Buzz
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, modern medicine in developed nations was often seen as a beacon of sterility and advanced clinical practices. However, throughout much of history, medical treatments were crude, chaotic, and often downright repulsive. In eras plagued by diseases like smallpox, cholera, and the plague, patients were far less concerned with cleanliness. Survival was the priority, and both doctors and patients sought ways to harness nature's power. Centuries ago, practices now dismissed as superstition were endorsed by some of Europe's most educated minds.
10. The Wound Salve
Among the most bizarre treatments of the early modern period was an ointment applied not to the wound itself but to the weapon that caused it. This method, rooted in 'sympathetic magic,' was supported by figures like Walter Ralegh and Kenelm Digby, a prominent 17th-century proto-scientist. Jean Baptiste van Helmont, a renowned Belgian chemist, suggested a recipe including 'moss from an unburied skull, human fat, mummy, human blood, linseed oil, and turpentine.'
A version of this remedy, as described by Francis Bacon, called for 'the fat of two bears killed during mating.' Indeed, this required not only stealth but also precise timing to ensure the bears were slain at the peak of their union. The Wound Salve might have had some success, as it prevented surgeons from touching the wound directly, reducing the risk of infection.
9. Cerebral Pâté
A 17th-century remedy for epilepsy, devised by John French, a chemist and physician associated with Robert Boyle, the Father of Chemistry, involved using the brain of a young man who had died violently. The brain, along with its membranes, arteries, veins, nerves, and spinal cord, was to be ground into a paste-like consistency. This mixture was then soaked in spirits of wine, placed in a glass container, and left to ferment in horse dung for six months before distillation.
French, a skilled anatomist, had easy access to human cadavers through his work at the Savoy Hospital. In 2011, Tony Robinson and I recreated this bizarre concoction for a television program, substituting pig brains for human ones. The result was more soup-like than pâté, and we opted to skip the lengthy dung fermentation process.
8. The Homunculus
A 1650 alchemical text, *A New Light of Alchemy*, provided a recipe for creating a homunculus. It instructed placing human sperm in a sealed container and burying it in horse dung for 40 days until signs of life appeared. The resulting transparent, bodiless form was to be nourished daily with human blood and kept in dung for 40 weeks, after which it would supposedly develop into a living infant.
Paracelsus, the revolutionary 16th-century medical figure, famously declared this creation the 'Homunculus, or Artificial Man.' He emphasized that it required the same nurturing and attention as a human child until it matured. Despite his death in 1541, many 17th-century scientists appeared to take the concept seriously, embodying the spirit of pushing boundaries, much like The Doors' anthem, 'Break on Through to the Other Side.'
7. Skull Smoothie
In the 1660s, an English physician proposed a calcium-rich chocolate concoction as a treatment for apoplexy. The recipe included powdered male peony root, human skull fragments, ambergris, and musk. To this, a pound of cocoa kernels and sugar were added to create a chocolate mixture. Patients were advised to consume half an ounce daily, mixed with sage or peony flower infusion.
This physician was Thomas Willis, later known as the Father of Neuroscience. He amassed significant wealth, eventually purchasing a 3,000-acre estate from the Duke of Buckinghamshire. Chocolate, a luxury at the time, had been prescribed for decades, particularly to women, as it was believed to enhance their physical appearance and vitality.
6. Chicken and Pigeon Therapy
Among countless bizarre and ineffective plague remedies, chicken therapy stood out. The process involved plucking a live chicken and pressing its bare skin against a plague sore until the bird died, likely from shock. This was repeated with additional birds until one survived, signaling the removal of plague spirits. Pigeons were also widely used. In *The Duchess of Malfi*, Webster’s character famously declared, 'I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the feet of a plague victim than kiss one of you fasting,' a statement audiences of the time would have understood.
