40 Outlandish Old Medical Treatments That Doctors Wouldn’t Dream Of Practicing Today

This woman is immersing her limbs in basins filled with water. That seems tame enough. But the fact that the apparatus next to her is running electricity through the water is hair-raising to say the least. This gizmo is an example of Dr. Schnee’s four-cell bath. Medics used it to treat rheumatism and aching joints. 

This image was taken in 1940 at the Scots Mission Hospital in Tiberias, now in Israel. Assisted by Sister Lee, Dr. David Torrance ministers to a patient called Dow in what looks like an iron lung. These were used to help people with breathing difficulties. Doctors most commonly used this machine to treat those suffering from polio.

In 17th-century Europe doctors dealing with plague victims wore truly bizarre outfits. According to National Geographic magazine, the large beaks were filled with concoctions made from herbs. The look was completed with leather gloves and ankle-length coats covered in perfumed wax. Sadly, these costumes would have given little or no protection from the bubonic plague, which actually infects humans via flea bites.

Before the current Covid pandemic, the worst worldwide viral infection in the last century was the great flu epidemic. Known as the Spanish Flu, it struck in 1918 and by the time it had run its course an estimated 50 million were dead. The precise nature of the treatment this woman is receiving during the outbreak – and its effectiveness – is unknown.

At first sight, you’d be forgiven for wondering what on Earth is going on here in this photograph by Marjory Collins. In fact, it’s 1943 and we’re at the U.S. Army’s medical field service school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A doctor is demonstrating how to set a broken jaw for the benefit of an audience of military dentists. So now you know!

This machine appears to be administering some form of unpleasant torture. But it is actually giving a controversial form of medical treatment – controlled electric shocks. Known as a Bergonic chair, this device was used in an attempt to allay the psychological effects of shellshock from World War I. We can only hope that the treatment did indeed help the unfortunate victims. 

We’re glad to be able to say that artificial limbs have come a long way since this example, worn by a woman sometime around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A bootmaker called James Gillingham made this leg at his workshop in the English town of Chard in Somerset. Chard became an important centre for the manufacture of prosthetic limbs. 

Here’s a bottle of Dr. Kilmer’s Female Remedy. The label claims that inside is “The great blood purifier and system regulator. The only herbal alterative and depurative ever discovered” – whatever all that baloney means. Many of these questionable patent medicines disappeared from the shelves after the U.S. Congress passed the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

A man sits with one leg and both arms immersed in salt water. He looks rather anxiously at an elaborate contraption to which he appears to be wired. What we are actually looking at is a prototype electrocardiograph made by British medical equipment firm the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. The gadget – in a far more streamlined form – is still used today to monitor a patient’s heart performance.

The strange-looking kit in this case is a set of cupping equipment. This was a therapy that involved heating the glass vessels and attaching them to the bare skin of the back. The cups would have been filled with something combustible such as a mixture of herbs. The therapist would set these alight and once the flame had died out, the cups would be placed on the patient. Their theoretical purpose was to ease muscular aches and aid blood flow.

This formidable set of protective gear – modeled here circa 1918 – was not to shield the wearer from infectious disease. Rather, it was to protect medical practitioners from the danger of the radioactivity that was a side-product of X-rays. As the 20th century went on the dangers of radioactivity were increasingly recognized and safety measures were tightened. 

The warfare of World War I led to large numbers of horrific head injuries. The showers of hot shrapnel released by heavy artillery shells caused carnage. Those factors and the resulting injuries led to doctors developing new techniques of reconstructive surgery and prosthetics to mend shattered faces. This image shows an array of items used to rebuild facial structures. 

We’re in the city of Piedmont in north-western Italy sometime in the 1920s. What we’re witnessing is a type of thermal treatment. With her pajama pants leg presumably rolled up, the patient has one limb buried in mud in a limb-shaped box. Perhaps this was a treatment for muscular pain. Or maybe she just had a thing about mud. Who knows?

What in the world is it? Well it’s described as a respiratory jacket, similar to the much-more-bulky iron lung. It had the same purpose as the latter – it helped patients with weakened lungs with their breathing, often when they were in the grip of polio. Since the patient in this case is clearly a dummy, it’s safe to assume that this nurse is engaged in a practice run.

