muscles move. He would take pictures during the experiments. He then exposed them all to the same things in order to catch their reactions. He had them listen to jazz music, smell ammonia, look at pornographic pictures, and place their hands in a bucket of frogs.

For the final experiment he would bring out a live white mouse and ask them to cut its head off. The people would question if he was serious about this one. He would tell them he was and even encourage it. The people involved would be hesitant to pick up the knife and then they would put it back down. The men would curse and the women would cry. Some of them would not do it at all, but the two thirds that did do it performed it clumsily. He was shocked by how people would be willing to comply with the orders that they are given, but never found a common facial expression of the ones that performed the experiment.

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8.
Turkey Turn-ons

Researchers Martin Schein and Edgar Hale wanted to know about the sexual behaviors of turkeys. What they discovered is that the male species were not fussy. They placed a model of a female turkey in a room and observed the male turkey mating with it like he would have it was a live one. This intrigued them, so they wanted to know what it would take to make the turkey become uninterested. They began by removing parts of the model one by one. They removed the tail, feet and wings and the male turkey still mated with it. Finally, they just put the head on a stick and they still mated with it. They came to the conclusion that because the males are some much larger than the females that the head of the female turkey is the part that turns the males on.

They continued to experiment, wondering what it would take for the male not to want to mate with a head. What they discovered was a fresh female head was first place in the mating, then a dried out male head, then a two year old female head, and then a balsa wood head would still stimulate the turkey.

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9.
Two-headed Dog

Surgeon Vladimir Demikhov wanted to shock the world so he created a two headed dog. He connected a head of a puppy to that of a full grown German Sheppard. He then proceeded to invite the press to witness his creation. What were discovered are the shared commonalities the two heads had. When one was hungry the other one was, when one was hot and panting so did the other head, when one yawned so did the other. The only difference was that the older the dog would try and shake off the other head and in return the other one would bite the ear of the older dog. He continued to do these experiments for years in hoping to learn how to be successful at performing a heart transplant.

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10.
Eyes Wide Open

Researcher Ian Oswald wanted to know if it was possible to fall asleep with your eyes open. So, he conducted a study. He would ask the individual to lie down on a couch and would tape their eyes open. He then would place a flashing light in front of them, he attached electrodes to their legs to deliver shocks and blast blues music in their ears. Performing an EEG, he found that no matter what happened the individual would be asleep with the span of twelve minutes. Through his study, he found that when the brain is faced with the same monotony, then it is apt to fall asleep no matter what. This can explain why people are apt to fall asleep while driving down a wooded road in the middle of the day.

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