This practice was endorsed by some of the era’s most esteemed physicians. When John Donne fell gravely ill in 1623, the king’s personal doctors attended him, placing dead pigeons at his head to draw out harmful vapors. Christopher Irvine, a royal surgeon, claimed in 1656 that applying the plucked rear of a hen to a snakebite could neutralize venom. Such pigeon-based remedies remained popular in folk medicine well into the 19th century.
5. Aqua Divina
Despite its appealing name, 'divine water' was anything but. Prepared by Paracelsian chemists, it involved chopping up the entire body of someone who had died violently—bones, flesh, and organs—into tiny pieces, then mashing it into an indistinguishable pulp.
Thankfully, few patients actually consumed Aqua Divina. The macabre mixture was distilled into a liquid, which was then mixed with the patient’s blood to supposedly draw out disease. Johann Schroeder, a prominent German chemist, was a major proponent of this remedy. Even after his death in 1664, Irish priest John Keogh continued to recommend it in 1739, his credibility bolstered by his marriage to a cousin of the Duchess of Marlborough.
4. Poison
In addition to numerous medicines derived from human remains, there were also detailed instructions for creating potent poisons from human bodies, often while the victims were still alive. A 1638 account described a red-haired sailor kidnapped in North Africa, hung upside down with a broken back, and forced to ingest vipers. His swollen face and throat dripped a lethal liquid into a silver basin, creating a poison so deadly it could kill on contact.
Another tale involved a cardinal who used his mistress to produce poison, a necessity for his ecclesiastical duties in early-modern Italy. He buried her up to her waist in a secluded courtyard and applied vipers to her breasts, extracting a potent venom for his use.
3. Cutting for the Stone
When Puritan minister Nicholas Byfield died in 1622, an autopsy revealed a bladder stone weighing thirty-three ounces, comparable in size to a large red cabbage. Samuel Pepys, who underwent a successful stone removal in 1658, kept a tennis ball-sized stone as a souvenir. In 1669, John Evelyn’s brother, suffering from a bladder stone, resisted surgery until Evelyn brought Pepys to convince him of the procedure’s merits.
Evelyn likely omitted the gruesome details of lithotomies he witnessed in a Paris hospital in 1650 when speaking to his brother. One patient, a forty-year-old man, had a stone larger than a turkey’s egg removed. The procedure involved binding the patient to a chair, making an incision in the scrotum, and extracting the stone with a crane-like instrument, causing immense pain. Another patient, a cheerful eight or nine-year-old child, endured the operation with remarkable patience and expressed joy upon seeing the stone removed.
2. Borrowed Arm
In 1597, Italian surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi detailed a method for reconstructing damaged or missing noses. A skin flap was taken from the patient’s arm and attached to the nose, requiring the arm to remain splinted against the face for up to three weeks. While this sounds uncomfortable, it pales in comparison to having one’s nose attached to another person’s arm for the same duration.
Tagliacozzi once treated an Italian nobleman who paid his servant to donate arm skin for a new nose. After three weeks of being physically connected, the servant gained his freedom and moved to Naples, while the nobleman stayed in Bologna. Initially successful, the nose later rotted, allegedly because the servant had died, and the nose maintained a 'secret sympathy' with its original body. Deemed sacrilegious for altering God’s creation, Tagliacozzi’s body was exhumed and removed from consecrated ground by the Catholic Church.
1. Patients? I Piss on Them!
In 1580, Italian physician Leonardo Fioravanti was in Africa when a dispute between a Spanish gentleman, Andreas Gutiero, and a soldier turned violent. The soldier severed Gutiero’s nose with a swift sword strike. Fioravanti retrieved the nose from the sand, washed it with urine to remove debris, and reattached it using his specialized balm. After eight days of bandaging, the nose healed perfectly, and Gutiero recovered fully.
Urine, being sterile upon excretion, was often a safer option than contaminated water. Modern medicine still utilizes urea, a component of urine, for treating ulcers and infected wounds. Historically, Thomas Vicary, Henry VIII’s surgeon, used urine for wound care, and Thomas Willis, a Restoration-era doctor, even recommended patients drink their own urine for certain ailments.