Most of us in need of minor medical treatment expect to pay a visit to the local drug store. But what if medicines were available on the street? That’s just what we’re seeing here in this photo from the 1890 taken somewhere in Oklahoma. You’ve heard of street food? Well this is a horse-powered street pharmacy. We’ll probably stick to rather more reassuring bricks-and-mortar drug stores.

Five lucky patients are receiving treatment for respiratory illness. They’re inhaling medicinal vapor containing substances such as eucalyptus and menthol, designed to help with breathing. The year is circa 1930 and the whole thing looks very orderly and well-organized. So perhaps it’s no surprise that this image was captured in Germany.

Some of us might welcome losing a pound or two around the hips. But how many of us would put ourselves at the mercy of this fiendish machine? This photo of what is described as a hip massager was published in a German newspaper in 1928 although it was taken somewhere in America. We can only imagine what the good folk of Germany made of this strange gizmo. Still, the lady trying it out appears to be enjoying herself, kitten heels and all.

If the clothing was different, you might well imagine that this was a scene from a medieval torture chamber. The caption tells us that the man dangling in an extremely uncomfortable position is Mr D.F. Angier, a Post Office department inspector. In attendance is Dr. L.F. Kebler, previously of the Food & Drug Administration. The machine, it’s claimed, can increase a person’s height by up to 6 inches. We’re not buying it. 

A quick glance and you might think this photo simply shows a man being served breakfast in bed. But closer scrutiny of this 1910 image taken in the northern English town of Harrogate reveals otherwise. The recumbent man's swaddled feet are actually connected to an electrical machine. Apparently this was a form of rheumatism or frostbite treatment.

This device, pictured in 1938 with a seemingly willing volunteer, is called a four-cell galvanic bath. It looks remarkably like four buckets of water to us. But in fact it is rather more than that – an electrical current runs through the water. It’s meant to improve the circulation. Usually, advice recommends not mixing electricity and water on any account. Presumably the medics in charge of this procedure knew what they were doing. Let’s hope so.

Here’s a shot from 1929 of an impressive-looking Roentgen X-ray machine in use at the eponymously named institute in Frankfurt, Germany. Obviously, the ability to internally scan a patient was a massive step forward for modern medicine. But in the early days, it could be lethally dangerous for practitioners because of the high levels of radiation to which they were exposed. This machine claims to protect the physician. But its design leaves us doubtful.

Vaccines, as you may have noticed, have been in the news rather a lot in recent times. But we fondly hope that the vaccines that have been developed to combat COVID-19 are manufactured in a rather more sophisticated setting than this. Talk about a kitchen-table laboratory! Actually, this 1917 shot is from the U.S. Army Medical School and the guys are making typhoid vaccine. 

It’s 1888 and here are three men from the Viennese Voluntary Rescue Society proudly exhibiting their Wiener Ambulance. If you’re wondering why it appears to be called after a hotdog sausage, you probably don’t know that Wien is Vienna in German. In any case, it’s hardly a luxury vehicle. The patients, presumably played by volunteers in this shot, are actually stacked up inside in two layers.

It was Frenchman Ralph Dubois who invented this anesthetizing machine in 1884. It enabled a medic to administer controlled doses of chloroform to knock a patient out before surgery. Presumably this was a big improvement on soaking a rag with chloroform, holding it over the patient’s face and hoping for the best... 

Of course nowadays you can buy an aerosol that fits handily in the pocket. But there was no such thing when this photo of an electrical inhaler device was taken in about 1929. The machine delivered what was described as a “medicated fog.” It was intended for the treatment of flu and the common cold.

You hardly need to be a medical school graduate to know that smoking is most definitely bad for your health. But that information wasn’t known a century and more ago. Certainly it seems that Dr. Batty had no reservations about smoking. According to this label he’d been selling cigarettes specially formulated for treating asthma and a medical dictionary of other afflictions since 1882. The mind boggles.

Today, the weight-loss industry is a multi-billion dollar business. But it’s nothing new. Although as far as we know, no company now advertises tapeworms as an aid to dieting. The gruesome idea was that you could eat as much as you want and it would all disappear down the gullet of the “sanitized” tapeworm you’d swallowed. Don’t try this at home, kids!

