#10 Cataract Surgery
It’s disturbing to imagine ancient people performing surgery on a part of the body as sensitive as the eye, but cataract surgery has its roots as early as the 3rd Century A.D. In ancient India a physician would use a needle to puncture a person’s eye. Then they dislodged the clouded lens which impaired vision.
Now, for context, modern cataract surgery involves removing the clouded lens and replacing it with a new artificial one. This ancient Indian form of the surgery only pushed the lens out of the way; and left it in the eye. This combined with the lack of sterile surgery tools is likely what yielded the poor results that followed.
Initially patients would report a clearing of their vision, but it in the long run many patients were left worse then they initially were – sometimes without sight at all. The initial success of the procedure though led doctors to keep practicing it and touting its benefits.
It was in the Medieval Arabic world that the surgery would actually involve removing the lens becoming the basis for the modern developments in the 1930s and 1940s.
#9 Hand Transplantation
Hand transplants might seem like something straight from science fiction, but today the procedure has been performed successfully multiple times. Perhaps more surprising, is that the original hand transplant took place in 1964.
A 28 year old marine lost his hand in a grenade explosion and agreed to undergo the experimental transplant. The donor was a recently deceased man in a nearby hospital.
Initially the procedure seemed to be a success. The man even reported that he had feeling in the transplanted hand. However, due to improper immunosuppressant drugs the man’s body rejected the new hand. After three weeks and despite the efforts from doctors from all over the world the hand had to be amputated.
Today, with the use of modern immunosuppressant drugs, the surgery can be successful, and there are cases of people who’ve lived with transplanted hands for more than a decade leading relatively normal lives.
#8 Treatment of Mental Illness
Even today treatments for mental illness are often criticized for being ineffective or damaging; but they’re most certainly better than the treatments of the past.
One practice, which was used all over the world from prehistoric to medieval times, was trephination. Trephination entailed removing patches of the sufferer’s skull. This was done in an attempt to let out demons or other forces which may have caused the mental ailment. Perhaps surprisingly, there is evidence that people survived the procedure – though its effectiveness is unclear.
The 20th Century saw the introduction of the lobotomy. In this procedure, a doctor would use a tool similar to an ice-pick to poke above a person’s eyeball and into their brain to sever connections in the prefrontal cortex. This could be done against a patient’s will. If they were lucky, they were unconscious when it happened.
The criteria for a lobotomy included schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, and many more. Often times the patient was either left with their mental illnesses or developed new ones.
Along with lobotomies, straightjackets were used to immobilize dangerous patients, and they would be placed in padded cells where they could not harm others or themselves. Here people could be left isolated for long stretches of time.
These techniques were largely phased out in the United States in the mid to late 1900s with the arrival of better mental drugs. Also, negative public perception may have contributed.
#7 Weight Loss Methods
Excess fat and even obesity aren’t just modern problems as even the ancient Romans dealt with them. One physician described a range of excess fat from overweight, to fat, to obese – which meant someone who “cannot walk without sweating, cannot reach when sitting at the table because of the mass of his stomach, cannot breathe easily, cannot give birth, [and] cannot clean himself.”
Conventional methods of weight loss such as portion control and exercise have long been recommended, but wouldn’t it be easier to lose weight by regularly taking warm baths? That is what one doctor from the 1600s recommended. Or what about a special soap from the early 1900s which, with regular scrubbing, would get rid of fat?
While they probably weren’t successful at least these methods weren’t harmful. Poet, celebrity, and politician of the early 1800s, Lord Byron, was so obsessed with staying thin that he would drink large amounts of vinegar to reduce his appetite, which on its own wasn’t healthful, but when he did eat it would sometimes be only biscuits and soda-water for days in a row. Supposedly, Lord Byron often looked sick.
Then there is the tapeworm diet. This entails someone voluntarily ingesting a tapeworm so that worm will feed off of whatever they’re eating. No actual dieting required, but there is the side effect of having a worm in your intestine that may grow up to thirty feet long.
Whether the tapeworm diet was ever mainstream is debated and possibly a sensational rumor though there is this 1920s style ad which seems to endorse such a diet saying things like, “eat, eat, eat, and always stay thin” and “no diet, no bath, no exercise”. Maybe you can’t imagine that a person would do this to themselves at all, but in 2013 a woman from Iowa ate a tapeworm for these purposes. So maybe it’s not so much of a stretch that in the 1920s, when maintaining a thin body, was even more crucial that large numbers of people did this.
#6 Birth Control
While the modern birth control pill only showed up in the 1960s, people have always been looking for better birth control. Condoms have long existed, though formed from animal organs. Oral solutions often came in the form of herbs and plants. One such plant, the Silphium Plant, is rumored to have actually worked, though it can’t be studied as the plant went extinct long ago due to over-cultivation – possibly because of the high demand for the plant’s contraceptive uses.
Whether or not it worked at least the worst side effect was an unexpected pregnancy. Other methods included the consumption of mercury – a substance which is now known to be very dangerous to humans.
In certain African countries, non-lethal but equally bizarre techniques were practiced. Such was the practice of a woman wearing a waist-band with a pouch full of herbs prior to intercourse. Also, recommended was wearing an umbilical cord like a waistband. The idea of wearing something prior to intercourse also may have emerged in Medieval Europe where it’s rumored that women were encouraged to tie a pair of weasel testicles around their thigh during intercourse.
