19th Century Medical Practices

19th Century

Medical Practices

Heroin

Mercury

Urine

Bloodletting

Drinking urine was said to cure an endless list of ailments and promote good health. You can take my word and all the research done by scientist that it doesn't cure anything at all.

Trepanation

Did you know heroin calms coughs. In the 19th century coughing was extremely rude, so they used heroin to cure it. Heroin is very addictive and destructive, but at least we wont hear that loud, annoying cough.

Bloodletting was a famous medical treatment. The theory was that the body was made of four fluids called blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. If there was anything wrong with a person, it was because one of the fluids were out of balance. So doctors would take blood and attempt to balance the fluids out. This also never cured any problems, just made people feel woozy after lots of blood loss.

Now everyone knows mercury is not good for the human body. In the 19th century people believed mercury fixed everything from a scraped knee to fixing your fiber levels. In truth the only thing mercury did was give people chest pains, heart problems, lung problems, coughing, and death. But mercury did stop the spread of STD's and cured syphilis. For example Mozart used mercury to cure his syphilis, but soon after died of mercury poisoning, but who cares, at least he didn't have syphilis.

Toothache

The oldest medical practice was drilling holes in peoples heads to cure seizures and migraines. This cure did very little help leaving people disabled or dead. This practice use to be famous in societies as the Incans and Mayans. These societies were also wiped out.

Children's Soothing Syrups

Hysteria

Have a toothache, just take cocaine drops and your cured. In the 19th century cocaine toothache drops required no prescription, and were sale at your local drug store. Imagine someone getting addicted to cocain, with such a easy access to it.

Women's mood swings where to be know as a symptom of a deadly disease in the 19th century. These mood swings were cured by the doctor administrating vaginal massage until the woman achieved hysterical paroxysm. Wonder why the symptoms for Hysteria was so long?

Alias Grace

Alias Grace is put in an asylum in the 19th century. She is studied by Dr. Jordan for his research for mental illness. At least thats what we are led to believe at first.

Rachel Humphrey

Rachel Humphrey steals drugs from Simon and becomes opium addicted. Opium contains morphine and heroin which is very addictive and destructive to the body. Wonder where she ends up in a few years?

Location

Medical practices in the 19th century were mostly taken place in private homes or doctor's office. During this time hospitals were known to be dirty. Most doctors would even travel on foot or horse back to their patients.

Who Treated What

In the 19th century doctors were expected to treat everything from fevers to livestock. Later on in the century doctors started to specialized in certain body parts.

Conclusion

19th century medical practices were not the best, and some may have worked, but with many side effects.

Children bothering you? In the 19th century children were given soothing syrups to calm them down. Now what they didn't know was what was contained in each of these bottles. Each ounce of soothing syrup contained 65mg of pure morphine. They did keep the children calm but at the risk of dying and addiction when they grew up.