- We suppose it’s a cure for what ails you if it kills you. At least your fever’s gone.
We’ve come far in terms of science. While we still have much to learn, we understand universe in a way our ancestors couldn’t even imagine.
That’s why they had to come up with their own explanations for how such things as nature, disease, and so forth work. Sometimes they made surprisingly accurate assumptions, but more often than not their ideas were hilarious nonsense.
Here are five beliefs people of old used to hold about life, the universe, and everything.
Riding on a Train Would Drive You Insane… Or Worse
Once upon a time, the fastest method of travel most people could imagine was on horseback. Then some engineers figured out how to strap a steam engine on some wheels and the locomotive was born.
You might think that people would be excited about getting to travel faster from place to place. But the initial reaction was actually quite the opposite.
Although early trains could only move at around 30 miles per hour, many folks thought that human beings simply couldn’t withstand such immense speed. The velocity and the rattle of the train would permanently damage the brain and drive you insane.
Some even claimed that the fantastic G forces of riding a speeding early-19th-century train would squeeze a person’s organs right out of his orifices. Of course, that never happened, but at least we can see that our fear of new things has always been there.
Breast Milk is Coagulated Period Blood
In the ancient days (and sometimes even today) women’s bodies have mystified the mostly male intellectuals. There are so many weird things about the ladies — for example, where the **** does breast milk come from?
Well, if you asked the science-like people of ancient Israel, Greek, Rome, or medieval Europe, they might tell you that it comes from the same place as period blood. Not only that, it is period blood.
You wouldn’t think that upon seeing the two substances — there’s a notable difference in color, to begin with. But the thinkers of old came with a whole process of how a woman’s body produces milk.
According to Aristotle and other brilliant minds, a woman’s body didn’t get rid of all period blood during menstruation. Whatever was left would coagulate, heat up, and turn milky white due to hot air.
We’re not exactly sure where the hot air came from. But that’s okay, since we’re pretty sure whoever came up with this theory didn’t know either.
Tobacco Smoke Enemas Cured Pretty Much Everything
Today, we know that smoking tobacco is bad for your health. But when this fancy new substance first made its way from the New World to Europe, people had some fascinating ideas of what it could do.
They did — accurately, if we might add — observe that smoking tobacco made your heart beat faster and that the smoke was warm. What better way to use it, then, than to revive hypothermic drowning victims.
But an unconscious person can’t exactly start puffing on a pipe. That’s alright, just have the doctor smoke tobacco and use a tube to blow the smoke up the patient’s ass.
We can’t imagine that would have any effect, but soon enough tobacco smoke enemas became a go-to treatment for pretty much anything. Doctors prescribed them to cure headaches, colds, abdominal cramps, and even cholera and dysentery.
The process wasn’t exactly safe, though. Let’s say the smoking doctor started coughing and accidentally inhaled strongly through the butt-tube… Yes, that happened.
That’s why doctors eventually switched to using bellows instead. And then they came to their senses and stopped blowing tobacco smoke into people’s butts.
Feeding Morphine to Babies Calms Them Down
We have to admit, this belief isn’t exactly incorrect. Giving a baby morphine will definitely calm it down, but it’s such a spectacularly terrible idea that we’re featuring it anyway.
Much like with tobacco, licensed and not-so-licensed doctors didn’t exactly understand the dangers of opium and its derivatives at first. For example, in the mid-19th century, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup hit the market in the U.S.
This delightful little concoction was a cocktail of morphine, powdered opium, and various other more or less dangerous ingredients. It was marketed as something that would soothe any person or animal, but the target market were mothers of small children.
And sure enough, a spoonful of morphine calmed the babies right down. Sometimes, it’d soothe them so well that they’d never, ever cry again.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, although still on the market, had built a reputation as a surefire way to kill your baby. It only took people 50 years to realize that.
Demons Live in Brussel Sprouts
Brussels sprouts are a divisive food item. Some people love them, others claim that they were invented by Satan himself.
The people of medieval England were strictly in the latter camp. So much so, in fact, that they thought Brussels sprouts were quite literally possessed.
The general wisdom at the time was that there could be demons living in Brussels sprouts. This might sound more like religion than science to you, but wait till you hear the reasoning.
People had noticed that sometimes when they eat Brussels sprout, they started experiencing stomach pains, fever, and bouts of diarrhea. If that sounds like food poisoning to you, well, that’s probably because that’s what it most likely was.
Of course, nobody at the time knew what bacteria are. So instead of carefully washing their Brussels sprouts, they’d cut a small cross to sprout’s base to exorcise the demons.
Some people still do this today. Only, now they claim that the cut makes the sprouts cook faster.