None of these methods have been scientifically tested, but wearing a pair of weasel testicles or an umbilical cord may work as birth control in an indirect way of repelling any potential sexual partners
#5 Breast Implants
The first breast augmentation surgery was performed in 1893. An accident had left an opera singer with a damaged breast. Worrying that the imbalance would be damaging to her career she agreed to have a large fatty tumor removed from her back and implanted in her chest.
Despite this procedure being the first of its kind it had apparently gone according to plan. A checkup a year later showed that the results were still visible. The breast with the implant was a bit smaller and firmer, but overall the patient was pleased with the results.
Over a hundred years later breast augmentation surgery is the most common cosmetic surgical procedure in the United States and has been since 2006. Today the procedure is most commonly done with artificial implants made of silicone and sometimes other artificial materials.
#4 Bloodletting
Bloodletting, the practice of intentionally bleeding someone, is, today, synonymous with debunked medical theories, but in the past it was used commonly. How commonly? Well, as one Roman writer put it, “to let blood by incising a vein is no novelty: what is novel is that there should be scarcely any malady in which blood should not be let.”
From infections, to fever, to reducing pain and swelling, to smallpox, to arthritis, to constipation, to the common cold, and even simply to maintain general health – bloodletting was the old version of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”.
This could be performed by either cutting a person’s vein – preferably on the forearm or cutting the jugular vein – or by attaching a bloodsucking worm known as a leech to a patient. Sometimes a person was bled so much in one session that they passed out (which was considered a good sign), and other times they were bled over a period of days.
Famously, United States President George Washington asked to be bled when dealing with a throat infection. In just 12 hours, Washington had been bled of about 80 ounces of blood, a substantial amount considering the average adult male has about 195 ounces of blood in their body. Whether the bloodletting or the initial infection killed him is still debated to this day.
The whole practice stemmed from the idea that imbalances of substances in the blood cause ailments and by bleeding someone a balance could be restored. While bloodletting is still used to treat a few ailments, this idea of balance is not the science behind modern bloodletting.
#3 Rhinoplasty
The first records of a rhinoplasty, or a nose job as it’s commonly called, come from around 3,000 to 2,500 BCE in Ancient Egypt. This procedure, however, wasn’t just to make a nose look better but rather to restore it entirely. Criminals were often punished by having their noses removed or mutilated; hence they would seek whatever crude procedures were available just to not look unsightly.
In ancient India this was especially important as the nose represented someone’s dignity and honor. This Indian version of the nose job from 600 BCE involved taking skin from either the forehead or the cheek to repair the mutilated nose.
Even the modern nose job, which focuses on making someone more aesthetically pleasing, might be older then you think, developing in Europe in the 1800s. Wealthy people would often pay to reduce humps in their noses or straighten crooked noses, and there are even old before and after photos and artist renditions as evidence of these procedures.
Today rhinoplasties have become one of the most popular forms of cosmetic surgery. In 2018, they ranked as the most common plastic surgery among men.
#2 Dental Implants
Commonly it is believed that dental implants of the past were made out of wood, with the popular example of George Washington’s mouth of wooden teeth. However, this was generally only the case for poor people as the wealthy preferred more realistic options. In the case of Washington, his dentures were not wooden at all but instead contained materials such as cow and horse teeth, silver and copper alloys, and ivory.
But for some of the wealthy in Victorian Britain, dentures made from animal teeth weren’t quite realistic enough. Known as “Waterloo Teeth”, the teeth of dead soldiers were often removed so that they could be used in implants.
Another source of human teeth during this time was the poor. Ironically, while poor people weren’t as able to buy the best replacement teeth they were less likely to lose their teeth in the first place as they didn’t have access to the sweetest and most sugary desserts. Sometimes poor people would voluntarily sell their teeth for money, and other times their teeth were forcibly removed.
These options might sound disgusting, but it’s very easy for modern people to take for granted not only the cleaning and replacement options that have only recently become available but also the effects unnatural diets can have on teeth.
#1 Hair Transplantation
In a hair transplant, hair follicles are taken from one part of the head and placed in the balding area. Usually hairs are taken from the back and sides of the head, areas less prone to balding. Contrary to popular belief, hair follicles usually aren’t taken from other parts of the body, and they definitely aren’t taken from other individuals. Ignoring aesthetic problems coming from the different hair textures, the body would undoubtedly reject these follicles.
However one doctor from a century ago, had a different approach to the procedure. Posted in a science journal from 1921, a doctor advertised his hair transplant surgery which involved quite literally taking hairs from one person and placing them into the head of another – not the follicle, but just a piece of hair.
He would cut off a long piece of a woman’s hair – not for any reason other than long hair was easier to work with – and he’d insert it into a gun-like contraption. The device, loaded with hair, would be placed against the scalp. As described in the magazine the following would then happen.
“Two lances force their way into the scalp carrying between jaws a section of the female hair. The method of the operation is very similar to that employed by the mosquito when it inserts its spears… into the skin of a man. The jaws then spread slightly, leaving the hair within the tissue and a knife cuts the hair off.”
The theory was not necessarily that the transplanted hairs would act as replacement hair, but rather that the female hairs being inserted would stimulate the man’s own dormant hair follicles. There is no information on whether or not the procedure did anything other than encourage a horrible infection.
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