The Most Notable Disease Treatments from History

I’ve spent most of my time in The Pharmacy talking about modern treatments for diseases. I’ll be an expert in synthetic, clinically efficacious, and overall safe medications. To spice things up a bit, I’ve decided to take a deep dive into the sophisticated practices from the past, renditioning five of the most notable disease treatments from throughout history.

This article aims to give some background on historical medicine and discover whether these treatments are still legitimate.

1. Blood-letting

This medicinal practice is one of the most famous historical remedies for all kinds of illnesses. Do you have the Black Plague? Blood-letting. Do you have syphilis? Blood-letting. Popularized around 3000 years ago, cultures around the globe relied on the blood-letting practice until as recently as the 19th century.

Blood-letting got its origin from the ancient understanding of illness and disease. Before discovering Germ Theory, historical practitioners believed that humans possessed four “humors”: blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile. Any imbalance in these humors was thought to cause disease.

Let’s say that a person from ancient times developed tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a lung infection that causes its victim to cough up blood. Physicians of the time saw blood and thought that the infected person had too much blood in their body, and that’s why they were sick. So what does the doctor do? The doctor creates cuts in the infected person’s skin to let out the excess blood. The patient dies due to tuberculosis complicated by severe blood loss.

Modern medicine recognizes the harm in blood-letting and no longer uses the technique in practice. Is the treatment legitimate? Hard no.

2. Cinchona

Cinchona is a genus of over 20 species of plants native to the Andes of South America. South American natives used these plants to cure people who fell victim to a particular illness. Known throughout history as the “Roman Fever,” malaria has been killing people left and right for thousands of years.

Quinine, a substance found naturally in cinchona plants, is an effective treatment for malaria. South Americans knew this, but as with almost everything in history, the remedy they’ve been using for hundreds of years became outsourced by European colonizers. By uprooting these plants from their native habitat, the world gained an effective treatment for malaria.

Scientists and herbalists from the day continued to research quinone and developed more effective malaria treatments designed from the naturally sourced quinine. Is cinchona legitimate? Absolutely. Many modern medications owe their roots to quinine (You like my joke?), and modern medicine has refined those medications with more minor side effects and better clinical outcomes.

3. Mercury

If you’ve taken an introductory chemistry class, you’ll know that mercury is the only liquid metal on the periodic table and is toxic to most living things. Early thermometers used to contain mercury, and so did early medicine. In the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, early physicians prescribed compounds like cinnabar (mercury sulfide) and sublimate (mercury chloride) as medicinal treatments for various illnesses like trachoma and venereal diseases.

Most notably, Arabian quicksilver ointment rose to popularity during the syphilis outbreak in Europe in the 15th century. Through trial and error, people realized the harmful effects of ingesting mercury and started applying it topically. Up until the early 20th century, physicians used mercury in disease, particularly as an antiseptic.

Is mercury legitimate? Not in a million years. Never touch mercury unless you’re in a lab and you have appropriate protection.

4. Urine

Our modern understanding of urine is that it is mainly made up of waste products. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans believed that giving urine to babies and young children would break their fevers and stop convulsions. Urine therapy stayed relevant throughout the years, especially for those living in impoverished areas.

Effective treatments for bacterial infections weren’t around before the 1940s, so those who were sick would try anything to cure themselves. They believed that drinking urine would cleanse and sterilize their systems.

Urine is mainly made of water, urea, uric acid, creatinine, and various other electrolytes. Creatinine is a waste product of muscle, and urea and uric acids are waste products of metabolized structures in the body. There are no available claims and no clinical trials that prove urine has any medicinal properties, and urine should be excreted as waste only.

5. Chamomile

The last treatment on this list happens to be the safest and most used in modern days. Chamomile is the common name for a group of plants belonging to the Asteraceae family. Ancient Egyptians and Romans described chamomile in their writings, promoting the herb for sleeplessness and anxiety.

Nowadays, we drink chamomile tea as a way to calm our nerves and our stomachs. There is little known about the long-term health effects of ingesting chamomile, which includes how chamomile interacts with various pharmaceutical medications. The tea is most likely safe for the general population, and there is little known evidence for its safety in pregnant or breastfeeding people. Chamomile remains as herbal therapy and a lovely tea to drink on a cold night.