Radithor was marketed in the early part of the 20th century as a cure-all and energy drink. The makers, Bailey Radium Laboratories of East Orange, New Jersey, asserted that its miracle drink could cure everything from insomnia to anorexia and hysteria. But it contained the radioactive element radium. So it was actually extremely dangerous. Wealthy industrialist Eben Byers found this out to his cost when, after five years of drinking Radithor, half his face fell off. 

What’s this masked man up to on a street in London, England, in 1921? Well, he’s an employee of the London General Omnibus Company and he’s demonstrating the equipment used to combat flu aboard the company’s vehicles. Of course, in 1921, the dreaded Spanish flu, or the H1N1 virus as it was properly known, had killed millions in the very recent past. So it’s no wonder that people were taking what precautions they could to protect against deadly infection. 

In this picture from 1914 at least some attempt has been made to protect the physician from repeated exposure to the radioactive material used in the making of X-rays. But how effective a simple wooden cabinet was in that respect is open to question. This image was captured at the Cochin Hospital in Paris, France, in the radiology department run by Dr. Maxime Menard. Menard himself had to have a finger amputated when it became cancerous.

Yes, you read that right: chocolate-coated arsenic. Just in case you’re in doubt about the properties of arsenic, here’s a definitive description from the website of respected health publication the British Medical Journal. “Arsenic,” it states bluntly, “is one of the most toxic metals derived from the natural environment.” Yet it was widely used in medicines as late as the early 20th century.

One of the scourges of Victorian London and other places around the world at the time was smallpox. These two men with a hand-pulled carriage photographed in 1877 were working to sanitize the streets of the British capital city. Ultimately, smallpox was eradicated by vaccination in the 20th century rather than by disinfecting the streets.

As previously noted, in the early days of anesthetics, one of the substances used was chloroform. In this image captured in 1847 Joseph Clover of University College Hospital in London, England, is demonstrating his equipment for giving a patient a dose of the drug. It’s said that Queen Victoria made the treatment popular as she used it to ease the pain of childbirth. 

This might look like a vicious assault in process, but it is actually a medical treatment being carried out in France circa 1900. The bearded man is a bonesetter and he’s manipulating the patient in what appears to be an attempt to alleviate back pain. We’d have to say that the treatment looks frighteningly drastic. Let’s hope it was effective.

Anyone who has experienced the discomfort of excessive catarrh will vouch for the fact that effective treatment is a godsend. In this advertisement from about 1890 the Eccles Medical Company of Boston, Massachusetts, claims to have “a new method” for alleviating congestion problems. Fortunately, the company promised to send an “illustrated explanation” for the operation of the fearsome-looking apparatus.

We’re on the streets of London sometime in the 1870s and two women scan the wares of a man described as a “street doctor.” In fact, he seems to be selling only cough lozenges, but for those of limited means that would have been better than nothing. Britain is famous now for its National Health Service but of course that didn’t exist in the Victorian era.

Hands up all those who don’t know that mercury is poisonous? As we thought, not a single hand. But the toxicity of the silvery metal was not always common knowledge. Indeed a range of medicinal preparations contained quicksilver, and they were advertised as curing everything from constipation to syphilis and the flu. It wasn’t until surprisingly late in the 20th century that the pharmaceutical industry turned its back on mercury.

This early 1920s photo shows a man, who looks like a sporting type judging by his dress, getting a massage from an attentive woman. His left leg appears to be made of some kind of metal. Given the date of the image, there’s every likelihood he lost his limb during World War I. The terrible injuries received by so many during that conflict led to rapid improvements in prosthetics. 

Few of us relish a visit to the dentists, but this alarming piece of equipment would be hardly likely to make us feel more relaxed about a dental check-up. This image taken in a French dental surgery in 1922 shows a patient at the mercy of a sinister-looking machine. It’s described as “a device to extract teeth.” It apparently never caught on: we can’t think why...

Dr. H. Andreshou treats a patient with ultraviolet light. The original caption tells us that this results in sunburn after a few treatments. The year was 1922 and medical science had not yet connected exposure to this type of lightwave with skin cancer. We can only hope that this woman emerged from the doctor’s surgery without long-term health problems.